Droit du seigneur
"[2] When the plebeians of the Etruscan city of Volsinii rebelled against the aristocrats in 280 BC, "They took their wives for themselves and placed the daughters of the nobles under the jus primæ noctis, while all their former masters on whom they could lay hands were tortured to death.
American historian Vern Bullough suggested that this illustrates that such behaviour was commonplace in the period, and that the "legend [of droit du seigneur] reflected the reality".
[10] In the 14th-century French epic poem Baudouin de Sebourc, a tyrannical lord claims the jus primae noctis unless he receives part of the bride's dowry.
[15][16] The Jurchens' sexual habits and mores seemed lax to Han Chinese, such as marrying with an in-law, which was one of China's "Ten Heinous Crimes".
[19][20] Personal memoirs from early 19th century Western Estonia claim widespread use of the rule of first night; whether it was a fully legal right is not elaborated [21] In Shakespeare's play Henry VI, Part 2 (c. 1591) the rebel Jack Cade proclaims: "there shall not a maid be married, but she shall pay to me her maidenhead ere they have it".
[26] The right was mentioned in 1556 in the Recueil d'arrêts notables des cours souveraines de France of the French lawyer and author Jean Papon.
[37] The modern French scholar Alain Boureau says that Boece probably invented King Ewen, but he views this as mythology, not as a polemic against medieval barbarism.
[36] Other Scottish scholars of his era quoted Boece with approval, including John Lesley (1578), George Buchanan (1582), and Habbakuk Bisset (1626).
[6][38] The historical existence of the custom in Scotland was also accepted in Scottish legal works such as James Balfour's Practicks (c. 1579), John Skene's De Verborum (1597), and Thomas Craig's Jus Feudale (1603).
[40] However, according to the Scottish legal scholar David Maxwell Walker, instances have been recorded of the jus primæ noctis being claimed up to the 18th century.
[6] After their travels in Scotland in 1773, Samuel Johnson and James Boswell documented the custom of the payment of merchet, linking it with the "right of first night".
Howarth, Cervantes was inspired by Peruvian marriage ceremonies and what is described is different from the classic version of the droit du seigneur as it involves multiple virgins.
However, Cervantes' story was a source for the English play The Custom of the Country, written by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger and published in 1647.
[43] In modern times, Zaire's president Mobutu Sese Seko appropriated the droit de seigneur when traveling around the country, where local chiefs offered him virgins.
[45] As late as the 19th century, some Kurdish chieftains in Anatolia raped Armenian brides on their wedding night (part of what was then known as the khafir or hafir system).
[51][7] Over time, the Encyclopædia Britannica and the Larousse encyclopedias dramatically changed their opinion on the topic, moving from acceptance to rejection of the historical veracity of the idea.
[56] In 1930, Scottish legal scholar Hector McKechnie concluded, based on historical evidence, that the practice had existed in Scotland in early times.
