"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 and Holinshed's huge black-letter folios in Queen Elizabeth's time with as much interest as they do Macaulay's or Prescott's elegant octavos in the reign of her successor, Victoria. Shakespeare drew again and again upon the former for the material of his historical plays; and in writing "Henry VIII.," he adopted often the very language of the Chronicler. The well-known description of Wolsey, which he puts into the mouth of Queen Katherine,-- "He was a man Of an unbounded stomach, ever ranking Himself with princes; one that by suggestion Tith'd all the kingdom: Simony was fair play: His own opinion was his law: I' the presence He would say untruths; and be ever double, Both in his words and meaning; He was never, But where he meant to ruin, pitiful: His promises were, as he then was, mighty; But his performance, as he is now, nothing: Of his own body he was ill, and gave The clergy ill example,"--