Escheat was thus a peculiarly valuable right both to the Crown and to mesne lords. Its effect was simply this: one link in the feudal chain was struck out, and the links on either side were fitted together. If the defaulter was a Crown tenant, all his former sub-tenants, whether freeholders or villeins, moved up one rung in the feudal ladder and held henceforward directly of the king, who enjoyed the entire complexus of legal rights previously enjoyed by the defaulter in addition to those previously enjoyed by himself: rents, crops, timber, casual profits, and advowsons of churches falling vacant; jurisdictions and the profits of jurisdictions; services of villeins; reliefs, wardships, and marriages of freeholders as these became exigible. The Crown, however, while taking everything the defaulter might have taken before default, must take nothing more—so at least Magna Carta[91] provides. The rights and status of innocent sub-tenants must not be prejudiced by the misdeeds of their defaulting mesne lord. ----- Footnote 91: See _infra_, c. 43. ----- (_c_) _Wardships_ are described in the _Dialogus de Scaccario_ as “escheats along with the heir” (_escaeta cum herede_).[92] This expression does not occur elsewhere, but it would be impossible to find any description of wardship which throws more light on its nature and consequences. When the heir of a deceased tenant was unfitted to bear arms by reason of his tender years, the lands were practically, during his minority, without an effective owner. The lord accordingly treated them as temporarily escheated. During the interval of nonage, the lord entered into possession, drew the revenues, and applied them to his own purposes, subject only to the obligation of maintaining and training the heir in a manner suited to his station in life. Frequently, considerable sums were thus spent. The _Pipe Roll_ of the seventeenth year of Henry II. shows how out of a total revenue of £50 6s. 8d. from the Honour of “Belveeir,” £18 5s. had been expended on the children of the late tenant.[93] Wardship came to an end with the full age of the ward, that is, in the case of a military tenant, on the completion of his twenty-first year, “in that of a holder in socage on the completion of the fifteenth, and in the case of a burgess when the boy can count money, measure cloth, and so forth.”[94] Wardship of females normally ended at the age of fourteen, "because that a woman of such age may have a husband able to do knight’s service."[95] ----- Footnote 92: See Hughes’ edition, p. 133. Footnote 93: See _Dialogus_, p. 222 (citing _Pipe Roll_, p. 27). Footnote 94: