1. The position of being elder or senior; seniority, precedence of birth, primogeniture.
1594. R. Parsons, Confer. Success., I. vi. 128. Primogenitura or eldership of birth … was greatly respected by God.
1667. Dryden, Ind. Emperor, I. ii. My claim to her by Eldership I prove.
1754. Richardson, Grandison, I. v. 19. Her sister addressed her always by the word Child, with an air of eldership.
1838. Arnold, Hist. Rome, I. 274. [By Roman law] all children … inherited their father’s estate in equal portions, without distinction of sex or eldership.
2. nonce-use. As a mock title of honor (after lordship): The personality of an elderly person.
1748. Richardson, Clarissa (1811), IV. 90. So irresistible to their elderships to be flattered.
3. The office or position of elder in a church.
1577. Harrison, England, II. v. (1877), I. 109. The office of eldership is equallie distributed betweene the bishop and the minister.
1655. Fuller, Ch. Hist., IX. vi. § 52. He was deposed from his Eldership.
4. The collective body of (ecclesiastical) elders; a body or court of elders, a presbytery.
1557. N. T. (Genev.), 1 Tim. iv. 14. That gyft … which was geuen thee by prophecie with the laying on of the handes, by the Eldership.
1634–46. Row, Hist. Kirk (1824), 66. They that tyrannize not over, but be subject to their particulare elderships.
1721. Wodrow, Corr. (1843), II. 568. Do you not lay in one scale the minister against the whole eldership in the other?
1828. E. Irving, Last Days, 151. As office-bearers in the church we are an unholy and an unworthy eldership.
1885. Edgar, Old Ch. Life Scotl., 189. All the courts of the Church might be called either Presbyteries or Elderships.
