[f. as prec. + -SHIP.]
1. The office of a collector.
1553. Act 7 Edw. VI., c. 4 § 2. Their said Office of Collectorship of the said Tenths.
1679. Wood, Life (1848), 213. This Lent the collectors ceased from entertaining the bachelors … so that now they got by their collectorships, whereas before they spent about 100l. besides their gains.
1701. Answ. to Patrick Hurly’s Vind., 10. He was recommended to the Collectorship of the County of Clare.
1857. Toulmin Smith, Parish, 180. The Poor Law Board … attempted … to take the collectorship out of the hands of those whom the collection alone concerned.
1873. Lowell, Among my Bks., Ser. II. 232. The Collectorship at Whitehaven was … offered to Wordsworth.
1884. Manch. Exam., 17 Nov., 5/3. The contest for a rate collectorship at Ashton.
2. In India; = COLLECTORATE.
1789. Colebrooke, in Life (1873), 35. Some of the districts of this collectorship.
1793. Sir W. Jones, in Asiat. Res. (1799), IV. 9. In one collectorship … there have lately been found … a million and three hundred thousand native inhabitants.
1800. Wellington, in Owen, Disp., 656. In regulating any of the collectorships in Bengal.
3. The practice of a professed collector of curiosities, etc.
1870. Athenæum, 15 Oct., 498. The growing spirit of collectorship in the United States.
1883. Dowden, in Academy, 24 Nov., 342/1. Contributions of real importance to the study Goethe have been made by the spirit of collectorship aided by scientific criticism.
