ABSTRACT This article considers the test used to determine the presence or absence of life in newborn babies, in relation to a widower’s entitlement to remain in land brought to the marriage by his wife, as tenant by the curtesy of England. To qualify for curtesy, a widower needed to have produced a live and legitimate child, but, since even a short period of life was sufficient, there might be disputes as to whether a child which was now dead had ever been alive. The common law therefore had to develop a way of settling this difficult matter of confirming or denying the presence of life. Several thirteenth-century sources show an emphasis on a sound as an indicator of life. This article considers the use of a sound criterion in this area, arguing that thinking and practice surrounding the appropriate test were more complex, less settled, and more interesting than has been represented in somewhat perfunctory accounts in the work of later lawyers and legal historians. This is significant for the understanding of this area of medieval law, but also has broader implications within legal history and historiography, and for scholars from other fields such as medieval social and medical history.

中文翻译：

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“有必要在四个 [墙] 内听到这个问题的哭声或喧嚣”：爱德华一世统治时期英格兰的 Curtesy 获得租赁资格

摘要 本文考虑了用于确定新生婴儿是否有生命的测试，涉及鳏夫是否有权留在他的妻子作为佃农结婚的土地上，这是由英格兰的屈辱。要获得屈膝礼，鳏夫必须生下一个活的合法的孩子，但是，因为即使是短暂的生命也足够了，对于现在已经死了的孩子是否还活着，可能会有争议。因此，普通法必须发展出一种方法来解决这个确认或否认生命存在的难题。一些 13 世纪的资料表明，声音是生命的标志。本文考虑在该领域使用合理的标准，认为围绕适当测试的思考和实践更复杂，更不固定，并且比后来律师和法律历史学家的工作中有些敷衍的描述更有趣。这对于理解中世纪法律这一领域具有重要意义，但对法律史和史学以及中世纪社会和医学史等其他领域的学者也具有更广泛的影响。