ABSTRACT
Research projects often have very unassuming beginnings and this one is no different. Many years ago, I happened across a book by Richard Adair, titled Courtship, Illegitimacy, and Marriage in Early Modern England.1 Adair predominantly dealt with the lower socio-economic classes, and I idly wondered if anyone had taken a look at illegitimacy and illicit sex among the aristocracy. What happened to noblemen and noblewomen who engaged in extramarital sexual relationships? A preliminary search came up with very little. I noted this interesting gap in the historiography and stowed it away in a folder marked “future ideas,” which I had created in a moment of temporary organizational zeal.
