[f. JUSTICE sb. + -SHIP.] The office or dignity of a justice or judge; the functions of a justice, or their discharge. Similarly Chief Justiceship.
1542–3. Act 34 & 35 Hen. VIII., c. 26 § 13. Any office of Stewardeshipps Chamberlaineshipps Chancellourshipps or Iusticeshipps.
a. 1645. Habington, Surv. Worc., in Worc. Hist. Soc. Proc., III. 428. His offyce of Cheyfe-Justiceshyp of the Marches of Wales.
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, VII. ix. Desiring her brother to execute justiceship (for it was indeed a syllable more than justice) on the wench.
1793. G. Read, in Life & Corr. (1870), 547. I have at length determined to accept of the chief justiceship of the supreme court [of Delaware].
1897. Westm. Gaz., 30 Sept., 8/1. The doyen of English judges… who retired from a Justiceship of the Queen’s Bench in 1890.
b. With poss. adj. as a title for a justice.
1692. Vindication, 12. Can any one … believe that His Justiceship … was never so imposed on?
1736. Lediard, Life Marlborough, I. 58. His exquisite Justice-ship employ’d … the whole Wisdom of the Nation, to undo his vile Undoings.
