Greensleeves Scavenger Hunt...Everyone Welcome To Join In

[toni*]

If the child was illegitimate would have it had implications on the burial?
I know unbaptised people were not permitted to be buried in certain areas

[Pastmagic]

From all this reading reading round the subject, I am thinking that there must be some economic angle to this. Here are two documents of the time, which show how things are recorded. But it is hard to see what economic threat William posed, and to whom.


http://rootsresearcher.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/amanuensis-monday-apprehension-of-richard-read-re-bastard-child-his-brother-john-paying-the-bastardy-bond-for-him/

[Greensleeves]

I am inclined to agree with you PM.  If it was deliberately written like that to ensure that William could not inherit, though, it would appear that at his baptism he was expected to survive.  However, in the event, he was buried five days later.

I still don't know, if William was illegitimate, why the record states "illegitimate son of Robert Shadforth (jnr) and Alice (his wife)." I would have thought the putative father would have been 'named and shamed' to distance the Shadforths even further from the child.

So, was this the Shadforths taking advantage of their positions?   Had the marriage between Robert and Alice already broken down, which meant that Robert Jnr and his father, Robert Snr,  were anxious to ensure that any child of the second marriage (he was presumably already in a relationship with Mary Whittingham) would inherit.

[youngtug]

Even if William was not Roberts son, in law Robert, being married to Alice at the time of the birth, was the father, so the question of inheritance does not arise.
Here is an example of ecclesiastical law that may be appropiate. ;  http://www.archive.org/stream/ecclesiasticall01jemmgoog#page/n20/mode/2up

[youngtug]

" I would have thought the putative father would have been 'named and shamed' to distance the Shadforths even further from the child.

Only by going to the quarter sessions. The baby died. Anyway, the child had a father to support him, he wasn't a burden on the parish.
 This you may find interesting;  http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1989-0/haller.htm

[Greensleeves]

that latter link makes really shocking reading YT.

[Greensleeves]

Right, to try to start summarising a few things, I have put together these facts which the Hunt has produced,  as a suggestion of who Alice Laws might be: 

It is possible that Alice Laws was a widow when she married Robert Shadforth Jnr.  At the age of 39, it seems unlikely that she would been single.  Is this Alice’s family?

All events at St Hilda’s, Hartlepool:

7 Nov 1722  Baptism -  Robert Burrell, son of William Burrell
15 Feb 1746 Robert Burrell married Alice Watt
19 Sep 1748 Baptism - Alice Burrell, daughter of Robert Burrell
10 Jun 1753 - Baptism - William Burrell, son of Robert Burrell

24 Aug 1774 - Marriage of William Laws and Alice Burrel
Witnesses: Robert Shadforth*, Jane Hastings
(*this must have been Robert Shadforth Snr, as Robert Shadforth Jnr was about 16 at the time)

12 Feb 1776 - Burial: William Laws, Taylor (sic)

10 Jan 1785 Marriage of Robert Shadforth (jnr) and Alice Laws
Witnesses:  William Burrell, Ann Coulson

[Pastmagic]

Just a thought - who were the witnesses at Robert Jnr's second speedy marriage? And if Alice had married Laws, were there any children?


PM

[Tephra]

It's time for this weeks Scavenger Hunt, and this week it's a bit of a tangle.

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,506327.0.html

Good Luck and Good Hunting

Barbara


As usual, this Hunt will remain open for any further information which may come in.