ABSTRACT
Most births in seventeenth-century England well over 90 per cent of them took place within marriage; yet there was always a perceptible number of illegitimate 7 per cent; that is, almost one mother in 14 began her reproductive career as a bastard-bearer. The eighteenth-century rise in illegitimacy seems to have coincided with a shift in the pattern of bridal pregnancy. The continuity between courtship and illegitimacy suggests that many births. As a rough average covering the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, perhaps one English birth in 30 or 40 was illegitimate; or, in other words, the illegitimacy ratio was about 2.5 or 3 per cent. The first-birth illegitimacy ratio averaged out, between the mid sixteenth and mid eighteenth centuries, at about English people had a rather relaxed, tolerant attitude to bastard-bearing, or at least to fornication. The continuity between courtship and illegitimacy suggests that many English people had a rather relaxed, tolerant attitude to bastard-bearing, or at least to fornication.
