Anne Orthwood's Bastard Summary

In Anne Orthwood's Bastard, John Ruston Pagan focuses our attention on the legalities surrounding a single case of out-of-wedlock pregnancy in seventeenth-century Virginia. Prosecutions for fornication and premarital pregnancy were common matters in early modern courts in Virginia, British North America, and England. Through Pagan's narrative, this seemingly routine case gains significance for early American legal history. He argues that the event, its characters, and the legal suits it generated, revealed that by the last half of the seventeenth century, Virginians had shaped a distinct legal culture on the Eastern Shore. In order to best illuminate the mechanics of local justice on the Eastern Shore, each chapter focuses on a key figure
Pagan argues that, Justices did so because the financial burdens to fathers were comparatively light. In England, fathers had to pay payments to indenture their offspring; in Virginia indentures were easily obtained with minimal payments and freed fathers from the future obligations of child support. In the Orthwood case justices instantly accepted Anne's oath that John Kendall had fathered her children. However, after Anne's death, Kendall filed a petition that denied paternity. The justices were persuaded and ruled in favor of Kendall, but they did not alter their earlier verdict that obligated Kendall to remain legally responsible for the support of the infant Jasper, whom he quickly indentured. In paternity proceedings, the presumed truth of a woman's word was, largely, unquestionable, but a man with powerful allies, like John Kendall, could maneuver to escape full responsibility. Initially, I was shocked to discover that these modifications and maneuvers in no way amended the penalties endured by mothers who were burdened with penance, extra service, fines, or corporal punishment. I suppose that in a world where a women has no voice or equality among men, this discovery would be rather less