Did Ralph Vaughan Williams have children?

Answer 1

He possibly did; in a recent documentary revealing his secret love affair to Ursula Wood years before they married after the death of his first wife, it emerged that she had become pregnant around that time and decided to have an abortion. According to Professor Byron Adams, "She very much wanted to believe that the child was Vaughan William's, but we don't know who's child it was".

Answer 2

There is a vague claim that Sir William Davenant was Shakespeare's illegitimate son, but that is the only rumour of that kind about Shakespeare.

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William Davenant (born 1606) may have claimed to be Shakespeare's illegitimate son.

Davenant's parents (or, if the claim is true, his mother and her husband) kept the Crown Inn in Oxford, where his father (or "father") was mayor. Shakespeare used to stay there on his journeys between his marital home in Stratford on Avon and his work in London. It's thought that Shakespeare was William Davenant's godfather, which suggests he was a family friend.

Davenant became poet laureate in 1638. He also wrote plays, and adapted some of Shakespeare's plays for current tastes. The comment attributed to him "that he wrote in the same spirit as Shakespeare and was content enough to be called his son" may simply mean that he considered himself a poetic successor to Shakespeare (rather than his actual son), instead of a member of the "tribe of Ben" - the followers of Ben Jonson.

Answer 3

He was married twice; neither marriage yielded children.