Introduction
A primary measure in determining the extent to which illegitimacy was a stigmatised category is its effect on individual life chances. This chapter investigates the extent to which illegitimates could achieve parity of social status with their legitimate counterparts, measured through educational, occupational and marital prospects. This partly indicates parental intent; the choices parents made in their children's education suggest how they viewed their future potential. Detailed analysis of life trajectories allows a more nuanced understanding of the extent and causes of disadvantage. In particular, it indicates whether any disadvantage resulted from reduced access to wealth and influence, labelled here as structural disadvantage, or from direct stigma against illegitimates as inherently tainted and inferior.
Illegitimates' life chances have received limited historiographical attention. Cathy Day, the only historian to examine illegitimates' marriages, concluded from parish reconstitution that 'there were no statistically significant differences' in the legitimate and illegitimate marriage rate.1 Limited research into the education of foundling and
pauper children found no particular difference. Most poor children, legitimate or not, went into service, the army and navy, or parish apprenticeship.2 Research into
higher-status illegitimates contended that wealth made illegitimacy immaterial; McClure considered that illegitimacy 'in no way interfered with marriage chances nor, usually, with preferment to high office'.3 Stone argued that 'illegitimate boys...
1 Cathy Day, Wiltshire Marriage Patterns, 1754-1914: Geographical Mobility, Cousin Marriage and
Illegitimacy (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2013), pp. 212-3.
2 Ruth McClure, Coram's Children: The London Foundling Hospital in the Eighteenth Century
(New Haven, 1981), pp. 47-8.
3 McClure, Coram's Children, p. 10. This is echoed in multiple secondary works, which
generally state only that the aristocracy were relaxed about extra-marital sex and treated illegitimate children well, without providing detail about why or in what way. See: Randolph Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution. Volume One: Heterosexuality and the Third Gender in
suffered no social discrimination in terms of professional career or marriage' but that daughters faced considerably reduced marriage prospects.4 These hypotheses are,
however, based only on the evidence of a few superlatively successful illegitimate individuals and have not been tested in a systematic study. There has been no consideration of the motives behind parental choices or the causes of differing life trajectories. Research in French, German and Russian contexts indicates that illegitimates did find it more difficult to marry and enter occupations comparable with that of their birth fathers, resulting in reduced socio-economic status.5 This
chapter argues that illegitimacy caused some disadvantage among English illegitimates. This varied considerably according to gender, but not in the way suggested by Stone.
This argument is reached through quantitative analysis of a dataset of 24 families from the peerage and baronetage. This elite group was chosen due to the availability of biographical data. It is not only difficult to trace the life trajectories of lower-status individuals but discussion of motivations and the consequences of illegitimate disadvantage requires complementary manuscript sources. The dataset comprises 225 individuals, all the children or grandchildren of peers or baronets, born between 1667 and 1819.6 Roughly half of the individuals were illegitimate and the dataset
includes only slightly more males than females. Families were selected from the same archive searches used to identify the main case studies of this thesis. These are families whose illegitimate members could be identified in a primary source.7 Family
Enlightenment London (Chicago, 1998), pp. 172-5, Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500-1800 (London, 1977), pp. 532-4; Lisa Zunshine, Bastards and Foundlings: Illegitimacy in Eighteenth-Century England (Columbus, 2005), pp. 134-8, 166; H.J. Habakkuk, Marriage, Debt and the Estates System: English Landownership, 1650-1950 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 153-
4.
4 Stone, Family, Sex and Marriage, p. 534.
5 Maria R. Boes, '"Dishonourable" Youth, Guilds, and the Changed World View of Sex,
Illegitimacy, and Women in Late-Sixteenth-Century Germany', Continuity and Change 18.3 (2003), pp. 349-50; Otto Ulbricht, 'The Debate about Foundling Hospitals in Enlightenment Germany: Infanticide, Illegitimacy, and Infant Mortality Rates', Central European History 18 (1985), p. 231; Matthew Gerber, Bastards: Politics, Family and Law in Early Modern France (Oxford, 2012); pp. 103-5; Olga E. Glagoleva, 'The Illegitimate Children of the Russian Nobility in Law and Practice, 1700-1860', Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6.3 (2005), p. 497.
6 See appendix 3 for a summary of the dataset, and appendix 5 for a full list of the individuals. 7 This included manuscript correspondence and published works, such as The Diary of Joseph
Farington, ed. Kenneth Garlick, Angus D. Macintyre, Kathryn Cave and Evelyn Newby, vols
trees were constructed using genealogical data in Debrett's and Burke's peerages and the International Genealogical Index, supplemented with the Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography and History of Parliament Online. Education information was found
in published and manuscript diaries and correspondence, as well as the published registers of the main public schools and Oxford and Cambridge Universities.8 I
collected information on education, occupation and marriage for each illegitimate and their legitimate half-siblings or first cousins to produce a legitimate control group for comparison.9 I could then compare illegitimates of the same gender,
similar age and family background and, crucially, compare illegitimate sons with both younger sons and heirs. I excluded children who died young, in this case before the age of twenty-one, to create an 'at-risk' group for marriage and occupation.10
The dataset is supplemented with qualitative evidence from upper middling and elite correspondence and life-writing. Qualitative sources from some of the families who appear in the dataset provide context of the reasons behind educational,
W.S. Lewis (New Haven, 1937-83, online edition). For more on the identification of manuscript sources, see introduction, pp. 32-3.
8 I used a variety of sources, including: John Burke, A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the
Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire, 2 vols (London, 1832); William R. O'Byrne, A Naval Biographical Dictionary, Comprising the Life and Services of Every Living Officer in Her Majesty's Navy, from the Rank of Admiral of the Fleet to that of Lieutenant, Inclusive. Compiled from Authentic and Family Documents (London, 1849); History of Parliament Online,
http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org [accessed 21 May 2017]; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn), http://www.oxforddnb.com.
sheffield.idm.oclc.org/view/article/10025 [accessed 21 May 2017]; A Cambridge Alumni
Database: a database of all alumni of the University of Cambridge, 1200-1900, http://venn.lib.cam.
ac.uk/Documents/acad/2016/search-2016.html [accessed 21 May 2017]; Alumni Oxonienses:
The Members of the University of Oxford, 1715-1886, ed. Joseph Foster 4 vols (Oxford, 1888-
1891); The Eton College Register, 1753-1790, ed. Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh (Eton, 1921); The
Harrow School Register, 1800-1911, ed. R. Courtenay Welch, M.G. Dauglish and P.K.
Stephenson (3rd edn, London, 1911); The Record of Old Westminsters; a biographical list of all those
who are known to have been educated at Westminster school from the earliest times to 1927, ed. A.H.
Stenning and G.F.R. Barker, 2 vols (London, 1928); Alumni Carthusiani: A Record of the
Foundation Scholars of Charterhouse, 1614-1872, ed. Bower Marsh and Frederick Arthur Crisp
(London, 1913); Winchester College, 1836-1906: A Register, ed. John Bannerman Wainewright (Winchester, 1907); List of Carthusians, 1800-1879, ed. W. D. Parish (Lewes, 1879); Winchester
Scholars, ed. Thomas Frederick Kirby (London, 1888). I also searched the register books of
smaller local school, and newspapers such as The Gazette for promotions, obituaries, and birth, marriage and death announcements.
9 I chose one set of cousins, the children of a comparable sibling i.e. the next brother in the line
of inheritance if the parent was the eldest, or another younger brother if the parent was also a younger sibling.
10 Thomas included children who had reached the age of seventeen in his 'at risk' group.
David Thomas, 'The Social Origins of Marriage Partners of the British Peerage in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries', Population Studies 26.1 (1972), p. 100.
occupational and marital limitations. The middling families were not included in the quantitative dataset. 'Middling' is here defined as individuals who did not have titles and whose primary income was not from land. The Benthams, Darwins and Nevilles had professional occupations, including physician and civil servant, and were upwardly mobile. Erasmus Darwin, for instance, purchased a landed estate later in his life. Their wealth and professional employment made them characteristic of a particularly upper middling sort, socially and economically distinct from the lower middling sort. This latter group was much more economically precarious, encompassing shopkeepers, smallholders or skilled artisans. Upper middling sources are partly included to demonstrate that the motivations and experiences of illegitimates from titled families were not unusual, and to indicate the impact of more limited financial resources. Many titled families, particularly the baronetage, were economically more comparable with the professional classes in their access to cash in particular. Lower middling sort and labouring families could not be included due to insufficient qualitative evidence of the motivations behind life choices and the difficulty of tracing their family trees.
This evidential approach does come with some caveats. The dataset is not statistically representative, as the identification of illegitimates is too unreliable. Previous studies, such as Hollingsworth's demography of the peerage, used a well- defined group recorded in published genealogies such as Burke's Peerage, or membership of the House of Lords.11 This is not possible for illegitimates, as birth
and parentage were not uniformly recorded. I could only include children whose illegitimacy and parentage were known to their peers and recorded in a primary source.12 Individuals were located using every likely iteration of their name, as well
as other clues such as additional relatives' names and place names. The dataset also cannot satisfactorily provide numbers on female educational choices because women did not attend public schools. Discussion of female education, in particular, is therefore based on qualitative sources only. I have made it clear in the following
11 Thomas, 'Social Origins', p. 99; T.H. Hollingsworth, 'The Demography of the British
Peerage', Population Studies 18.2 (1964), supplementary issue, p. 6. Hollingsworth measured the number of illegitimate births to members of the peerage, but did not trace their marriages and deaths. Gerber's study of illegitimate life trajectories in France relied on tax rolls produced from the 1697 tax on illegitimates, Gerber, Bastards, pp. 103-5. Similar sources unfortunately do not exist for England.
discussion when I am referring to the dataset (the quantitative analysis of the 225 individuals) or the qualitative correspondence and life-writing evidence. Most individuals in the group were also born in the latter half of the period examined in this thesis. It is unclear whether this reflects the increasing illegitimacy ratio, or greater willingness to acknowledge illegitimate relatives. I also could only include the children of elite fathers because elite mothers were much less likely to either have
or acknowledge illegitimate children. 13 Acknowledgement here means the
acceptance of some kind of parental responsibility and public knowledge of a relationship. It did not necessarily mean cohabitation or familial integration.14 The
dataset includes only those children whose parentage and illegitimacy were known; we cannot be sure how many children were abandoned or raised entirely under false names. The inclusion only of known illegitimate children allows like-for-like comparison, as it tests the impact of illegitimacy itself, rather than poverty or obscurity, on life chances. However, these conclusions can only apply to a proportion of illegitimate individuals, and indicate the best case scenario for those who were fortunate enough to be acknowledged by their fathers.
This chapter first considers illegitimates' educational opportunities. It argues that illegitimates were not excluded from public schools and universities, but that legitimates' education was prioritised within individual families. Illegitimate daughters experienced the greatest difference, partly because their education was focused on employment. The chapter then considers occupational differences. Comparison of illegitimate sons with legitimate younger sons suggests that illegitimates were disadvantaged primarily because of their limited access to the traditional sources of wealth and influence. Their status was derivative and many had to wait until much later life to receive paternal inheritance or political office, a particular disadvantage for men. The final section investigates marriage opportunities. Illegitimate daughters experienced little disadvantage, in contrast to illegitimate sons who generally married lower down the social scale. The choice of partner, according to birth status and kinship, provides interesting evidence of how illegitimates' social status was perceived by families.