ARMAS PEQUEÑAS EN GUATEMALA
V. IMPACTO DE LA PROLIFERACIÓN DE ARMAS PEQUEÑAS EN GUATEMALA
The kinship family describes a slightly amorphous 'broader group of relations by blood and marriage'.199 Kinship was often expressed instrumentally, at all social
levels. Ideally, kin could be relied upon for assistance such as hospitality, patronage, marriage negotiations or crisis support.200 These actions were ideally reciprocal and,
much like notions of friendship, implied a measure of service.201 Kinship was not
measured by proximity. Reciprocal ties could be maintained over great distances,
and 'awoken' in response to need after years of dormancy.202 Behaviour was
governed by a set of strong cultural expectations and emotional standards, based on relationship type, age or gender.203 Many relationships were a mixture of obligation
and affection; duty prescribed a minimum level of assistance and emotional expression, but greater instrumental effort was often a consequence of greater
198 For example, Retford, Art of Domestic Life, pp. 148, 234. 199 Tadmor, Family and Friends, p. 104.
200 Cressy, 'Kinship', p. 50; Diana O'Hara, Courtship and Constraint: Rethinking the Making of
Marriage in Tudor England (Manchester, 2000), pp. 30-51.
201 Pearsall, Atlantic Families, p. 28; Tadmor, Family and Friends, pp. 30-31, 179, 191, 204-6, 212-
4; Cressy, 'Kinship', pp. 46-7; Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, ‘Reciprocal Bonding: Parents and their Offspring in Early Modern England’, Journal of Family History 25.3 (2000), pp. 291-312; Harris, Siblinghood, pp. 57, 68-69, 133.
202 Tadmor, Family and Friends, pp. 113-6, 188; Pearsall, Atlantic Families, pp. 65-6; Hansen,
'Bonds of Affection', p. 42; Cressy, 'Kinship', pp. 46-9; Ilana Krausman Ben-Amos, Adolescence
and Youth in Early Modern England (New Haven, 1994), p. 169.
203 Broomhall and Van Gent, 'Corresponding Affections', pp. 159, 146; Davidoff, Thicker than
Water, pp. 133-4; Broomhall, 'Emotions in the Household', p. 4; Tadmor, Family and Friends,
emotional intimacy.204 This balance between obligation and emotion is key to
understanding the place of illegitimates within the kinship family. Almost all illegitimates were seen as entitled to some measure of kin support as acceptable dependants but only some reached a second level of greater intimacy and reciprocity. As kinship was so often based on actions, illegitimates could earn their place in the kinship family. In turn, individuals appropriated the language and ideals of normative kin relationships to inform their behaviour towards illegitimate relatives.
As we have seen, poorer families often expressed an obligation to provide and care for illegitimate relatives by accepting them into their household. Higher-status families were less likely to cohabit with illegitimate relatives but took on financial responsibility for them outside the household. This was to a certain extent an extension of paternal maintenance, as it was articulated in the same moral code of genteel benevolence.205 It also operated in tandem with other ideal family behaviour
such as hospitality, sustained personal contact and concern for welfare, according to the legitimate norm where inheritance inequalities were ideally counterbalanced by a duty of assistance from the family head towards younger or less fortunate relatives.206 When industrialist John Spencer died in 1775 without providing for his
nine-year-old illegitimate son John Smith, Spencer's nephew and heir Walter Spencer-Stanhope accepted financial responsibility. Walter paid John and his mother an annuity and the costs of John's genteel education. Walter's support of John was presented as an act of generosity towards a child in need but also reflected the obligation and reciprocity of kinship. Walter and his friends saw maintenance as repaying a debt, in exchange for the considerable estate he had inherited from his uncle. In letters to John's mother Mary, Walter referred to Spencer as 'your Friend & mine, our common Benefactor' and Spencer's friend John Cholwell counselled Walter to maintain the Smiths as a 'duty & act of gratitude'.207 Walter also accepted
responsibility for John as part of the family that he now headed, writing to Mary,
204 Broomhall and Van Gent, 'Corresponding Affections', pp. 149-50; Tadmor, Family and
Friends, p. 192; Medick and Sabean, 'Interest and Emotion', pp. 11-13.
205 See chapter 1, pp. 76-7.
206 Harris, Siblinghood, pp. 33, 112-4, 117.
207 BALS: Sp/St 60554/15, Walter Spencer-Stanhope to Mary Smith, 13 November 1775;
60554/9, John Cholwell to Walter Spencer-Stanhope, 25 November [1775]. The original French is 'le devoir, & la reconnaissance', and the translation is my own.
'[t]he Yorkshire Estate is left to me... As such I stand in the Place of him [Spencer]... like him you shall always find me ready to assist you & to protect your Son'.208
Similarly, George, 11th Earl of Pembroke, accepted responsibility for the children of his illegitimate half-brother Augustus Montgomery, paying annuities, arranging
marriage settlements and providing patronage.209 The two Montgomerys were
acknowledged in his will alongside other dependent kin; the only other collateral kin mentioned were the unmarried daughters of George's maternal cousins.210 George
was the Montgomerys' primary source of support and so he included them in concepts of familial duty alongside other kin that needed him most.211 These
relationships were unequal, but based on strong concepts of familial duty and of illegitimates as acceptable dependants.
Kinship obligations entailed not only money but also continued concern and personal contact. Walter Spencer-Stanhope included John Smith within normative affective and material exchanges. John was a regular visitor to the family seat, Cannon Hall, and he and Walter maintained a life-long correspondence, accompanied with occasional presents of venison from the family estate, which John acknowledged in letters of thanks for such 'kind attention'.212 John reciprocated
through his occupation as a schoolmaster and clergyman; he took charge of Walter's
208 BALS: Sp/St 60554/15, Walter Spencer-Stanhope to Mary Smith, 13 November 1775.
Similar in 60554/10, Walter Spencer-Stanhope to Mary Smith, 3 December 1775.
209 TNA: PROB 11/1733/88, will of the Right Honourable George Augustus Earl of Pembroke
and Montgomery.
210 He gave £100 to Misses Georgiana and Caroline Spencer, and £50 to Miss Louisa Spencer.
Their fathers were younger sons with limited resources of their own, TNA: PROB 11/1733/88, will of the Right Honourable George Augustus Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery, 1826.
211 Their mother Susan Maltass was the daughter of a Turkish merchant and lived in Paris
after her husband's death. Their biological grandmother Kitty Hunter pre-deceased her son and had no other surviving biological or step-children. PP1, p. 33; TNA: PROB 11/1806/240, will of Sir Alured Clarke, 1832; PROB 11/2176/128, will of Susan Otherwise Suzanne Maltass otherwise Montgomery, Widow of Paris, France, 1853. For similar legitimate examples see Harris, Siblinghood, p. 144; Ben-Amos, The Culture of Giving, p. 19.
212 BALS: Sp/St 60554/12, Mary Smith to Walter Spencer-Stanhope, 22 September 1779;
60556/1, John Smith to Walter Spencer-Stanhope, 30 July 1782; 60556/109, John Smith to Walter Spencer-Stanhope, [1803]; 60556/19, John Smith to Walter Spencer-Stanhope, 8 November 1804. There are at least 109 extant letters between John and Walter or Walter's son, covering the period 1782-1824 held in Barnsley Archives. A similar relationship of visiting was maintained between Lady Dacre and her illegitimate step-son, Lady Dacre to William Tyler, 23 May 1793, in Barrett-Lennard, Account, p. 624.
sons at school, organising their holidays and giving them advice.213 John's
relationship with Walter and his sons was both instrumental and affective, evident in expressions of anxiety and a desire to see each other. Walter wrote to John on the occasion of his moving to a new parish, 'I long to hear how you go on, & what are your schemes... I hope you can continue to spend some Time with us in London'.214
John, in turn, counselled his young cousin John Spencer-Stanhope in terms similar to those used by elder relatives. He warned him to be careful of 'first impressions' at university, jokingly concluding '[y]ou must hear & read with patience my lecture & exhortations: if I was less anxious than I am about your welfare I could the more readily refrain'.215 John occupied an uncertain position, entirely dependent on Walter
for income and social status and employed in tasks which served the legitimate Spencer-Stanhopes, such as ordering books, travelling with his young cousins, and gathering political intelligence. This inequality was, however, balanced with considerable affective integration and he was clearly valued by the family.
John Smith's liminal position is encapsulated in a condolence letter written on John's death by Walter's wife Mary. She felt that 'our poor Friend' had 'in every possible way proved his gratitude to [Walter] for all he had done for him, & I always considered him as an attached & sincere Friend to us all, & on that account feel it
right to show my regard to his Memory by going into Mourning'.216 John was
213 For further details, see chapter 3, pp. 189-90.George Montgomery had a similar reciprocal
relationship; a clergyman, he was given the family's most profitable living. In return he acted as family representative in the parish and stood as the executor of his step-grandmothers' will. WSHC: 2057/F4/45, Bishop of Salisbury to Lord Herbert, 19 August 1810; 28 September 1810; Thomas Bromley to Lord Herbert, 21 September 1810; TNA: PROB 11/1785/403, will of the Right Honourable Elizabeth Countess of Pembroke and Montgomery. The role of executor was overwhelmingly performed by close kin, noted in 87 percent of the wills tested by Keith Wrightson, 'Kinship in an English Village: Terling, Essex 1550-1700', in Richard M. Smith (ed.), Land, Kinship and Life-Cycle (Cambridge, 1984), p. 330.
214 BALS: Sp/St 60556/29, Walter Spencer-Stanhope to John Smith, 9 July 1805.
215 BALS: Sp/St 60556/18, John Smith to John Spencer-Stanhope, 27 October 1804. Smith
frequently joked that his cousin would become tired of receiving letters from Smith rather than a beautiful young lady, writing for example, 'God bless me, what, you exclaim, am I pester'd with another Letter... I had at least hop'd on seeing the frank, that I should have heard... from Marianne!' BALS: Sp/St 60556/38, John Smith to John Spencer-Stanhope, 19 October 1805.
216 BALS: Sp/St 60557/2, Mary Winifred Spencer-Stanhope to Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope, 27
January 1826. Family solidarity at illegitimates' funerals was not only confined to elite families like the Spencer-Stanhopes. Shopkeeper Thomas Turner supplied mourning favours at the funeral of Alice Stevens (1728-57), illegitimate daughter of farmer Benjamin Stevens and smallholder Avis Smith. He stated that 'a large company of people' attended. Turner records distributing hatbands and favours to 21 attendees, seven named Stevens, including
considered the inferior in this relationship, the recipient of Walter's generosity, echoing the insecurity of illegitimates' inclusion in the household-family. But, he was included in an affective concept of family, expressed as attachment, sincerity and regard in family correspondence and, crucially, in public through mourning rituals, by this time perceived to reflect an emotional relationship.217 This status was
conveyed through his active affective and instrumental service as a 'friend'.218
Many instrumental benefits of kinship were expressed through patronage. Illegitimate children were considered acceptable beneficiaries of family patronage and significantly their claim was considered using affective terms. Naval patron Admiral Rodney assured Lord Pembroke that his illegitimate son Augustus 'is really worthy the affection with which you honour him, and I shall ever be happy to... shew that regard which I shall ever retain for the Earl of Pembroke' by promoting him.219 Helping an illegitimate was seen as a favour to the whole family. Lady
Cowper assumed that Lord Melbourne would assist illegitimate George Wyndham in a legal matter as, 'from his regard for [their] father he would like to oblige any of his family'.220 Families explained requests for patronage through open reference to an
illegitimate relationship. George Herbert justified a patronage request for his nephew through the boy's origin, 'his being [a child] of... a lefthanded Sister of mine, will
perhaps plead my excuse'.221 Patrons assumed that parents and relatives had
obligation and affection towards illegitimates and did not question the propriety of such requests.
Alice's half-brother, and two named Smith, suggesting that members of both her maternal and paternal family were considered close mourners, Diary of Thomas Turner, pp. 77-8. For the occupations and property of her parents see: ESRO: PBT 2/1/8/248, Deanery of South Malling, will of Benjamin Stevens, 26 November 1763; ESRO: SAS/F 256, archive of Frere & Co of London, solicitors, year lease, 16 October 1735.
217 Pat Jalland, Death in the Victorian Family (Oxford, 1996), pp. 300-2. Going into mourning
was expensive and a public, ritual display of connection to the deceased. The inclusion of illegitimates within mourning customs is striking, as customs were highly governed by etiquette. See Lou Taylor, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History (London, 1983), pp. 19-20, 108-112, 130.
218 For the language of friendship as also applying to kin, and having both affective and
instrumental components see Tadmor, Family and Friends, pp. 177, 179, 191, 204-6, 212-4; Cressy, 'Kinship', pp. 46-7, and below, p. 154.
219 PP2, p. 160, Admiral G.B. Rodney to Henry, Lord Pembroke, 5 October 1781.
220 Reported in WSRO: PHA 8641, Lady Frances Burrell to George Wyndham, 22 December
1838.
Illegitimacy did limit inclusion within some gestures of kinship. Parental efforts to keep illegitimates secret and physically separate from legitimate family limited the formation of affective and instrumental bonds. For example, illegitimate baptisms rarely included family celebrations or the selection of godparents. Illegitimates were therefore excluded from these rituals of 'incorporation', designed to 'underline and extend bonds of friendship' and kinship.222 John Cannon bitterly contested his son's
paternity and made no mention of any celebration on his birth in 1711.223 In contrast,
when Cannon's legitimate son was born in 1716, the godparents were Cannon's father and his employer, cementing instrumental ties and following family tradition.224 James St Aubyn, himself the illegitimate son of a baronet, kept his four
children secret from most of his family until his youngest child was at least five.225
As a result, no St Aubyns attended the christenings of his daughters Anne and Elizabeth in 1811. The choice of godparents indicates some attempt to provide useful kin connections, echoing normative conventions; one was their maternal aunt Anne, who was connected by marriage to the aristocratic Halliday family.226 However, the
other godparents were their biological mother and father, plus James' intended wife and therefore his children's future stepmother. This selection of biological or step- parents was very unusual. It may have been a way of cementing unacknowledged parental ties through socially acceptable godparentage but limited the children's links to only the nuclear family. James saw his children as participating in his own affective familial ties. He 'nam[ed] my child Elizabeth... because Mrs Prideaux, my
222 Clodagh Tait, 'Spiritual Bonds, Social Bonds: Baptism and Godparenthood in Ireland, 1530-
1690', Cultural and Social History 2.3 (2005), pp. 302, 321-2; Will Coster, Baptism and Spiritual
Kinship in Early Modern England (Aldershot, 2002), pp. 9-10, 72-3. For a later example of the importance of godparents for male social and professional networks see Valerie Sanders, 'Godfathering: The Politics of Victorian Family Relations', in Lucy Delap, Ben Griffin and Abigail Wills (eds), The Politics of Domestic Authority in Britain since 1800 (London, 2009), pp. 243-60. Coster notes that illegitimate children may have been more likely to be given godparents as a means of providing them with additional parental figures, but that connection ceased from the seventeenth century onwards, pp. 41-2. I have found only one reference to a celebration or the selection of godparents, and none involving paternal kin. See chapter 4, p. 228.
223 Chronicles of John Cannon, pp. 103-4.
224 Ibid., pp. 10, 180, 134. Cannon's own godfather had been his paternal grandfather,
suggesting a family tradition. When his youngest son was born in 1725, the godparents were all paternal relatives.
225 It is unclear at what point all the family knew about the children. Their earliest contact
with only a select number of paternal aunts and uncles was 1818, and they met their grandmother in 1821, HHL: MssHM 80304, Diary of James St Aubyn, 1810-1819, pp. 268-9; MssHM 63181, Diary of James St Aubyn, 1819-1859, p. 71.
226 Coster states that godparents were frequently chosen from both kin and social superiors
father’s eldest sister was so named, and whose remembrance will ever be dear to me'. But their inclusion in instrumental networks was limited; Mrs Prideaux did not attend or stand as godmother.227 When Elizabeth died aged nine in 1818, only two
paternal relatives whom James had ‘acquainted with this secret part of my family
concerns’ attended her funeral. 228 Although families often took on caring
responsibilities for illegitimate infants, their arrival was not marked within the usual systems of public, ritual acknowledgement of kinship. Illegitimates therefore lacked automatic membership in kin groups from birth.
However, once illegitimates made contact with kin they could form normative instrumental and affective relationships, given the right circumstances. As the St Aubyn girls got older, their father began living full time with them and their mother, and slowly introduced them to his family.229 James was himself well integrated into
his paternal and maternal kin, partly because his father had always openly acknowledged his illegitimate children as the offspring of two long-term cohabiting relationships. His diary indicates that he socialised regularly with his legitimate paternal cousins, siblings, mother, father and stepmother. 230 He also participated in
reciprocal bonds of support, financial assistance and advice. In 1816 his brother-in- law Edmund Prideaux (who was also his paternal uncle's brother) loaned him £100, repaid when Edmund made James his children's guardian in his will three years later.231 In 1822, six months after his children met their paternal grandmother, James
threw her a birthday party, 'solely that [the girls] might be introduced to my brother & sister-in-law, & from a more particular family concern'. When their grandmother did not turn up, James considered it 'indelicate, unpolite, and unfeeling'.232 He
wanted to bring his daughters into an affective familial network and, significantly, seems to have expected this to be possible. Over time, the girls were accepted. In
227 HHL: MssHM 80304, Diary of James St Aubyn, 1810-1819, pp. 54-5. 228 Ibid., p. 268.
229 They move into a house together on 27 December 1822, HHL: MssHM 63181, Diary of
James St Aubyn, 1819-1859, p. 101.
230 In the year 1810 alone he stayed with his paternal legitimate cousins the Barrett-Lennards
five times and they visited him or met at another location a further five times. He stayed with his legitimate cousins the Molesworths twice and they visited him once, HHL: MssHM 80304, Diary of James St Aubyn, 1810-1819. For sociability with his father and stepmother see HHL: MssHM 80304, Diary of James St Aubyn, 1810-1819, pp. 36; 62, 63; HALS: 21M69/14/1, Emma St Aubyn to General Sir William Knollys, 23 May [1833].
231 HHL: MssHM 63181, Diary of James St Aubyn, 1819-1859, pp. 28, 226. 232 Ibid., pp. 84-5.
1826 their grandmother stayed with them for 'nearly four months', and in their twenties they went on long visits alone to a range of paternal and maternal kin.233
When Mary died in 1838 aged 25 the funeral was conducted by her cousin and 'attended by all our Relations and some few other friends'. Her aunt Emma considered that this level of attendance was 'very unusual' and that although James 'has done all he could do disuade [his paternal family] from it... they will go', indicating the affection and duty shown to James and his children.234 Once known
about, the girls were included in an extension of their father's kin links, which over time deepened into normative kin relationships in their own right.
What were the mechanisms that allowed integration to happen, despite multiple disadvantages of secrecy, physical distance and instrumental inequality? Within legitimate sibling groups, inequalities of age, gender and personality were theoretically overcome by the strength of the bonds of blood and affection, from which historians have generally excluded illegitimates. 235 Evidence suggests,
however, that discovery of a blood connection was sufficient entitlement to a minimum of kin support, primarily financial. Horace Walpole's younger illegitimate half-sister Catherine Daye was brought up by her mother in Chichester, separately from the other Walpoles. She was apparently unknown to the brothers until 1769,