on to produce
from the remaining plays, _seriatim_, such passages as in his judgment
do bear upon the question, and to remark upon them, thus isolated and
disconnected from each other. Mr. Rushton is more methodic and logical.
He does not merely quote or cite all the passages which he has noticed
in which legal terms occur, but brings together all such as contain the
same terms or refer to kindred proceedings or instruments; and he thus
presents his case with much more compactness and consequent strength
than results from Lord Campbell's loose and unmethodical mode of
treating the subject. We can arrive at the merits of the case on either
presentation only by an examination of some of the more important of the
passages cited.

Lord Campbell, as we have just seen, mentions "Henry VIII." as one of
the fourteen plays in which he has found nothing which relates to the
question in hand; but Mr. Rushton opens his batteries with the following
passage from the very play just named; and to most readers it will seem
a bomb of the largest dimensions, sent right into the citadel of his
opponents:--

"_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