Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
Except that I think ownership is at the core of my point, at least as far as this discussion touches on The Three Musketeers. Were the Queen's jewels actuallys hers, or did they belong to the state? More relevantly, it was made quite clear in The Three Musketeers that the woman keeping Porthos was doing so from the coffers of her husband. My assumption (I do not know for certain) is that in marriages of those times everything, probably including the wife, was legally the possession of the husband (it wasn't until 1882 that the Married Women's Property Act was passed in the UK, I don't imagine France was too different). So there was a great disparity in how a kept woman was kept versus how a kept man was kept. |
I would say from the coffers of the marriage. Same as if the husband was keeping a mistress. The cost came from the same pool. I don't know French law from the 1620's, I do know domestic law varied from country to country, widely. I am familiar with the differences between Spanish domestic law and English common law on the subject, because Texas law is almost totally based upon Spanish law, not English, which comes as a great shock for people relocating to Texas.