restrictive conditions. By what steps we have arrived at our present, on the whole, satisfactory if incomplete, legislation for the protection of the property of the insane, is an inquiry by no means unprofitable and uninteresting, and I propose in a short chapter to trace them rapidly, with a brief reference to successive Acts of Parliament.[213] It is needful to premise that Blackstone's definition of an idiot was "that he is one who hath had no understanding from his nativity, and therefore is by law presumed never likely to attain any." "He is not an idiot if he hath any glimmering of reason, so that he can tell his parents, his age, or the like common matters." From such a condition the law clearly distinguished the lunatic, or _non compos mentis_, who is "one who hath had understanding, but by disease, grief, or other accident hath lost the use of his reason." The lunatic was assumed to have lucid intervals, these depending frequently, it was supposed, upon the change of the moon. Others who became insane--or, as it was expressed, "under frenzies"--were also comprised under the term _non compos mentis_. The law varied in accordance with these distinctions, the charge of the lunatic being intrusted to the king, and the custody of the idiot and his lands vested in the feudal lord, though eventually, in consequence of flagrant abuses, it was transferred to the Crown in the reign of Edward I. by an Act now lost, which was confirmed by Edward II., 1324. This marks the earliest Act extant (17 Edward II., c. 9) passed for the benefit of mentally affected persons. The words run:--"The king shall have the custody of the lands of natural fools, taking the profits of them without waste or destruction, and shall find them their necessaries, of whose fee soever the lands be holden. And after the death of such idiots he shall render them to the right heirs; so that by such idiots no alienation shall be made, nor shall their heirs be disinherited."[214] The same Act legislates for lunatics--those who before time had had their wit and memory. "The king shall provide, when any happen to fail of his wit, as there are many having lucid intervals, that their lands and tenements shall be safely kept without waste and destruction, and that they and their household shall live and be maintained completely from the issues of the same; and the residue beyond their reasonable sustentation shall be kept to their use, to be delivered unto them when they recover their right mind; so that such lands and tenements shall in no wise within the time aforesaid be aliened; nor shall the king take anything to his own use. And if the party die in such estate, then the residue shall be distributed for his soul by the advice of the ordinary."[215]