Note 1139 — Chapter VIII · RISE OF ECCLESIASTICAL MARRIAGE: THE CHURCH DEVELOPS AND ADMINISTERS MATRIMONIAL LAW

"To this agreement between church and state there was the one well-known exception: our temporal courts would not allow to marriage any retroactive power; the bastard remained incapable of inheriting land even though his parents had become husband and wife and thereby made him capable of receiving holy orders and, in all probability, of taking a share in the movable goods of his parents.... But about all other matters the church could have, and apparently had, her way.... 'You are a bastard, for your father was a deacon': that was a good plea in the king's court, and the king's court did nothing to narrow the mischievous latitude of the prohibited degrees."—Pollock and Maitland, op. cit., II, 375, 376. On legitimation through subsequent marriage by the canon law see Esmein, op. cit., II, 37 ff.; Swinburne, Of Spousals, 233 ff.