Illegitimate Son Research Articles

Conspiracy, Congregation, Company, and Commerce in England, 1680–1688: The Narratives of Edward Massey of Braintree

AbstractIn 1683, Edward Massey, an obscure office‐holder in Braintree, Essex, provided the state with one of the most explosive accounts of conspiratorial activities in England during the so‐called ‘Exclusion Crisis’. Massey, a prisoner in the King's Bench, named dozens of individuals in his native Essex, as well as the West Country and London, who apparently aired seditious grievances with King Charles II and his Roman Catholic brother and heir, James, Duke of York, and compassed participation in a national plot to ensure the succession of a Protestant in the form of Charles's illegitimate son, James, Duke of Monmouth. The colourful details of the alleged conspiracy bear reproduction in this article. Nevertheless, the difficulty of crediting the most radical implications of Massey's narratives calls for a cautious assessment of their reliability and value to historians. Fortunately, additional evidence enables us to treat Massey's account as a detailed testimony of how those marginalised by the Stuarts’ post‐Restoration settlements were able to mobilise behind and sustain their discontents, and the anxious secrecy and cautious trust which, amid heightened state surveillance, defined their encounters. Moreover, the article demonstrates how necessarily secretive political and religious networks mapped onto, and drew strength from, bonds which were forged in experiences of parochial administration and business, particularly the production of and trade in cloth. The result is an account of the Restoration's ‘politics of religion’ which highlights the communicative and ideological importance of the politics of local office and (inter)national trade.

التبنِّي في التشريع التونسي ضمان نسبي للمُتبنَّى

The Tunisian legislator tried, through the adoption institution, to elevate the adopted son to the status of a legitimate son and enable him to have the same rights and duties as the latter. However, in reality, these guarantees did not reach in their content the required level of permanence, stability and stability due to the possibility of their expiration as soon as factors emerged that could affect the interests of The the adopted person, which often leads to him being returned to his original status through a ruling reversing the adoption. This research studies the mechanisms of the adoption institution in dealing with the dilemma of a child losing his original family and elevating him to the status of a legitimate son by discussing the issue of the lack of achieving similarity between the adopted son and the legitimate son, as well as the issue of the disappearance cessation of adoption. The study concluded that the Tunisian legislator worked hard to enable the illegitimate son to live in an environment similar to that of the legitimate son, by approving the institution of adoption. However, the guarantees provided by this institution remain incomplete and inconsistent, and it recommends the need for the Tunisian legislator to intervene again and review the provisions it has enacted, especially setting strict laws that prevent reversal in adoption and stipulating them in Law A. 27 of 1958, dated March 4, 1958, relating to public guardianship, sponsorship, and adoption, in an attempt to address cases of reversal in adoption, which have a severe impact on the adoptee, whether on the psychological or material physical level. It must be emphasized that the best solution to guarantee the rights of all parties is to follow the instructions of Islamic law regarding the issue of adoption.

Statelessness and (il)legitimacy in Al Bassam’s Petrol Station and Shakespeare’s King Lear

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Kuwaiti British playwright Sulayman Al Bassam’s Petrol Station (2017) draws on themes, tropes, and motifs from Shakespeare’s King Lear (1606) to dramatize the plight of stateless people worldwide. Al Bassam’s use of King Lear hinges on the fact that it is a play that depicts fraught family bonds against the backdrop of national concerns, a question that Petrol Station vividly dramatizes. First, both plays open with an old patriarch making an important decision. Although the two patriarchs propose that their decisions will ensure justice and integrity, ironically, the decision taken by each patriarch wreaks havoc, augments sibling rivalry, and eventually creates a chaotic situation that exacerbates divisions and frictions. Second, in both plays a patriarch has a legitimate son and an illegitimate one whose relationships are marred by continual conflicts and clashes. However, while in Shakespeare’s play, the illegitimate son is Machiavellian and malevolent, in Al Bassam’s play, the illegitimate son is helpless and even naïve. Furthermore, some characters in Al Bassam’s play can be viewed to have traces of Shakespeare’s characters, particularly the Fool, who critically comments on the course of actions. Finally, both plays end tragically with people committing suicide or being killed and carried to the stage. Overall, Al Bassam’s play draws our attention to the harsh conditions that stateless people, represented by the illegitimate son of the petrol station’s owner, endure daily. In this sense, Al Bassam’s play draws on Shakespeare’s representation of violence to depict how stateless people are subdued and oppressed.

Mercantile Life in Early 19th Century Southeast Asia: The Ross Brothers

Abstract: British traders operating in the East in the early nineteenth century faced warfare, piracy, and shipwreck, along with the competing interests of local rulers and East India Company (EIC) officials. This article looks at episodes in the maritime careers of three brothers to show how the commercial environment affected trade. The brothers were born in Jamaica, illegitimate sons of a Scottish trader who served as a government official and his freed slave. One son became a ship’s captain in the Bombay Marine, the private navy of the EIC and an important surveyor of Eastern seas. Another son also joined the Bombay Marine but left under unknown circumstances and transferred to the private ‘country trade’ after adopting a new name. The third son became a ship’s captain in the country trade and died after an attack by local pirates in Bangka. The family circumstances that led to the brothers’ careers and lives of their children are summarized to illustrate the social mobility of descendants of West Indian slaves in the early nineteenth century.

Manuscript Organization and Female Readership: Reading the Naples Manuscript

This article examines the layout and organization of the Naples manuscript “Vittorio Emanuele III,” MS XIII.B.29 to argue not only that the intended readership of the manuscript was predominantly female but also that it deliberately guides those readers towards the themes of various kinds of healing. The medieval recipes at the beginning connect to the medical sub-themes in the romance and the saint’s life that follow. These tales and the recipes also contain themes of childbirth, marriage, and family, and this is continued with the trials of the illegitimate son of Gawain, Libious Desconious, and the broken families of Sir Isombrase and Grisilde in the following texts. The opening medical recipes, which to modern sensibilities seem generically anomalous in a book containing romances and saint’s lives, in fact “anticipate the kind of female agency which the subsequent narratives exemplify.”

A European Entrancement: Animal Magnetism among the Russian Nobility in France and St Petersburg, 1784–1787

Abstract: This article examines the reception of animal magnetism among the Russian nobility in the mid 1780s, at a time when this pseudo-science aroused the curiosity and scorn of many across Europe. The first part of the article focuses on how young Russian noblemen — including Catherine II's illegitimate son, Aleksei Bobrinskii — first encountered animal magnetism in France during Grand Tours, via Masonic networks that were utilized by their governors. Significantly, the Russian noblemen were not only introduced to Franz Mesmer's well-known form of animal magnetism, which sought to cure ailments through physical contact and the use of baquets , but they were also exposed to magnetic somnambulism. This strand of animal magnetism purportedly enabled patients to see the cause of ailments within themselves and others. Moreover, practitioners in Lyon believed that magnetic somnambulism offered the potential for a somnambule to obtain powers of clairvoyance and to be able to achieve a higher state of spiritual consciousness. The second part of this article studies how both strands of animal magnetism — Mesmeric and magnetic somnambulism — briefly flourished in St Petersburg in 1786, the first practitioner being Borbinskii's governor, before Catherine II effectively banned the practice.

«I will make no speeches; I come to die»: the duke of Monmouth execution – a simple of Jacobite propaganda, 1685

The article analyzes a document testifying to the last moments of the Duke of Monmouths life. The eldest illegitimate son of Charles II, Monmouth rebelled against his Catholic uncle James II. The rebel militias were defeated by the royal regular army and the Duke was captured. The defeated bastard of royal blood tried to save his life by begging forgiveness from the king, but was executed. Government propaganda used the plot of the dukes execution, showing him as a weak and weak-willed traitor. The text of the article analyzes a pamphlet describing the various stages of preparation for the execution of the duke. The pamphlet shows Monmouths behavior before his death. His dialogue with the priests is given. The attempt of the royal power to force Monmouth to repent is shown. The documents included in the appendix are also being examined the dukes letters to King James and his declaration, in which the rebel is blamed before the Crown. The Duke of Monmouth was the last rebel of royal blood in the history of England to claim the throne of the Three Kingdoms. It is concluded that the rebellious duke has no support from the general population and the popularity of his business. The importance of mass media in early Modern England is shown.

Flemish Immigration and Geoffrey of Monmouth's De gestis Britonum

Flemish Immigration and Geoffrey of Monmouth's <i>De gestis Britonum</i>

“Time Meant Nothing”: A New Reading of Pietro di Donato's Three Circles of Light beyond Autobiography and Stereotypes

“Time Meant Nothing”: A New Reading of Pietro di Donato's <i>Three Circles of Light</i> beyond Autobiography and Stereotypes

Serbian rulers and the Sokol movement

The origin of the Sokol idea and movement is related to the second half of the 19th century. At that time, most of the Slavic peoples were enslaved, their national consciousness was awakening. The Czechs, who were exposed to great pressure and Germanization, founded Soko in 1862 as a Slavic gymnastics organization. Unlike them, the Serbs already had their own state and gymnastic knightly societies were created in a free state under the auspices of Serbian rulers. The first gymnastics troupe was created in 1857 under the leadership of Steve Todorović, who was raising Prince Mihailo's illegitimate son Velimir. In addition to him, several other children from Belgrade families practiced in the company. Prince Mihailo Obrenović, who lived in Europe for a long time, knew the importance of gymnastics and sports,so he bought exercise equipment and gave a plot of land for exercise on the site of the current Academy of Sciences. During the reign of King Milan, the first Belgrade Society for Gymnastics and Wrestling was founded in 1882, which changed its name to Soko in 1891. Since the foundation of this society, the patron was the heir to the throne, later King Aleksandar Obrenović. After the May coup 1903, Crown Prince Đorđe Karađorđević became the patron of Sokol. When he abdicated, his brother King Alexander did not officially receive patronage, but he considered himself a Sokol and had a decisive influence on the strengthening of the organization and the profiling of the Sokol ideology. In 1929, he decided that his minor son, the Crown Prince Petar, would become the head of the Sokol (Sokol elder) of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The seniority of the Crown Princ and later of King Peter gave the Sokol movement a certain amount of exclusivity. The Sokol movement grew rapidly, the number of members grew, Sokol house were built, and Sokol Slets were organized. The official uniform of the young Crown Prince was the Sokol uniform, and he even wore it to his father's funeral. His brothers Tomislav and Andrej were also members of Sokol. After the death of King Alexander, Regent Prince Pavle enrolled his sons in Soko. The Serbian rulers correctly understood the importance of exercise and sports and used their authority to strengthen the Sokol idea and movement. Thanks to them, the Serbian and Yugoslav Sokol movement was largely supported by the state and was able to strengthen and develop indiscriminately.

The genetic legacy of the Hunyadi descendants

The Hunyadi family is one of the most influential families in the history of Central Europe in the 14th–16th centuries. The family’s prestige was established by Johannes Hunyadi, a Turk-beater who rose to the position of governor of the Kingdom of Hungary. His second son, Matthias Hunyadi, became the elected ruler of the Kingdom of Hungary in 1458. The Hunyadi family had unknown origin. Moreover, Matthias failed to found a dynasty because of lacking a legitimate heir and his illegitimate son Johannes Corvinus was unable to obtain the crown. His grandson, Christophorus Corvinus, died in childhood, thus the direct male line of the family ended.In the framework of on interdisciplinary research, we have determined the whole genome sequences of Johannes Corvinus and Christophorus Corvinus by next-generation sequencing technology. Both of them carried the Y-chromosome haplogroup is E1b1b1a1b1a6a1c ∼, which is widespread in Eurasia. The father-son relationship was verified using the classical STR method and whole genome data. Christophorus Corvinus belongs to the rare, sporadically occurring T2c1+146 mitochondrial haplogroup, most frequent around the Mediterranean, while his father belongs to the T2b mitochondrial haplogroup, widespread in Eurasia, both are consistent with the known origin of the mothers. Archaeogenomic analysis indicated that the Corvinus had an ancient European genome composition.Based on the reported genetic data, it will be possible to identify all the other Hunyadi family member, whose only known grave site is known, but who are resting assorted with several other skeletons.

Queen Bona Sforza as Part of the Blended Family Not Obvious Relationships at the Royal Court in Cracow

Historiography has tried to break, not without difficulties and, so far, with rather limited success, the centuries-old ”black legend” concerning Bona Sforza (1494–1557), Queen of Poland from 1518. One of the most long-lasting and distinct components of the Queen’s image is the assessment that she was a bad mother, overprotective and toxic toward her elder children, and distant and indifferent toward her younger daughters, as well as a bad mother-in-law. Bona was a significant part of what we would nowadays refer to as a blended family. After her marriage to Sigismund the Old, Bona Sforza became a mother to his daughters from his first marriage. She gave birth to five children of her own between 1519 and 1526. The King’s daughter by his lifelong, pre-marriage concubine, Katarzyna Telniczanka, was brought up at the royal court in Cracow; so was the daughter of Katarzyna and her husband. The son of the King and Katarzyna, Jan, Bishop of Vilnius, had a close relationship with the royal family, and Queen Bona even established friendly relations with her husband’s illegitimate son. Bona’s means of functioning within the blended family, so typical of her, along with other elements of the extensive model of queenship established by her in Poland for the first time, were later continued by her daughters. The example of Bona’s queenship and motherhood seems to indicate that the skill of functioning within a blended royal family could be a cultural and dynastic investment, as well as an asset that provided benefits.

Ion (Euripides) and Karna (Mahabharat, Sanga Ilakkiyam) - Deconstruction of Binary Oppositions

“Ion” is a Greek play authored by Euripides depicting the story of Ion. The “Mahabharata” is an epic written in both the Tamil and Sanskrit languages. The story of Karna is one of the sub plots in this epic. In the Greek play, Creusa who is impregnated by Apollo, the Sun God, keeps Ion in a casket together with a breast plate for his protection. In the Tamil myth, Kunti who is impregnated by the Sun God places her son Karna in a casket and sets it afloat in a river to conceal the birth of the child. Regarding the breast plate in this story, it is shown that Karna was born with the breast plate glued to his breast. Creusa, the mother of Ion, had had an illegitimate son born to her before marriage and remains childless for a long time after getting married to another person. Kunti too gave birth to a son before marriage and remains childless for a long time with her lawful husband. After that, Creusa had offspring by the grace of the God and Kunti too had offspring by the boon of the Gods. Thus, the parallels of binary oppositions and deconstruction are seen in these two myths. Noble birth and low birth, men and women, willing and out of compulsion, happiness and unhappiness are some of the binary oppositions. Theism and Atheism, biological mother and step mother are some of the deconstructions of binary opposition. This article deals with the parallels seen between these two myths, identifying the binary oppositions in these myths and deconstructing the binary oppositions by identifying their instabilities. Keywords: Ion, Karna, myth, Sanskrit, Tamil

Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, and Scoundrel

Frank J. Cannon: Saint, Senator, and Scoundrel

Maurice Druon’s Tistou and His Green Thumbs: A Leap from Egophilia to Ecophilia

An illegitimate son of a Russian Jewish immigrant, born in Paris on April 23, 1918 and one of the France’s most prolific men of letters, Maurice Druon made a name for himself as a patriotic egophiliac. Through his critically acclaimed series of historical novels, Les Rois Maudits, and Les Grandes Familles, for example, he intended to revive the long-lost French medieval egotistic glory. With his wartime resistance hymn, “Chant des Partisans”, which he and his uncle, Joseph Kessel, adapted from the Russian-born troubadour Anna Marly’s lyric song, he infused a strong sense of ego in the French fighters against the German wartime occupiers. It was for all such contributions to nation building and for his unflinching determination to promote French linguistic and political culture that he was made Minister of Cultural Affairs in Pierre Messmer’s cabinet (1973-1974), a Deputy of Paris (1978-1981) and a ‘perpetual secretary’ of the Académie Francaise. But in between his writing Les Rois Maudits, as he said in the preface to the story, he wanted to try his hands in something else and ended up writing Tistou Les Pouces Verts. This paper makes use of the properties of ecocritical theory in order to investigate the importance of Maurice Druon’s stride from egotistic to eco-conscious writing meant for children.

Dancing Queen: Marie de Médicis' Ballets at the Court of Henri IV by Melinda J. Gough

Reviewed by: Dancing Queen: Marie de Médicis' Ballets at the Court of Henri IV by Melinda J. Gough Catherine Gaughan Gough, Melinda J. Dancing Queen: Marie de Médicis' Ballets at the Court of Henri IV. UP of Toronto, 2019. ISBN 978-1-4875-2679-5. Pp. 378. Dancing Queen sheds new light on Marie de Medici's ballets presented at the turn of the seventeenth century and her enormous contribution to the genre of court entertainment as both patron and performer, most notably the ways in which the performing arts were used as a vehicle for politically engaged queenship. Thoroughly researched from a wealth of previously unavailable primary sources, this interdisciplinary project explores these performances through theories and methodologies derived from literary studies, social and political history, theater and art history, sociology, musicology, women and gender studies. The book highlights the queen's political authority expressed through textual and visual iconographies combining Christian and classical imagery, as well as a larger defence of Bourbon legitimacy in early modern France. Marie de Medici' fascinating role in the revival of the arts in Henri IV's court includes selecting lesser status performers or the king's illegitimate son dressed en travesti and her savvy use of court ballets for political purposes. At the heart of this project is the French-to-English translation of three early seventeenth-century royal women's ballets made available for the first time: Ballet of the Sixteen Virtues, Ballet of Diana and her Nymphs, and Ballet de Madame. The book creates a vivid picture of the ways in which cultural activities in France aided political legitimation and negotiations not previously explored in standard histories of French court ballet. The numerous images, as well as the extensive bibliography and notes, serve as helpful resources for further study in the field. Overall, the five chapters trace modern women's theatrical and political agency across linguistic and geographical borders, and the insightful analyses of the ballets provide a deeper understanding not only of the dances themselves but of the political implications for the Habsburg-Bourbon rapprochement. An engaging and informative read, Dancing Queen will be an asset to any French history collection and a keen reference point for research focusing on dance and women's studies in early modern queenship and court culture. [End Page 221] Catherine Gaughan Ryerson University (ON, Canada) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

Henry II of Trastámara (1366–1367, 1369–1379)

Henry II of Castile, also known as Henry of Trastámara, from the Latin “Tras Tamaris” (or beyond the Tambre River), King of Castile and León (1366–1367, 1369–1379) was the first king of the Trastámara Dynasty. In summary, it was a minor branch of the house of Burgundy (or an “Iberian extension” of it), with presence in the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Navarre, and Naples. Most notably, it began playing an essential role in the kingdom of Castile, but after the Compromise of Caspe, its power extended decisively to the kingdom of Aragon (1412). Henry II was the illegitimate son of Alfonso XI and his lover Leonor de Guzmán. He waged a civil war against his stepbrother, Peter I, legitimate heir to the throne, as the son of Alfonso XI and Maria of Portugal, Queen of Castile. Henry’s determination to be recognized as king led him to employ the arts in a campaign to discredit his stepbrother and tarnish his image, portraying himself as a defender of the faith with the right to rule. He built the Royal Chapel (1371) in the main church of Córdoba (today’s Mosque/Cathedral) for the burial of his father and grandfather, Ferdinand IV, in order to underscore his connection to the royal line, and refurbished the Puerta del Perdón (Gate of Forgiveness) in 1377, the main entrance to the church, for use as a dramatic stage for public events.

Heterotopian Disorientation: Intersectionality in William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth

This article reads William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth (2016) through the lens of Michel Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia to explore the film’s ambivalent gender and racial politics. The country house that Katherine Lester is locked away in forms a quasi-heterotopia, mediated through a disorienting cinematography of incarceration. Although she manages to transgress the ideological boundaries surrounding her, she simultaneously contributes to the oppression of her Black housemaid, Anna. On the one hand, the film suggests that the coercive space of the colony—another Foucauldian heterotopia—may threaten white hegemony: While Mr Lester’s Black, illegitimate son Teddy almost manages to claim his inheritance and, hence, contest the racialised master/servant relationship of the country house, Anna’s voice threatens to cause Katherine’s downfall. On the other hand, through eventually denying Anna’s and Teddy’s agency, Lady Macbeth exposes the pervasiveness of intersectional forms of oppression that are at play in both Victorian and twenty-first-century Britain. The constant spatial disorientation that the film produces, this article suggests, not only identifies blind spots in Foucault’s writings on heterotopian space as far as intersectionality is concerned, but also speaks to white privilege as a vital concern of both twenty-first-century feminism and neo-Victorian criticism.

The Illegitimate Offspring of King John of England Identified from the Rolls

King John was not unusual among medieval English monarchs for siring illegitimate offspring, among them three sons and a daughter born of aristocratic ladies. Chroniclers and moralists’ charges that John’s sexual predations extended to his barons' wives and daughters became a significant factor in baronial alienation that resulted in the 1215 rebellion. A search of royal records from John’s reign yields names of seven: six sons and one daughter, all acknowledged by him. Records from the reign of his son Henry III reveal three more, two sons and one daughter, a total of ten, a number far smaller than that of hs great-grandfather Henry I, famous for siring over twenty illegitimate children. John’s father Henry II fathered only four or five bastards, one of whom became an earl and another an archbishop. Before the Church won power to regulate marriages by the early thirteenth century, sons of kings, princes, and aristocrats born outside formal marriage experienced little stigma. Possibly due to changing attitudes, John’s bastards never rose in prominence as did earlier monarch’s illegitimate offspring, some of whom played major parts in England’s history. None of John’s illicit sons rose to an earldom or bishopric, although entered the baronial ranks and a daughter married the Welsh prince, Llywelyn. Most of John’s illegitimate sons had military careers, serving their father and their brother as royal household knights. Two sought careers in the Church, but neither rose to high rank.

Stable isotope analysis and differences in diet and social status in northern Medieval Christian Spain (9th–13th centuries CE)

The Iberian Peninsula was at the forefront of the religious, economic, and political changes that swept across Europe during the Medieval Period, including the expansion of Christianity following the disintegration of the Umayyad Caliphate. Between the 9th and the 13th centuries CE, northern Iberia, in particular, witnessed a marked demographic and economic expansion that accompanied the emergence and development of different Christian Kingdoms. A growth in religious infrastructure driven by territorial expansion at the expense of Al-Andalus, and the emerging importance of the Camino de Santiago (the Way of St. James) from the 11th century CE, represented vital processes in changing urban networks and social stratification. However, shifting diets and social structures brought about by these changes require direct study beyond historical texts or localised osteoarchaeological and biomolecular studies in order to determine their wider impacts on peoples’ lived experience. Here, we apply radiocarbon dating (n = 6) and stable carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis to bone and dentine collagen from various locations (n = 10) across the north and north-eastern areas of modern Spain, where three prominent Medieval Christian Kingdoms (Aragon, Castille and Navarre) developed. We sampled 40 human and 32 faunal remains dating to between the 9th and 13th centuries CE, including historical personages such as Sancho Ramirez, Count of Ribagorza and an illegitimate son of King Ramiro I of Aragon; Saint Raymond William or San Ramón de Roda; Pedro de Librana, the first bishop of the city of Zaragoza after its conquest by the Christians in the 12th century CE; an unknown princess from the royal house of Aragon; and individuals from the urban and rural nuclei of Pamplona, Logroño, Lobera de Onsella (Zaragoza), and San Roque de las Quintanillas (Burgos). We compared our results to existing data from the same area demonstrating clear differences in access to animal protein and marine/freshwater resources between rural, urban, and high social status populations on a regional scale. Our data show significant differences in δ15N values between the different groups, with the highest values seen among the ‘elite’, followed by urban populations who benefited from trade and socio-economic diversity. This dataset acts as an important reference point for future studies focusing on changes in the diet and health among different sectors of Medieval society and, in particular, the development of social inequality in the Christian Kingdoms of Iberia as they formed at the centre of novel cultural and religious exchanges across Europe.