To remove which, I shall endeavour to prove, that it is possible, and has been frequently known, that children have been born at seven months.  Paul, the Counsel, has this passage in the 19th Book of Pleadings, viz.:  “It is now a received truth, that a perfect child may be born in the seventh month, by the authority of the learned Hippocrates; and therefore, we must believe that a child born at the end of the seventh month in lawful matrimony may be lawfully begotten.”

Galen is of opinion that there is no certain time set for the bearing of children; and that from Pliny’s authority, who makes mention of a woman that went thirteen months with child; but as to what concerns the seventh month, a learned author says, “I know several married people in Holland that had twins born in the seventh month, who lived to old age, having lusty bodies and lively minds.  Wherefore their opinion is absurd, who assert that a child at seven months cannot be perfect and long lived; and that it cannot in all parts be perfect until the ninth month.”  Thereupon the author proceeds to tell a passage from his own knowledge, viz.:  “Of late there happened a great disturbance among us, which ended not without bloodshed; and was occasioned by a virgin, whose chastity had been violated, descending from a noble family of unspotted fame.  Several charged the fact upon the Judge, who was president of a city in Flanders, who firmly denied it, saying he was ready to take his oath that he never had any carnal copulation with her, and that he would not father that, which was none of his; and farther argued, that he verily believed it was a child born in seven months, himself being many miles distant from the mother of it when it was conceived.  Upon which the judges decreed that the child should be viewed by able physicians and experienced women, and that they should make their report.  They having made diligent inquiry, all of them with one mind, concluded the child, without discussing who was the father, was born within the space of seven months, and that it was carried in the mother’s womb but twenty-seven weeks and some odd days; but if she should have gone full nine months, the child’s parts and limbs would have been more firm and strong, and the structure of the body more compact; for the skin was very loose, and the breast bone that defends the heart, and the gristles that lay over the stomach, lay higher than naturally they should be, not plain, but crooked and sharp, rigid or pointed, like those of a young chicken hatched in the beginning of spring.  And being a female, it wanted nails upon the joints of the fingers; upon which, from the masculous cartilaginous matter of the skin, nails that are very smooth do come, and by degrees harden; she had, instead of nails, a thin skin or film.  As for her toes, there were no signs of nails upon them, wanting the heat which was expanded to the fingers from the nearness of the heart.  All this was considered, and above all, one gentlewoman