“York.  Is not Gaunt dead? and doth not
Hereford live?

* * * * *

Take Hereford’s rights away, and take from time His charters and his customary rights; Let not to-morrow, then, ensue to-day:  Be not thyself; for how art thou a king, But by fair sequence and succession?  Now, afore God, (God forbid I say true!) If you do wrongfully seize Hereford’s rights, Call in the letters patents that he hath By his attorneys-general to sue His livery, and deny his offer’d homage, You pluck a thousand dangers on your head.”  Act ii.  Sc.  I.

“Bol.  I am denied to sue my livery here, And yet my letters patents give me leave:  My father’s goods are all distrain’d and sold; And these, and all, are all amiss employed.  What would you have me do?  I am a subject, And challenge law:  Attorneys are denied me; And therefore personally I lay my claim To my inheritance of free descent.”—­Ib.  Sc. 3.

And Lord Campbell, although he passes by these passages in “Richard II.,” quotes, as important, from a speech of Hotspur’s in the “First Part of Henry IV.,” the following lines, which, it will be seen, refer to the same act of oppression on the part of Richard II. towards Bolingbroke:—­

  “He came but to be Duke of Lancaster,
  To sue his livery and beg his bread.” 
  Act iv.  Sc. 3.

But, here again, Shakespeare, although he may have known more law than Holinshed, or even Hall, who was a barrister, only used the law-terms that he found in the paragraph which furnished him with the incident that he dramatized.  For, after recording the death of Gaunt, the Chronicle goes on:—­

“The death of this duke gave occasion of increasing more hatred in the people of this realme toward the king; for he seized into his hands all the rents and reuenues of his lands which ought to have descended vnto the duke of Hereford by lawfull inheritance, in reuoking his letters patents which he had granted to him before, by virtue whereof he might make his attorneis generall to sue liverie for him of any manner of inheritances or possessions that might from thencefoorth fall unto him, and that his homage might be respited with making reasonable fine,” etc.—­HOLINSHED, Ed. 1587, p. 496.

The only legal phrase, however, in these passages of “Richard II,” which seems to imply very extraordinary legal knowledge, is the one repeated in “Henry IV.,”—­“sue his livery,”—­which was the term applied to the process by which, in the old feudal tenures, wards, whether of the king or other guardian, on arriving at legal age, could compel a delivery of their estates to them from their guardians.  But hence it became a metaphorical expression to mean merely the attainment of majority, and in this sense seems to have been very generally understood and not uncommonly used.  See the following from an author who was no attorney or attorney’s clerk:—­