nonage

noun

1. The state of being under legal age; minority, the fact of being a minor.

   “His vvarlike vvife Simeramis, her huſband being dead, / And ſonne in nonage, faining him ſhe ruled in his ſtéede: / Delating in a males attire the Empire nevve begonne: / The vvhich, his yeares admitting it, ſhe yealded to her ſonne.”

   “In him there is a hope of government, / That in his nonage council under him, / And in his full and ripen'd years himself, / No doubt, shall then and till then govern well.”

   “c. 1608, John Donne, A Litany, stanza VI, "The Angels" in The Poems of John Donne, edited by Edmund Kerchever Chambers, London: Lawrence & Bullen, 1896, http://www.bartleby.com/357/111.html And since this life our nonage is, / And we in wardship to Thine angels be, / Native in heaven's fair palaces / Where we shall be but denizen'd by Thee;”

   “The other he used to recreate himself with, after he had been solemnly Contracted to his intended Spouse who was in her Nonage, and kept her till his Wife was ripe for Consummation.”

   “Romancers, from Time's nonage, have invented and have manipulated a host of staple severances for their puppet lovers […]”

2. (obsolete, rare)A payment formerly made to the parish clergy upon the death of a parishioner, consisting of a ninth of the movable goods.