Bastard, obsolete term for the illegal cohabitation fathered children, sometimes for a child whose mother was of a lower position than his father. In the early Middle Ages was not the name bastard something dishonorable. William the Conqueror and Jean de Dunois, "the Bastard of Orleans," went public this name.
In the Franks shared bastards are up to and including inheritance with the legitimate descendants. The later medieval laws, however, was very strict against the bastard engines. These were, at least in France and Germany, the king's serf, did not inherit one's mother, was not right to testamentary disposition appoint over his possessions, which accrued to the country gentleman, and was excluded from all offices and bourgeois professions. In France, however, was the exception of the noble bastards. They had inherited a share of the estate, even if legitimate children existed, and was entitled to operate his father's arms, but with the addition of a star or an oblique Bjelke