no right of inheritance to the estates of their natural father or mother. But other natural or illegitimate children succeed to the estate of the mother in default of lawful children or descendants, and to the estate of the father who has acknowledged them, if he dies without lineal or collateral relations, or without a surviving wife." and if they are dead, the property passes to their legitimate children or to the illegitimate brothers and sisters of the testator, according to circumstances. There are various other regulations on this subject in the French Codes; but the above will be sufficient to indicate the spirit of this department of French jurisprudence. In Norway the state of the law is very favourable to illegitimate children. They are not only legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the parents, but the father may, previous to his contracting a marriage with any other party, declare the legitimacy of his children by a particular act, which gives them the same rights as his children born in wedlock. This declaration of legitimacy is generally made in Norway. (Laing's Nor-law of Pericles (Life by Plutarch, cap. way.) In several of the States of the North American Union ante-nuptial children are legitimated by the father's marriage to the mother. This is the case in the states of Vermont, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio. Kent states (Commentaries, vol. ii. p. 212, ed. 1840) that "bastards are incapable of taking, in New York, under the law of descents and under the statute of distribution of intestate's effects: and they are equally incapable in several of the other United States, which follow in this respect the rule of the English law. But in Vermont, Connecticut, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia, bastards can inherit from and transmit to their mothers real and personal estate, under some modifications, which prevail particularly in the states of Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina, and Tennessee; and in New York the estate of an illegitimate intestate descends to the mother and the relatives on the part of the mother. In North Carolina the legislature, in 1829, enabled bastards to be legitimated on the intermarriage of the putative father with the mother, and on his petition, so far as to enable the child to inherit the real and personal estate of his father as if he was lawfully born. In Louisiana bastards (being defined to be children whose father is unknown) have By the Athenian law (passed in the archonship of Eucleides, B.C. 403), as quoted by Demosthenes (Against Macartatus, cap. 12), illegitimate children were cut out from all inheritance and succession; nor could a inan who had legitimate male offspring leave his property to other persons, and consequently not to his illegitimate children. A previous 37) declared that those only were legitimate and Athenian citizens who were born of two Athenian parents. This law, which was repealed or violated in favour of a son of Pericles, was reenacted in the archonship of Eucleides. (Athenæus, xiii. 577; Demosthenes Against Eubulides, cap 10.) Among the Romans, if a man begot children in lawful matrimony (justæ nuptiæ), those children were his, and according to the phraseology of the Roman law, they were said to be in his power. If he begot children on a woman in any other way, they were not in his power; he had not the paternal authority over them, and they had not the rights of children begotten in lawful matrimony. If a man contracted what the Romans called an incestuous marriage, such as the alliance of father and daughter, mother and son, grandfather and granddaughter; as this was really no marriage, the woman was not the man's wife, and the offspring were not his children. But though there was no father, the offspring were considered the children of the mother, for there could generally be no doubt that they were the fruit of her body; accordingly such children had a mother, but they had no father. This was also the condition of children whom a woman brought forth from promiscuous intercouse; they were considered to have no father, because the father was uncertain: they were called Spurii, which is the common Roman The expression natural children, naturales filii, is borrowed from the Roman law. In the later Roman law naturales filii are described as the offspring of a concubine, or of a maid or widow whom a man has debauched. But the older sense of naturalis filius, naturalis pater, was that of natural son, natural father, as opposed to a son or father by adoption, as we see in Cicero and in Livy (xlii. 52; xliv. 4). The word is also used in the same sense in Gaius (i. 104), and by Ulpian (Dig. 37, tit. 8, s. 1, § 2). The context will show in any case whether it is the object of the writer to contrast natural-born children with adopted, or illegitimate children with legitimate. term for persons who had no legal | son of his mother, as indeed the English father. The reasons why they were law does for some purposes and yet not called Spurii, as assigned by the Roman for others. In a case in Lord Raymond's Jurists, are not satisfactory. (Gaius, i. | ‘Reports,' p. 65, there are some remarks 64.) Adulterine children, children be- on the maxim of a bastard being nullius gotten in an adulterous connection, had filius, and they form a good example of the of course no father. If we closely follow absurdity of the maxim. The English the principle of Roman law contained in law also, though it calls a bastard nullius the expression that those children are in filius, admits him to be the son of his pua man's power, and those only, whom he tative father for some purposes and not has begotten in lawful marriage, no per- for others. son, according to strict Roman law, had a father unless he was begotten in lawful matrimony. If a child was begotten in lawful matrimony, and the woman was divorced from her husband during pregnancy, the husband was the father, whether the woman remained single or married again during pregnancy. This was the case of Tiberius Nero, whose wife Livia was with child when she married Cæsar Octavianus: the child was Drusus, the brother of Tiberius, who was legally the child of his real father, and was afterwards adopted by Cæsar. Under the old Roman law, it does not appear that a person begotten out of lawful matrimony could be legitimated. As children not begotten in lawful marriage had no father, they could have no kinsmen on the (reputed) father's side, no Agnati. They could also have no cognati, for cognatio implied a legal marriage. If, then, a spurius died intestate, no person could claim his property as an adgnatus or cognatus, for there could be neither cognatio nor agnatio where there was no father; but in respect of proximity, his mother, or his brother by the same mother, could claim the Bonorum possessio by virtue of the Edict, Unde Cognati (Ulpian, Dig. 38, tit. 4). This instance proves that the spurius was considered the son of his mother, at least for certain purposes; but the origin of this rule of Edictal Law may not have belonged to a very early period. It is stated by some modern writers on Roman law, that with respect to the mother, there was no difference between children conceived in lawful marriage and children that were not. The English maxim that a bastard is nullius filius is not so good as that of the Roman law, which considers him to be the Children who were the sons of a concubine, or of a woman whom a man had seduced, were apparently called naturales because they were known to be the children of a man's body, and not adopted children, nor yet children begotten of promiscuous interourse. As already observed, the mother of a child may generally be ascertained, but the father cannot be certainly known, even when the woman is a married woman. However, it was a rule of Roman law that the husband must be presumed to be the father of his wife's child (Dig. 2, tit. 4, s. 5). This was only a legal presumption, and not an absolute rule. In certain cases the law provided precautions against a child being passed off as the husband's, when it was not his child. If a woman on the death of her husband declared that she was pregnant by him, those who were interested in the property in case the husband left no child, might apply to the Prætor for an order De Ventre Inspiciendo, the object of which was to ascertain the fact of pregnancy, and to secure the woman so that no fraud should be prac tised by her as to the birth of a child (Dig. 25, tit. 4). In case of divorce, the same process might also be used when the wife declared herself pregnant, and the husband would not admit the fact. The word "legitimate" (legitimum) in Latin means anything that is consistent with Law, whether it be customary law or positive enactment. A child begotten between two persons who were not in the relation of husband and wife, as a Roman citizen and a slave for instance, was said to be conceived illegitimately (illegitime concipi); and the status of such persons was determined by the status of the mother at the time of the birth. Accordingly, if the mother was a slave at the time of conception, but had been made free before the birth, the child was free. The status of children who were begotten according to law (legitime), was determined by the status of the mother at the time of the conception (Gaius, i. 89). The Roman terms legitimate and illegitimate in the earlier law, as applied to children, therefore did not correspond to our use of the terms. To take an instance from Gaius: if a Roman woman, a citizen, was pregnant, and in that state was subjected to the interdict of fire and water, by which she lost her citizenship and was reduced to the condition of an alien (peregrina), it was the general opinion that if the child was begotten in lawful marriage it was a Roman citizen; if it was begotten from promiscuous intercourse, it was an alien. All this shows that though those children only who were begotten in a legal Roman marriage were in the father's power and had the full rights of Roman citizens, all children otherwise begotten did not correspond to our bastards; they might be slaves, or peregrini, or naturales, or spurii. In the instance just given from Gaius, it appears that a child born of a woman who was a Roman citizen, but not begotten in lawful marriage, was spurius: a child so born of a woman who was not a Roman citizen was Peregrinus. The Roman law did not concern itself about the status of legitimacy or illegitimacy, in our sense, of those who were not the children of Roman citizens; such children were either Peregrini (aliens) or servi (slaves), as appears by another instance from Gaius (i. 91). This other instance is as follows:- Pursuant to a Senatusconsultum passed in the time of the Emperor Claudius, a woman, who was a Roman citizen, and cohabited with another man's slave, against the will of the owner, and contrary to notice from him, might be reduced to a servile condition. f a woman in a state of pregnancy was reduced to a servile condition on account of such cohabitation, the child that was born was a Roman citizen in case the woman conceived in lawful marriage, that is, if she was a married woman; if the pregnancy was the result of promiscuous intercourse, the child was a slave. The The old rule of Roman law that a Spurius (offspring of promiscuous intercourse) could not be made a legitimate son, appears to have been always maintained. The Spurius took the gentile name of his mother. It is mentioned by Suetonius (Julius Cæsar, c. 52) as an unusual thing, that Cæsar allowed his son by Cleopatra to be called by his name. The son, however, was not Spurius; he was Peregrinus. In the fourth century the practice of legitimation was introduced by Constantine the Great in favour of naturales, or men's children by concubines. constitution, of Constantine is only known as quoted in a constitution of Zeno (Code, v. tit. 27, § 5), which declared that it renewed the constitution of the Divus Constantinus, and enacted that those who, at the time of this constitution being published, were living with free women as concubines, and had begotten children of them, and had no wife and no legitimate children, might render all their children legitimate by marrying their concubines, and such children were to be on the same footing as after-born children of the marriage. But the benefit of the law did not extend to any children by concubines who should be born after the date of the constitution. The object of the law was to induce those who were then living in concubinage to marry, but not to allow any favour to such alliances in future. The Emperor Theodosius the Younger introduced a form of legitimating naturales, which was called Per Oblationem Curiae, which it is not necessary to describe particularly. Justinian, after various legislative measures, finally established legitimation by subsequent marriage in all cases of naturales, and placed the children who were born before the marriage, and those who might be born after, on the same footing. Anastasius established the mode of legitimation by Adrogation. Naturales, as they were sui juris, could be adopted by the form of adrogation, pursuant to a constitution of Anastasius. There seems to be no reason why this could not have been done according to the old Roman law; but there is probably no evidence that it was done. This constitution of Anastasius was repealed by Justin. Justinian established the practice of legitimation by imperial rescript, and by testament. A constitution of Justinian enacts (Code, vi. tit. 57, § 5) that if any woman of rank (illustris mulier) had a son born in matrimony and a bastard (spurius) also, she could give notning to the bastard, either by testament or gift, nor could he take the property ab intestato, so long as there were lawful children living. The constitution was published in order to settle a doubt as to the rights of spurii. But the children which a concubine who was a free woman had by the commerce of concubinage with a free man, could succeed to the mother's property on the same footing as her legitimate children, if she had any. It is important to form a right conception of the difference between children not begotten or born in lawful marriage, in the respective systems of English and Roman law. Paternity, in the Roman law, could only be obtained on the condition of begetting a child in lawful marriage. If this condition was not fulfilled, the male had no claim on the child who might be born from his connection with the mother; nor had the child or the-mother any claim upon him in respect of maintenance. The child was the fruit of the mother, and it belonged to her in all cases, except when the father could claim it as the offspring of a legal marriage. The spurious child was a member of the mother's family. No child could be in the power of a mother; and her child therefore would either be sui juris if she were so, or if she were in the power of her father, the child would be his grandson and in his power. This seems to be a strict consequence of the principles that have been here laid down as to the condition of spurii. The simplicity of the Roman system in this respect forms a striking contrast with the rules of English law as to children not born in lawful marriage. The Roman law declared that a spurius had a mother and no father, and it followed out this position to its strict consequence. The English law declares that a bastard is nobody's child, a position which it does not follow out to its consequences, simply because a doctrine so manifestly false never could be fully applied to practice. This doctrine of a bastard being nullius filius was apparently simply intended and adapted to deprive bastards of all capacity to inherit as heirs or next of kin, and consequently to favour escheat; and also to prevent any persons claiming as heirs or next of kin to them, in case of intestacy. Under the old law, and before the passing of the Statute of Wills, it must often have happened that the lands of bastards would escheat. The new rules of law as to bastardy at the present day have been solely framed with reference to the Poor Laws, for the purpose of saving the public, that is, the parish, from the charge of maintaining a bastard child. It is with this object that rules of law have been framed for ascertaining who has begotten the child and must contribute to its support; and for the purpose of settling the disputes between parishes as to the liability to maintain the child, it has been determined that for the purpose of settlement a bastard shall be considered his mother's child. But the old rules of law as to the incapacities of bastards still subsist, and according to these rules, a bastard has neither father, mother, sister or brother, or other remoter kin. only kin are the children whom he begets in lawful wedlock. An English bastard is therefore the founder of a new stock, the creator of a family whose pedigree can never be traced beyond him; a distinction which other people cannot have. His The Roman Law required children to be begotten in matrimony in order to be lawful children. The English law does not concern itself as to the conception, BATH, KNIGHTS OF THE. [331] BATH, KNIGHTS OF THE. sist of a grand-master and thirty-six coinpanions, a succession of whom was to be regularly continued. The officers appropriated to the order, besides the grandmaster, were a dean, a registrar, king of arms, genealogist, secretary, usher, and messenger. The dean of the collegiate church of St. Peter, Westminster, for the time being, was appointed ex officio dean of the Order of the Bath, and it was di but only as to the birth, which must be in wedlock. The Roman law required that when a man obtained possession of a woman's person, he must do it with a matrimonial mind: the English Law cares not with what mind he obtains possession of the woman; it is altogether indifferent about the origin of the connection. The old system combines, with a clear practical rule for determining the father, the condition of a marriage, an elevated no-rected that the other officers should be tion of the dignity of the marriage con- from time to time appointed by the grandnection. The modern system simply lays master. down a rule for determining paternity, subject to which it is regardless as to the freedom of ante-nuptial sexual connection. BATH, KNIGHTS OF THE, so called from the ancient custom of bathing previous to their installation. Camden and Selden agree that the first mention of an order of knights, distinctly called Knights of the Bath, is at the coronation of Henry IV. in 1399, and there can be little doubt that this order was then instituted. That bathing had been a part of the discipline submitted to by esquires in order to obtain the honour of knighthood from very early times, is admitted; but it does not appear that any knights were called Knights of the Bath till these were created by King Henry IV. It became subsequently the practice of the English kings to create Knights of the Bath previous to their coronation, at the inauguration of a Prince of Wales, at the celebration of their own nuptials or those of any of the royal family, and occasionally upon other great occasions or solemnities. Fabyan (Chron. edit. 1811, p. 582) says that Henry V., in 1416, upon the taking of the town of Caën, dubbed sixteen Knights of the Bath. Sixty-eight Knights of the Bath were made at the coronation of King Charles II. (see the list in Guillim's Heraldry, fol. Lond. 1679, p. 107); but from that time the order was discontinued, till it was revived by King George I. under writ of Privy Seal, dated May 18, 1725, during the administration of Sir Robert Walpole. The statutes and ordinances of the order bear date May 23, 1725. By these it was directed that the order should con The badge of the order was directed to be a rose, thistle, and shamrock, issuing from a sceptre between three imperial crowns, surrounded by the motto Tria juncta in uno; to be of pure gold, chased and pierced, and to be worn by the knight elect, pendent from a red riband placed obliquely over the right shoulder. The collar to be of gold, weighing thirty ounces troy weight, and composed of nine imperial crowns, and eight roses, thistles, and shamrocks issuing from a sceptre, enamelled in their proper colours, tied or linked together by seventeen gold knots, enamelled white, and having the badge of the order pendent from it. The star to consist of three imperial crowns of gold, surrounded with the motto of the order upon a circle gules, with a glory or ray issuing from the centre, to be embroidered on the left side of the upper garment. The installation dress was ordered to be a surcoat of white satin, a mantle of crimson satin lined with white, tied at the neck with a cordon of crimson silk and gold, with gold tassels, and the star of the order embroidered on the left shoulder; a white silk hat, adorned with a standing plume of white ostrich feathers; white leather boots edged and heeled; spurs of crimson and gold; and a sword in a white leather scabbard, with cross hilts of gold. Each knight was to be allowed three esquires, who are to be gentlemen of blood, bearing coat-armour; and who, during the term of their several lives, are entitled to all the privileges and exemp tions enjoyed by the esquires of the king's body or the gentlemen of the privy chamber. In 1815, the Prince Regent being de |