Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/472

 456 paration for the offence, by marrying within a few months after, our law is o indulgent as not to batardize the child, if it be born, though not begotten, in lawful wedlock: for this is an incident that can happen but once; ince all future children will be begotten, as well as born, within the rules of honour and civil ociety. Upon reaons like thee we may uppoe the peers to have acted at the parliament of Merton, when they refued to enact that children born before marriage hould be eteemed legitimate.

what has been aid it appears, that all children born before matrimony are batards by our law: and o it is of all children born o long after the death of the huband, that, by the uual coure of getation, they could not be begotten by him. But, this being a matter of ome uncertainty, the law is not exact as to a few days. And this gives occaion to a proceeding at common law, where a widow is upected to feign herelf with child, in order to produce a uppoititious heir to the etate: an attempt which the rigor of the Gothic contitutions eteemed equivalent to the mot atrocious theft, and therefore punihed with death. In this cae with us the heir preumptive may have a writ de ventre inpiciendo, to examine whether he be with child, or not ; and, if he be, to keep her under proper retraint, till delivered; which is entirely conformable to the practice of the civil law : but, if the widow be upon due examination found not pregnant, the preumptive heir hall be admitted to the inheritance, though liable to loe it again, on the birth of a child within forty weeks from the death of the huband. But if a man dies, and his widow oon after marries again, and a child is born within uch a time, as that by the coure of nature it might have been the child of either huband; in this cae he is aid to be more Rh