"_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:-- "If Cupid Shoot arrows of that weight, I'll swear devoutly H'as _sued his livery_ and is no more a boy." FLETCHER'S _Woman's Prize_, Act ii. Sc. 1. And this, from the works of a divine:-- "Our little Cupid hath _sued livery_ And is no more in his minority." DONNE'S Eclogues, 1613. Spenser, too, uses the phrase figuratively in another sense, in the following passage,--which may be one of those which Chalmers had in his eye, when, according to Lord Campbell, he "first suggested" that Shakespeare was once an attorney's clerk:--