[f. WARDER sb.1]
1. The office or position of warder.
1827. Buffalo Emporium & General Advertiser, 20 Aug., 3/6. The swains and their belles manage to get linked together ‘for better for worse’ through the intervention of a priest, and, occasionally without the leave or license of ‘the Lords of the Manor,’ who chance to hold in a sort of wardership the ‘stronger vessels.’
1867. De Ros, Memor. Tower Lond., 301. The Duke [of Wellington] at once stopped the purchase of Warderships.
2. The carrying out of the duties of a warder.
1897. Edin. Rev., Jan., 16. To an active and energetic soldier the wardership of these [Trans-Indus] marches offered a tempting field for military distinction.
1907. ‘John Oxenham,’ Carette of Sark, xxv. 238. There was no sound or sign of wardership.
