right of man, that the most ancient legal doctrine both of Rome and of England was that a will was an exceptional act, which needed the confirmation of the sovereign power. If such a doctrine had anyhow come to the knowledge of Flambard, it would assuredly seem to him a natural inference that no such confirmation should be granted save at such a price as the king might see fit to demand.
Wardship.
Its logical character.
Its oppressive working.
But of all the devices of Flambard, there was one which,
it would seem, was specially his own, one which was at
once the most oppressive of all and that which followed
most logically from the nature of feudal tenure. This
was the lord's right of wardship. This claim starts from
the undoubted doctrine that the fief is after all only a
conditional possession of its holder, that he holds it only
on the terms of discharging the military service which is
due from it. Nothing was easier than to argue that, when
the fief passed to an heir who was from his youth incapable
of discharging that service, the fief should go back into
the lord's hands till the heir had reached the time of life
when he could discharge it. The abuses and oppressions
which such a right led to need hardly be dwelled on; they
are written in every page of our legal history from the
days of Rufus to the days of Charles the First. Nothing
now enriches an estate like a long minority; in those
times the heir, when at last he came into possession,
found his estate impoverished in every way by the temporary
occupation of the king or of the king's favourite
to whom the wardship had been granted or sold. Yet it
cannot be denied that the argument by which the right
of wardship was established was, as a piece of legal
argument, quite unanswerable. And of all the feudal
exactions certainly none was more profitable. The
tenant-in-chief who died, perhaps fighting in the king's
cause, and who left an infant son behind him, had the
