ABSTRACT
The formal documents record their age, their possessions, their parentage and their guardians; but about their experiences, their emotions, their lives at home, or at school and university, manuscripts maintain a dispassionate silence. Payment of the exhibition money might be made either by the feodary locally, who in effect deducted the money from the rent paid him by the guardian, if he were in occupation of the ward’s lands; or where the sums were large, payment might be by the Receiver-General of the Court of Wards in London. The discreet gentleman, the sober gentlewomen, the twelve servants, the convenient and easy journeys, all these are not neglected; but neither are the evidence and the writings which the crown officers will minutely examine, once they can get their hands upon them.
