being within one day of a year and seven months; which is a much later date for the delivery of a live child, than the most liberal in their calculations have hitherto assigned. However, on reading the printed copy of the original record, in the rolls of parliament lately published, we find Lord Hale's note quite accurate. See Rot. Parl. v. 1. p. 353.—As to the case of R. 2. it confirms the doubt we have elsewhere stated of the opinion, that, if a widow marries again and has a child within nine months after the death of the first husband, the child may choose his father; and is an authority for deciding according to the proof of the woman's condition when her first husband died. Ante fo. 8. a. note 7. Terms of the Law, first edit. tit. Bastard, and Cowel Inst. lib. 1. t. 9.—Lord Hale's two other cases are reported in several books, Alsop and Stacey being in Cro. Jam. 541. Godb. 281. Palm. 9. 1 Ro. Abr. 356. and Thecar's in Cro. Jam. 685. Winch. 71. Litt. Rep. 177.[1] II. Note on Lord Coke's Doctrine as to the latest time with Women for Parturition.
If our law was really as strict in point of time as is here represented by Lord Coke, it would not sufficiently conform to the course of nature. The physicians, it is true, generally call nine months, each being of thirty days, the usual period for a woman's going with child. But then they allow, that,
- ↑ In the close of the first book of Paulus Zacchias's famous Questiones Medicolegales, there is a full discussion of the point of filiation, as between two husbands, where a woman soon after the death of her first husband marries a second. The question is raised in these words. "Filius mulieris, quæ illico ab obitu conjugis alteri nupsit, et novem decemve mensium spatio peperit; cujusdam præsumi debeat." See Paul. Zacch. lib. 1. tit. 5 quæstio ultima. The same point is investigated in the learned treatise by Alphonsus a Caranza, De Partu Naturali et Legitimo. See cap. 26. s. 71. The first book of Paulus Zacchias, who was a physician at Rome, first came out in 1621. The tract by Alphonsus a Caranza was first published about five years afterwards.
