a closet or little room adjoining to a bed-chamber, serving to dispose and keep a person's apparel in; or for a servant to lodge in, to be at hand to wait, &c.

a prince's court, is an apartment wherein his robes, wearing apparel, and other necessaries, are preserved under the care and direction of proper officers.

In Britain, the Master or Keeper of the Great Wardrobe was an officer of great antiquity and dignity. High privileges and immunities were conferred on him by king Henry VI. which were confirmed by his successors; and king James I. not only enlarged them, but ordained that this office should be a corporation or body politic for ever.

It was the duty of this office to provide robes for the coronations, marriages, and funerals of the royal family; to furnish the court with hangings, cloths of state, carpets, beds, and other necessaries; to furnish houses for ambassadors at their first arrival; cloths of state, and other furniture, for the lord lieutenant of Ireland, and all his majesty's ambassadors abroad; to provide all robes for foreign knights of the garter, robes for the knights of the garter at home; robes and all other furniture for the officers of the garter; coats for kings, heralds, and pursuivants at arms; robes for the lords of the treasury, and chancellor of the exchequer, &c. livery for the lord chamberlain, grooms of his majesty's privy chamber, officers of his majesty's robes; for the two chief justices, for all the barons of the exchequer, and several officers of their courts; all livery for his majesty's servants, as yeoman of the guard, and wardens of the Tower, trumpeters, kettle-drummers, drummers, and fifes; the messengers, and all belonging to the stables, as coachmen, footmen, littermen, postilions, and grooms, &c. all the king's coaches, chariots, harnesses, saddles, bits, bridles, &c. the king's water-men, game-keepers, &c. also furniture for the royal yachts, and all rich embroidered tilts, and other furniture for the barges.

Besides the master or keeper of the wardrobe, who had a salary of L. 2000, there was his deputy, who had L. 150, and comptroller and a patent clerk, each of whom has a salary of L. 300. Besides many other inferior officers and servants, who were all sworn servants to the king.

There was likewise a removing wardrobe, who had its own set of officers, and standing wardrobe-keepers at St James's, Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, Kennington, and Somerset House; but the whole of the wardrobe establishment was abolished by act of Parliament in 1782, and the duty of it in future to be done by the lord chamberlain.

WARSHIP, in chivalry, one of the incidents of te- Upon the death of a tenant, if the heir was under the age of 21, being a male, or 14, being a female, the lord was intitled to the wardship of the heir, and was called the guardian in chivalry. This wardship consisted in having the custody of the body and lands of such heir, without any account of the profits, till the age of 21 in males, and 16 in females. For the law supposed the heir-male unable to perform knight-service till 21; but as for the female, she was supposed capable at 14 to marry, and then her husband might perform the service. The lord therefore had no wardship, if at the death of the ancestor the heir-male was of the full age of 21, or the heir-female of 14; yet if he was then under 14, and the lord once had her in ward, he might keep her till 16, by virtue of the statute of Westminster, i. 3 Edw. I. c. 22, the two additional years being given by the legislature for no other reason but merely to benefit the lord.

This wardship, so far as it related to land, though it was not nor could be part of the law of feuds, so long as they were arbitrary, temporary, or for life only; yet when they became hereditary, and did consequently often descend upon infants, who by reason of their age could neither perform nor stipulate for the services of the feud, does not seem upon feudal principles to have been unreasonable. For the wardship of the land, or custody of the feud, was retained by the lord, that he might out of the profits thereof provide a fit person to supply the infant's services till he should be of age to perform them himself. And if we consider a feud in its original import, as a stipend, fee, or reward for actual service, it could not be thought hard that the lord should withhold the stipend so long as the service was suspended.

Though undoubtedly to our English ancestors, where such stipendary donation was a mere supposition or figment, it carried abundance of hardship; and accordingly it was relieved by the charter of Henry I. which took this custody from the lord, and ordained that the custody, both of the land and the children, should belong to the widow or next of kin. But this noble immunity did not continue many years.

The wardship of the body was a consequence of the wardship of the land; for he who enjoyed the infant's estate was the properest person to educate and maintain him in his infancy; and also in a political view, the lord was most concerned to give his tenant a suitable education, in order to qualify him the better to perform those services which in his maturity he was bound to render.

When the male heir arrived to the age of 21, or the heir-female to that of 16, they might sue out their livery or ousteremain; that is, the delivery of their lands out of their guardian's hands. For this they were obliged to pay a fine, namely, half-a-year's profits of the land; though this seems expressly contrary to magna charta. However, in consideration of their lands having been so long in ward, they were excused all reliefs, and the king's tenants also all primer seisin. In order to ascertain the profits that arose to the crown by these fruits of tenure, and to grant the heir his livery, the itinerant justices, or justices in eyre, had it formerly in charge to make inquisition concerning them by a jury of the county, commonly called an inquisitio post mortem; which was instituted to inquire (at the death of any man of fortune) the value of his estate, the tenure by which it was holden, and who, and of what age, his heir was; thereby to ascertain the relief and value of the primer seisin, or the wardship and livery accruing to the king thereupon. A manner of proceeding that came in process of time to be greatly abused, and at length an intolerable grievance; it being one of the principal accusations against Empson and Dudley, the wicked engines of Henry VII. that by colour of false inquiries they compelled many persons to sue out livery from the crown, who by no means were tenants thereunto. And afterwards a court of wards and liveries was erected, for conducting the same inquiries in a more solemn and legal manner.

When the heir thus came of full age, provided he held a knight's fee, he was to receive the order of knighthood, and was compelled to take it upon him, or else pay a fine to the king. For in those heretical times no person was qualified for deeds of arms and chivalry who had not received this order, which was conferred with much preparation and solemnity. We may plainly discover the footsteps of a similar custom in what Tacitus relates of the Germans, who, in order to qualify their young men to bear arms, presented them in a full assembly with a shield and lance; which ceremony is supposed to have been the original of the feudal knighthood. This prerogative, of compelling the vassals to be knighted, or to pay a fine, was expressly recognised in parliament by the statute de militibus, i. Edw. II.; was exerted as an expedient for raising money by many of our best princes, particularly by Edw. VI. and Q. Elizabeth; but this was the occasion of heavy murmurs when exerted by Charles I.: among whom many misfortunes it was, that neither himself nor his people seemed able to distinguish between the arbitrary stretch and the legal exercise of prerogative. However, among the other conceivings made by that unhappy prince before the fatal recourse to arms, he agreed to divest himself of this undoubted flower of the crown; and it was accordingly abolished by statute 16 Car. I. c. 40.