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Archiver > GEN-MEDIEVAL > 2011-11 > 1322447758


From: Peter Stewart <>
Subject: Re: Horace Round and Royal myths
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:35:58 +1100
References: <mailman.0.1322387748.5686.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com><95177393-5941-42d7-aa73-d952bba4e9bd@q27g2000prh.googlegroups.com><mailman.13.1322410868.5686.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com><257f7882-83ac-4993-9702-36cd79c8c983@d5g2000prf.googlegroups.com><mailman.29.1322426608.5686.gen-medieval@rootsweb.com><22429e67-1e36-40a1-9b82-6737405f0bcd@m10g2000vbc.googlegroups.com>
In-Reply-To: <22429e67-1e36-40a1-9b82-6737405f0bcd@m10g2000vbc.googlegroups.com>


On 28/11/2011 9:24 AM, Johnny Brananas wrote:
>> One notable Australian "gateway" to royal ancestry (also an American
>> one, though no-one has yet brought it up on the newsgroup) is through a
>> mining family, via the daughter of a Somerset gentleman whose
>> socio-economic ruin was due to insanity. Round perhaps thought the
>> English countryside in the 17th& 18th centuries was hopping with people
>> like him.
> I've sometimes wondered about physical deformities or mental
> deficiencies when you come across "unequal" marriages in the
> records ... for instance, a knight's daughter married to a yeoman.
> People are not always born "perfect," even today. Perhaps the parents
> had to do the best they could for a child with physical problems,
> etc. And usually these things would not be commented on in records.
>

Before the Reformation people born with physical disability would often
be sent as children to become monks or nuns - certainly there were a
number of blind, mute, lame or hunchbacked religious. Later on if
surviving long enough (in Britain anyway) they might have been burned as
witches & warlocks, I suppose. Or married to to an underling, as you
suggest. In some families the pyre might have been preferred.

Peter Stewart

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