The bastards of wealthy and influential figures were, in many cases, taken care of by their birth mothers and given financial support by their fathers.
The monastery provided food and shelter, while the municipality handled the money pious people gave the poor.
Further Acts of 1575 and 1609 declared that the mother of any bastard child would face corporal punishment or be placed in an English "House of Correction.
"[8] Under English common law, the burden of taking care of any illegitimate child frequently fell on a church or the community in which the bastard lived.
English common law focused intensely on the legal issues surrounding bastard children and thus created bastardy rules on those principles.
During the seventeenth century, when settlers started establishing permanent settlements in North America, decisions needed to be made concerning how the new legal system would work.
The people who established the New England colonies came to the new world so they could create a new society that fashioned itself on the rules and teachings of their religion.
[9] Due to the strong religious background of these colonies, colonists sought changes and improvements to the English common law.
[11] Married women during colonial times in America fell under the English governance rule of feme covert.
All cases of bastardy heard before colonial courts were the direct result of an act of adultery or fornication.
Women before the courts claimed that they engaged in sexual activity with men and explained to the courtroom that if somehow they ended up pregnant, the man would marry them, thus preventing the birth of a bastard child.
[14] A child being born out of wedlock automatically resulted in a trial to determine who the father was and who and how the bastard would be cared for.
It was believed that women endured so much anguish during birth that they would not lie and would truthfully confess to their sin of fornication and reveal who the baby's father was.
Either the pregnant women would willingly tell someone that she had a bastard son, and then she would name the father, or a midwife would ask the mother to tell whether or not her child was legitimate.
Bastardy cases in the colonies involved women of high, low, and middle standing, similar to England.
[19] In the 1650s, when the colonial courts reached a verdict in cases of adultery or fornication, the guilty parties had to pay fines ranging from forty shillings to ten pounds and were publicly struck with a whip six to fifteen times.
[20] From 1639 to 1666, in Connecticut, if a father did not willingly come forward to acknowledge his illegitimate child, the mother of the bastard received a public whipping.
The thought was that the male would not stand idly by and watch the mother of his child receive such harsh punishment and public humiliation.
To avoid the penalties and shame of having a bastard child, men and women took different steps to prevent pregnancy while engaging in sexual behavior.
Men could avoid the label of "father" if the pregnant woman chose to hide or conceal the truth from her midwife or the courts.
Birth control existed within colonial America, but due to a lack of understanding of human anatomy, attempts at avoiding pregnancy during this time often failed.
Instances such as a child being stillborn or the jury of a court understanding a single mother's plight made cases of infanticide tough to prosecute.
[25] Options did exist for colonists to attempt to escape from bastardy and fornication charges, although many of those choices led to less-than-desirable outcomes.
[26] Statutes in the colonies, similarly to in England, held that the reputed father, once determined, had to contribute financially to the bastard child.
As the law evolved from 1690 to 1740, the burden of proof in any case changed from witness testimony to evidence presented in court.
[27] As the eighteenth century progressed, more and more faith aspects of law creation and enforcement began to fade away in the New England and Pennsylvania Colonies.
As in England, as rural towns gave way to urban cities, laws such as bastardy needed to be refined to fit the conditions of the colonies.
By 1767, the Overseers of the Poor documented all cases of bastardy that they dealt with, thus making sure that no bastard child or other individual in need went unnoticed.
The Overseers of the Poor's primary goal was to regulate child support, not hand out punishments for sexual crimes committed by the parents.
If the amounts collected by the Overseers of the Poor were not enough, mothers and bastard children had the option of going to the almshouse, although many did not unless the situation was dire.