“Suff.  Lord Cardinal, the king’s further pleasure is,—­ Because all those things you have done of late By your power legatine within this kingdom Fall into compass of a premunire,—­ That therefore such a writ be sued against you, To forfeit, all your goods, lands, tenements, Chattels, and whatsoever, and to be Out of the king’s protection:—­this is my charge.”

King Henry VIII.  Act iii.  Sc. 2.

We shall first remark, that, in spite of his declaration as to “Henry VIII.,” Lord Campbell does cite and quote this very passage (p. 42); and, indeed, he must have been as unappreciative as he seems to have been inaccurate, had he failed to do so; for, upon its face, it is, with one or two exceptions, the most important passage of the kind to be found in Shakespeare’s works. Premunire is thus defined in an old law-book which was accessible to Shakespeare:—­

“Premunire is a writ, and it lieth where any man sueth any other in the spirituall court for anything that is determinable in the King’s Court, and that is ordeined by certaine statutes, and great punishment therefore ordeined, as it appeareth by the same statutes, viz., that he shall be out of the King’s protection, and that he be put in prison without baile or mainprise till that he have made fine at the King’s will, and that his landes and goods shal be forfait, if he come not within ij. moneths.”—­Termes de la Ley, 1595, fol. 144.

The object of the writ was to prevent the abuse of spiritual power.  Now, here is a law-term quite out of the common, which is used by Shakespeare with a well-deployed knowledge of the power of the writ of which it is the name.  Must we, therefore, suppose that Shakespeare had obtained his knowledge of the purpose and the power of this writ in the course of professional reading or practice?  If we looked no farther than Shakespeare’s page, such a supposition might seem to be warranted.  But if we turn to Michael Drayton’s “Legend of Great Cromwell,” first published, we believe, in 1607, but certainly some years before “Henry VIII.” was written, and the subject of which figures in that play, we find these lines,—­

  “This Me to urge the Premunire wonne,
  Ordain’d in matters dangerous and hie;
  In t’ which the heedlesse Prelacie were runne
  That back into the Papacie did fie.”

Ed. 1619, p. 382.

Here is the very phrase in question, used with a knowledge of its meaning and of the functions of the writ hardly less remarkable than that evinced in the passage from “Henry VIII.,” though expressed in a different manner, owing chiefly to the fact that Drayton wrote a didactic poem and Shakespeare a drama.  But Drayton is not known to have been an attorney’s clerk, nor has he been suspected, from his writings, or any other cause, to have had any knowledge of the law.  Both he and Shakespeare, however, read the Chronicles.  Reading men perused Hall’s