Talk:St Helen's Church, Abingdon

William Lee
When I saw the comment in "Three men in a boat" about Lee having had 197 people "issue from his loins", I was puzzled how one man could possibly have fathered that many children, since he was presumably Christian and married to only one woman at a time - and she could never have given birth anywhere near that often, even if she was constantly pregnant and produced quintuplets at every "sitting" (in which case she'd never have survived for long enough, especially given life expectancy and standards of hygiene at the time). And if he'd been prolifically unfaithful and sired offspring the length and breadth of the county, it would have caused such a public scandal that he'd never have been elected mayor even once, let alone five times. Only now do I realise that "issue from his loins" included not just his own children but also their descendants, which is surely stretching a point - most of them "issued" from someone else's "loins".84.243.236.9 (talk) 14:00, 13 June 2019 (UTC)