198 QUESTION OF GUARDIANSHIP. [Vili. Alice, who with the aid of the child's great uncles, the lords Philip and John of Ibelin, was guardian, seems to have avoided too close alliance with the new troops of Crusaders. Cyprus was, however, a regular station for the pilgrim fleets, and as regularly an object" of attack whenever the Sultans saw an opportunity of unresisted devastation. The little interest of the history runs rapidly on to the Crusade of the Emperor Frederick II, which brought about many other critical conjunctures in the history of Christendom. This particular portion of the history is of no small legal as well as historical interest. The kings of Jerusalem being men of action, practising little self-restraint and never taking care of themselves, generally died young, and left the fate of their kingdom in suspense on the life of their young children. Hence constant minorities, and the need of provisions for guardianship, a need which, as yet, had scarcely begun to be felt in the kingdoms of Europe. The practice therefore of the kingdom of Jerusalem in the matter of regency became a stock of legal cases, which, if not cited as occasion arose in corresponding circumstances in the West, afford to us at least a number of parallels. The earlier practice had been to give the wardship of the person of the heir to the nearest relation incapable of inheriting; that of the kingdom to the presumptive heir1. But the rule laid down in the Assizes, which is really perhaps a generalisation from the earlier cases rather than a deliberate constitution, was that the mother of the heir should be his guardian ; in case of her death, the next relation on the side on which the kingdom moved, that is, the heirpresumptive ; in case no such person could be found, it was 1 Assizes, i. 261. If a vassal die the custody of the ward is not to be in the heir, but in the nearest kinsman on the side on which the fief cannot fall. Cf. Glanville, vii. c. 11 ; Etablissemens, i. c. 117. If he is a sovereign or suzerain, his men shall have care of his body and fortresses, the heir to guard the heritage (i. 435). See Itinerar. R. R. p. xcvii.