Tracts, legal and historical

185
tiiralis 1 quia si esset naturaMs, legiti mare fur per
subsequens matrimonium, ut in d. c. tantaT 2 Such
doctrine and interpretation would appear conclu-
sive, and fatal to the legitimacy of the Stewarts
— and upon the whole Snares may he said^to lean
to this side ; although he at the same timegnotices
some opposite opinions, that seem, however, far from
convincing, and hids adieu to the subject in these
words, — " Cogita, et inhsereas asquiori et saniori
opinioni ad salutem animae, et conscientise." 3 One il-
lustration is forcible,, at least extremely plausible. If
parties labouring under an impediment of which
they are ignorant, contract a marriage clandestine,
and not in facie ecclesie, their ignorance avails no-
thing, and the issue are illegitimate, although born
infigura matrimonii, without any imputation, as is
possible, against the parents. " Quanto magis," then,
exclaims Suares here, ought bona fides or ignorance
" in concubinatu nil prodesse."
We might be induced to infer from a precedent
somewhat earlier, — in 1322, that with us igno-
1 Naturalis, it is to be observed, in the language of writers, de-
notes only the bastard off-spring of a solutus and soluta — being
opposed to spurius, which is descriptive of an incestuous or adul-
terous bastard, neither of whom in the general case at least, can
be legimated per subsequens matrimonium, while the issue of the
former assuredly can.
2 lb.
3 De successio?ie, Jil. nat. et spur, ap. opera Roderici Sua-
res, Jurisconsulti celeberrimi, p. 320.