protectorship

protector +‎ -ship

protectorship (plural protectorships)

1. The office of a protector or regent; protectorate.
   • c.1754–61, David Hume, The History of England: From the invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688, 1823, Volume 1, page 409,

     Henry, being so far recovered from his distemper as to carry the appearance of exercising the royal power; they moved him to resume his authority [1455], to annul the protectorship of the duke, to release Somerset from the Tower,²³ and to commit the administration into the hands of that nobleman.

   • 1974, William E. Wilkie, The Cardinal Protectors of England: Rome and the Tudors Before the Reformation, page 73,

     The one Irish provision which would have thrown the most light on Piccolomini's role would have been that to Tuam, the only one of the four metropolitan sees to fall vacant during Piccolomini's protectorship.

   • 2008, Paul Murray Kendall, Richard the Third, 2013, unnumbered page,

     Yet though Richard was moving quickly on a wide front of action in these first days of his protectorship, his measures reveal almost nothing about the political complexion of the council, about what was going om in the minds of the councilors who on May 5 had rushed with such happy unanimity to harness themselves to the chariot of the protectorship.

• protectorship in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam, 1913.