ABSTRACT
From the opinions of contemporaries, and the material which the people have surveyed elsewhere, there would be no difficulty in building up an impressive indictment of the whole wardship system as operated by the government of Elizabeth I. With growing national ambitions and mounting responsibilities—for war, diplomacy, domestic administration—the government became increasingly unable to live ‘of its own’, that is, of the traditional income of a great landowner and a medieval king. The administrative resources of the Elizabethan government, like its financial ones, were extremely limited; but its political aims and responsibilities outstripped them both. In a short space of time, Robert Cecil turned upside down the established doctrine upon which the Court of Wards had been operating during the sixty-years since its erection. One day, after revolution and civil war, the chance of government reform would come again.
