Definition
Adulterine has two distinct legal meanings, one rooted in family and canon law and one in medieval commercial regulation.
1. Of persons: Born of adulterous intercourse — that is, the offspring of a sexual union where at least one party was married to someone else at the time. Adulterine bastards were historically distinguished from ordinary illegitimate children (those born of two unmarried persons) and occupied the lowest rung of legal status among children born outside marriage.
2. Of institutions or acts: Unlawful, unauthorized, or operating without proper legal sanction. In medieval English law, guilds or trading companies that formed and operated without royal charter were called adulterine guilds. The designation carried the sense of something counterfeit or illegal in its very constitution.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Spurious; due to adulteration. Born of adultery. Pertaining to adultery. Illegal; unlicensed.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Proceeding from adulterous intercourse; spurious; without the support of law; illegal. Webster's illustrated the institutional sense with Adam Smith's reference to adulterine guilds — traders acting as a corporation without a charter.
The common meaning captures the term fairly well in both senses, but casual readers will likely recognize only the personal (illegitimacy) meaning and miss the institutional meaning entirely. In legal and historical sources, adulterine applied to organizations and charters with the same force it applied to persons — the shared thread being illegitimacy of origin, not moral condemnation of individuals.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
ADULTERINE BASTARD: The specific designation for a child born of adulterous intercourse, as distinguished from a natural child or ordinary illegitimate. Under Roman and canon law, adulterine bastards could not claim the status of natural children and were barred from holy orders — harsher treatment than that applied to children of two unmarried persons.
ADULTERINE GUILDS: Trading companies or merchant associations operating without royal charter or license. In 1180, Henry II fined sixteen such guilds in England. The term appears in Madox's History of the Exchequer and Smith's History of London, and was used by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations to describe the same phenomenon.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter adulterine in two very different bodies of source material, and conflating the two senses will distort analysis.
In ecclesiastical and family law sources: The term marks a specific legal category with formal consequences. Pre-modern ecclesiastical courts, canon law commentaries, and civil law treatises treated adulterine status as a distinct disability — not merely illegitimacy, but aggravated illegitimacy. Bouvier's note that children are not deemed adulterine when begotten of a woman openly married through ignorance of a prior spouse being alive is a doctrinal refinement worth tracking: it shows that the category turned on the moral and legal culpability attached to the union, not simply biological parentage in a technical sense. Researchers reading English ecclesiastical records, chancery proceedings involving inheritance, or colonial American status disputes should be alert to whether a source distinguishes adulterine children from other illegitimate children, because the legal consequences differed.
In commercial and constitutional history sources: The institutional meaning appears primarily in medieval and early modern English records, guild history, and political economy writing. Burrill's entry, supported by the Madox and Smith citations, anchors adulterine guilds firmly in the twelfth century and the Plantagenet administrative record. Adam Smith's use in The Wealth of Nations brought the term into eighteenth-century economic discourse, where it served as a shorthand for unauthorized monopoly-seeking. Researchers working on corporate chartering history, guild regulation, or the history of commercial licensing should not be surprised to find adulterine used as a near-synonym for unlicensed or ultra vires in this context.
The term appears rarely in modern American legal writing. When it does appear, it is almost always in historical analysis or comparative law discussion, not as operative legal language.
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Historical Dictionary Support
The five source dictionaries converge on both meanings but distribute their emphasis differently.
Black's (both editions) and Bouvier focus exclusively on the personal meaning — adulterine bastards and their diminished status under Roman and canon law. Their entries are substantively identical and track the canon law tradition closely. Bouvier adds the useful qualification about ignorance of a prior spouse, showing that adulterine status required knowing violation of the marital bond, not merely technical adultery in all circumstances.
Burrill is the only source to develop the institutional meaning at length, and his entry is the most historically grounded, citing Madox and Smith's History of London with specific dates. This makes Burrill the essential source for any research into adulterine guilds.
Rapalje & Lawrence present a corrupted entry — the text clearly contains a printing error or OCR artifact that splices the adulterine definition with material from an unrelated entry on ratification or agency. The usable portion tracks Bouvier on bastard status. Researchers should not rely on Rapalje & Lawrence for this term without consulting a clean copy.
Webster's 1913, though not a legal dictionary, synthesizes both meanings effectively and is notable for quoting Adam Smith directly — a reminder that the institutional meaning circulated well beyond legal texts.
What the historical dictionaries collectively understate is the procedural significance of adulterine status in English ecclesiastical court practice and in the conflict between civil and canon law over legitimation by subsequent marriage — a debate in which the category of adulterine bastards was specifically excluded from the canon law rule that marriage legitimated prior offspring.
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Jurisdictional Note
The adulterine bastard distinction was operative in jurisdictions following Roman or canon law and had some influence in early English ecclesiastical courts, but it was never fully absorbed into the common law of England or the American states. American courts addressing illegitimacy generally did not preserve the Roman law tier system distinguishing adulterine from other illegitimate children, though the terminology appears in some nineteenth-century American treatises drawing on civil law sources.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Illegitimacy
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Canon Law
Law Mind Encyclopedia — Medieval Guild Law
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