Protection

Besides its vernacular meaning of shelter from injury, a protection is used in law in the special sense of a certificate or writing showing a personal immunity. Thus it sometimes means a writ which the king, in virtue of his prerogative, might grant to a person named to be free from suits at law for a certain time, and for some reasonable cause: and these protections might issue for him who was going beyond sea in the king's service; or for him ■who was already abroad in the king's service, as an ambassador, &o.; or for the king's debtor, that he should not be sued till the king's debt should be satisfied. A protection might also be granted to a spiritual corporation, that their goods or chattels be not taken by the officer of the king for the king's service. Jacob. Brown says that this prerogative, however, is seldom exercised. It was formerly the subject of much abuse, whence the frequent complaints regarding it in the early constitutional period. While impressment of seamen to serve in the English navy was common, a certificate issued to a mariner to show that he was exempt from the press was called a protection.

Protection order

This is a species of order grantable by the divorce court, or by a magistrate; under the divorce act of 1857, to a wife whose husband has protection order entitled her, during the continuance of such order, to enjoy her own property, and to bring actions as if unmarried. The occasions for such an order are much fewer since the passing of the married women's property act, 1870 (33 & 34 Vict. ch. 93), as that declares that the wages and earnings of a wife, and any money or property acquired by her through the exercise of any literary, scientific, or artistic skill, shall be deemed her separate property.

2 Steph. Com. 267.

PROTECTOR OF SETTLE-