plural of Child.
Mr Derham computes, that marriages, one with another, produce four children, not only in England, but in other parts also. In the genealogical history of Tuscany, wrote by Gamarini, mention is made of a nobleman of Sienna, named Pichi, who of three wives had 150 children; and that, being sent ambassador to the pope and the emperor, he had 48 of his sons in his retinue. In a monument in the church-yard of St Innocent, at Paris, erected to a woman who died at 88 years of age, it is recorded, that she might have been 288 children directly issued from her. This exceeds what Hakewell relates of Mrs Honeywood, a gentlewoman of Kent, born in the year 1527, and married at 16 to her only husband R. Honeywood, of Charing, Esq.; and died in her 93rd year. She had 16 children of her own body; of which three died young, and a fourth had no issue: yet her grandchildren, in the second generation, amounted to 114; in the third, to 228; though in the fourth, they fell to 9. The whole number she might have been in her life-time, being 367.
\[ 16 + 114 + 228 + 9 = 367 \]
So that she could say the same as the dish of one of the Dalburg's family at Bafil:
\[ \text{Mater aut natae aut natae filia natum,} \]
\[ \text{Ut noncat, nate, plangere, filialam.} \]
Management of Children. See Infant.
Overlaying of Children, is a misfortune that frequently happens; to prevent which, the Florentines have contrived an instrument called arcuccio. See Arcuccio.
Children are, in law, a man's issue begotten on his wife. As to illegitimate children, see Bastard.
For the legal duties of parents to their children, see the articles Parent and Bastard.
As to the duties of children to their parents, they arise from a principle of natural justice and retribution. For to those who gave us existence, we naturally owe subjection and obedience during our minority, and honour and reverence ever after: they who protected the weakness of our infancy, are intitled to our protection in the infirmity of their age; they who by sustenance and education have enabled their offspring to prosper, ought, in return, to be supported by that offspring, in case they stand in need of assistance. Upon this principle proceed all the duties of children to their parents, which are enjoined by positive laws. And the Athenian laws carried this principle into practice with a scrupulous kind of nicety: obliging all children to provide for their father when fallen into poverty; with an exception to spurious children, to those whose chastity had been prostituted with consent of their father, and to those whom he had not put in any way of gaining a livelihood. The legislature, says baron Montefquieu, considered, that, in the first case, the father, being uncertain, had rendered the natural obligation precarious; that, in the second case, he had fulfilled the life he had given, and done his children the greatest of injuries, in depriving them of their reputation; and that, in the third case, he had rendered their life (so far as in him lay) an insupportable burden, by furnishing them with no means of subsistence.
Our laws agree with those of Athens, with regard to the first only of these particulars, the case of spurious issue. In the other cases, the law does not hold the tie of nature to be dissolved by any misbehaviour of the parent; and therefore a child is equally justifiable in defending the person, or maintaining the cause or suit, of a bad parent as of a good one; and is equally compelled, if of sufficient ability, to maintain and provide for a wicked and unnatural progenitor, as for one who has shown the greatest tenderness and parental piety. See further the article Filial Affection.