ALL SOUL'S DAY painted by JAKUB SCHIKANEDER,

Ran into a lady today who told me that Saint Theresa of Avila said, "if the saints fail you, try the souls" or something like that... basically it struck me that she was saying to pray to deceased ancestors.  Found this painting looking for a public domain image appropriate for the season of Halloween, Day of the Dead, and All Soul's Day.  If ever there was a celebration akin to ancestor worship in Christianity, this is it.

EGYPTIAN TREE OF LIFE

BASTARDY of ROYAL PERSONAGES DEFINED by CECIL HUMPHERY-SMITH

Cecil Humphery-Smith, OBE, FSA, Principal of the Institute of Heraldic and Genealogical Studies, in the book ROYAL BASTARDS, previously posted on this month, explains the concept of BASTARDY...
This part of the book is the best part, because you're possibly going to research for your own, less than royal, family and ask yourself WHAT DOES IT MEAN.

Here are my notes.

Humphery-Smith states that who was regarded as illegitimate varied from time to time.
A child born of an annulled marriage or before his parents married might not be considered so.
(I think of the children of some of the Princes and Princesses of Monaco present day...)

Most European countries considered illegitimate children to be outlaws  and where Roman law was, these children had no inheritance rights.  The mother would be given rights but the father would have no legal obligation to support them.  There was a stigma and through all classes of people, including the agricultural an laboring.  The concern was that the people involved were Vagrants.

"That the church took a dim view of illegitimacy is obvious from the number of records of penances inflicted by the ecclesiastical courts for the incontinence of parents...."  (Apparently there are records of penances and punishments to the parents for fornication and adultery.)
In 1610 a woman who had an illegitimate child went to the House of Corrections.

Laws against illegitimate children encouraged infanticide and abortion.

But by the 16th century more bastards are mentioned in church books and from the 1750's forwards it seems that the occurrence was becoming more common, and of less commentary.

"Knobstick weddings" were a means of forcing couples to marry even if they had no homes.

By the Acts of 1732/3 a woman had to declare who the father was.  Public whipping of the woman was done.  (One would wonder if this was meant to induce abortion!)  As a result women were desperate to name a father and would sometimes name a wealthy man who was not the father, so that she'd have a better chance of gaining support for the child.  Sometimes the woman would say the father was from another parish or district, making him hard to find.  People bribed others to call the child legitimate.

The children were not well off.  There are stories of children becoming slaves on farms, servants or whipping boys.

Of concern then, and now, is who supports the child of a parent or parents with no income. What happens to the social order, the responsibilities of family?

KNIGHT WITH SWORD

ROYAL BASTARDS : A BOOK TO LEARN FROM : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

Peter Beauclerk-Dewar and Roger Powell are the authors of...
ROYAL BASTARDS, which is a book to learn from. Not just because it gives bio-profiles of the circumstances of birth and royal and noble connections of a whole lot of illegitimate offspring of:
THE TUDORS
Edward IV (1442-1483)
Richard III (1452-1485)
Henry VIII (1491-1547)  (yep!)
THE STUARTS
Charles II (1630-1714)
James II (1633-1701)
Charles Stuart (1720-1788)
THE HANOVERIANS
George I (1660-1727)
George II (1683- 1760)
as well as
Frederick, Prince of Wales (a Son of George)
George, Prince of Wales (later King George IV)
William, Duke of Clarence (Later King Willian IV)
as well as some Windsors…
But because we learn that the surname Fitz teamed with the father's given name was that of so many.

Because we learn that some of these children -and their mothers who were "mistresses," were treated well, but while other's were accepted and elevated their mothers were trashed and left to die in poverty and obscurity.

We learn that COATS OF ARMS/ SHEILDS were designed for some of them and by reading the code of the coat of arms there are clues of illegitimacy.

We learn that there was punishment for the parents of illegitimate children, and as a result the following happened (and this will challenge your DNA genealogy) people gossiped (to heal or destroy reputations), they lied (a mother could claim a better or wealthier man was the real father), that naming the child after a famous person - a noble or King - could indicate that he was actually the father - and that infanticide was not out of the question.  The children were sometimes supported by the father, but they had no inheritance rights.

Sadly, women were far worse off when it came to punishment then the men, as if it were all their fault.  (Sound familiar?)  the Poor Laws of 1662 and the Vagrant Act of 1575-6 were harsh.  What was being upheld was the economy, the fact that in marriage it was understood what man would be supporting what women and what children.  It wasn't until the Tudors and the Stuarts that the illegitimate children got titles of nobility and entered into the peerage.

As I was reading this book I was thinking that in my research of small towns I sometimes found that illegitimate children, as indicated in church records, were often given exotic names as if a given name might compensate for a maiden name.

I'm going to post an EXCERPT from this book soon.  I found that the APPENDIX and definition of bastardy by Cecil Humphery-Smith - who has a long list of honoraria after his name was the best part!  I'll post excerpts from that soon!

C 2018 Book Review by Ancestry Worship Genealogy

AND THEN THERE WERE NONE ; ARE YOU THE LAST IN YOUR FAMILY?

Some of you are realizing that not only has your once huge genealogy chart turned into an inverted pyramid, but you may just be the last descendant of the family, or the last carrying the rare name.

If you're reading this blog, ANCESTRY WORSHIP -GENEALOGY, you may also be thinking about or in the process of documenting the family you're from, as that last member.

Some thoughts on this.

A man who knows not much about the Latter Day Saints, said to me "And every man gets his own planet or something."

I said that was my understanding too.  The man and his wife, and all their descendants.  But think about this. The Latter Day Saints may have a certain cosmology in place when they envision the after earth life in eternity, but they also know how family charts connect, and so really this is a vision of a connected membership of their church in the after life.  And they are interested in collecting the work of non-members because these also connect to LDS families and provide opportunities for more Ordinances to be done.

(My understanding is that by uploading your information to their databases,  THEY ARE CLAIMING COPYRIGHT.  If this is true, well, I don't like it. It challenges the notion that everyone whose name appears on a chart or who can be connected to dead persons don't mind their privacy being invaded.)

What I'm getting at is it might turn out that there are some living persons who you are connected to as family who aren't in your pyramid at all, inverted or upright.  I can't say that you'll find them through any means and that they'll welcome you to visit. I have met people who were invited to family reunions after connecting due to genealogy. (There are even family reunions for people with certain surnames, related or not.)

Soon after talking to this man with the idea that every LDS man gets a planet, I attended a Fundamentalist Christian Bible Study with a new friend. There people at the Bible Study were talking about End Times and the Rapture. The group leader was asked a lot of questions.  One person asked, "And we'll all be naked?" The group leader said, "We'll be like Adam and Eve again." She meant before the fall, when they themselves didn't notice or care about nakedness or feel any body shame.  My answer was that a person in the After Life (I'm assuming heaven) would be in their Spirit Body was not well received. Probably the term "Spirit Body" was a bit New Age for this group. When asked "Will we recognize each other?" the group leader said, "Yes, but we won't be MARRIED anymore."

Instead we'll all be united with God.

So, here is where the Latter Day Saints vision is different. In LDS afterlife you are still married if Sealed to the same spouse you have. You will be with your family.

Frankly, I like the idea that you could perhaps want to go it alone after a long earthly marriage, and you could choose to. I also like the idea that you will be you. And recognize your friends. At least at first, until you move on to a "higher plane" of heaven.  As a society we are just getting used to the frequent occurrence of Near Death Experiences and trying on the notion of Past Life Regression. We can only say that a person has been to heaven - and back - if they tell us how it went.

I'm fascinated by it all.

C 2018  Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot
This post has been edited July 2019.