from Robertson's The Baconian Heresy

Mr. Grant White's Case – Part 3

[110] In Massinger the usage abounds:

Style not that courtship, madam, which is only
Purchased on your part.
A New Way to Pay Old Debts, i, 2.

By that fair name I in the wars have purchased.
Id. iii, 1.

Purchased with his blood that did oppose me.
Id. iii, 2.

Honour
By virtuous ways achieved, and bravely purchased.
Id. iv, 1.

I can do twenty [tricks] neater, if you please,
To purchase and grow rich.
Id. v, near end.

the knowledge of
A future sorrow, which, if I find out,
My present ignorance were a cheap purchase.
The Picture, i, 1.

this bubble honour . . .
With the loss of limbs or life is, in my judgment,
Too dear a purchase.
Id. i, 2.

There are other toys about you the same way purchased [= received in gift].
Id. iii, 6.

I would not lose this purchase [= gain].
The City Madam, v, 1.

This felicity, not gained
By vows to saints above, and much less purchased
By thriving industry.
Id. ib. v, 3.

I shall break
If at this rate [by marriage] I purchase you.
Id. The Guardian, i, 1.

Here purchase the reward that was propounded.
Id. The Virgin Martyr, v, near end.

The danger in the purchase of the prey.
Id. The Unnatural Combat, ii, 1.

You have purchased
This honour at a high price [moral].
Id. ib.

My scrip, my tar-box, hook, and coat, will prove
But a thin purchase [= booty].
Id. The Bashful Lover, iii, 1. [111]

I would purchase
My husband by such benefits.
Id. ib. iii, 2, near end.

I will practise
All arts for your deliverance, and that purchased . . .
Id. The Bondman, v, 2.

And it is frequent in Chapman:

Borrowing
With thee is purchase.
Byron’s Conspiracy, i, 1.

My purchased honours.
The Admiral of France, ii, 2.

Consume
All he hath purchased.
All Fools, i, 1.

While we abroad fight for new Kingdoms’ purchase.
Revenge for Honour, ii, 1.

So much I prize the sweetness
Of that unvalued purchase.
Id. iv, 1.

Then your purchase holds,
The Ball, ii, 2.

And it is frequent in Chapman: We have it in the anonymous play Nero [1624]:

That heady and adventurous crew
That go to lose their own to purchase but
The breath of others and the common voice. i, 3;

and in Henry Porter’s Two Angry Women of Abington:

What shall I do purchase company? (v, i)

It seems unnecessary to carry the comparison further. The primary and quasi-"legal" sense of "purchase," so far from being peculiar to Shakespeare, is far more common than the other in the dramas of other writers in his and the next generation. And so absolutely normal was this use of the word that it enters into the old rhymed version of the Psalms, authorised for use in the churches in 1645:

The swallow also for herself
Hath purchased a nest. Ps. lxxxiv, 3.* [112]

When therefore we find the word used by Bacon (Essay of Honour and Reputation) we are not reading a legalism imposed on belles lettres by a lawyer, but a current English word used in its current meaning.** So widely was that meaning established that we find it as late as 1727 in a preface of Bishop Warburton’s:

For now the Invention of Printing hath made it [the usage of dedications] a Purchase for the Vulgar.
A Critical and Philosophical Enquiry into the Causes of Prodigies and Miracles,
1727, ded. p. vii.

For the rest, Mr. Grant White’s general case is obviously as void as that of Lord Campbell. To say no more of his divagation over the term "purchase," it is astonishing that such a scholar, who must have had a general acquaintance with the Elizabethan and Stuart drama, should find evidence of special and technical knowledge of conveyancing in the bare use of such terms and phrases "fine and recovery," "indenture," "tenure," "double voucher," "fee simple," "remainder," "reversion," and "forfeiture." A perusal of two plays of Massinger’s might have led the critic to cancel his whole thesis. In A New Way To Pay Old Debts we have, in addition to the passages already cited, this swarm of legal terms:

On forfeiture of their licences.

Makes forfeiture of his breakfast.

On the forfeit of your favour.

Sue in forma Pauperis.

Put it to arbitrament.

Come upon you for security.

By mortgage or by statute.

You had it in trust, which if you do discharge,

Surrendering the possession, you shall ease

Yourself and me of chargeable suits in law. [113]

If thou canst forswear

Thy hand and seal, and make a forfeit of

Thy ears to the pillory.

Indented, I confess, and labels, too,

But neither wax nor words!

There is a statute for you.

I know thou art

A public notary, and such stand in law
For a dozen witnesses: the deed being drawn too . . . and delivered
When thou wert present, will make good my title.
Your suit is granted

And you loved for the motion.

In The City Madam, by the same playwright, we have these:

I can make my wife a jointure of such lands too

As are not encumbered: no annuity

Or statute lying on them.

His bond three times since forfeited.

Ten thousand pounds apiece I’ll make their portions,

And after my decease it shall be double.

Provided you assure them, for their jointures,

Eight hundred pounds per annum, and entail

A thousand more upon the heirs male

Begotten on their bodies.

The forfeiture of a bond.

His whole estate

In lands and leases, debts and present monies,

With all the movables he stood possess’d of.

Cancel all the forfeited bonds I sealed to.

I will likewise take

The extremity of your mortgage, and the forfeit

Of your several bonds: the use and principal

Shall not serve.

From almost no play of Shakespeare can there be cited so many "legalisms" as occur in either of these two of Massinger. But Massinger is not singular. We have already noted dozens of legalisms in Jonson, Dekker, Reywood, and Chapman. [114]

In Lily’s Mother Bombie alone I find some thirty "legal" allusions:

A good evidence to prove the fee simple of your daughter’s folly.
I convey a contract.
Impannelled in a jury.
Carrying the quest to consult.
A deed of gift.
Witnesses to their contract.
Let us join issue with them.
He arrests you at my suit for a horse.
Sergeant, wreak thine office on him.
Nay, let him be bailed.
I’ll enter into a statute marchant to see it answered. But if thou wilt have bonds, then shalt have a bushelful.
Thou bound in a statute marchant? A brown thread will bind thee fast enough. But if you will be content all four jointly to enter into a bond, I will withdraw the action.
A scrivener’s shop hangs to a sergeant’s mace like a bur to a frieze coat.
You must take a note of a bond.
The scrivener cannot keep his pen out of the pot: every goblet is an ink-horn.
I, such as they cry at the ‘sizes, a work in issues.
Where did I consent? When? What witness?
Our good wills being asked, which needed not, we gave them, which booted not.
Wast thou privy to this practice?
Thou shalt be punished as principal.
Let the conveyance run as we agreed.
You convey cleanly indeed, if cozenage be clean dealing.
You shall presently be contracted.
Upon submission escape the punishment.
Thy fact is pardoned, though the law would see it punished.
I was content to take a bond jointly of them all. [115]
Sealed me an obligation, nothing to the purpose.
By this bond you can demand nothing.
I have his acquittance: let him sue his bond
With such a noverint as Cheapside can show none such.

Every one of these phrases would have been certified by Lord Campbell and Senator Davis as a proof of legal knowledge had they found it in Shakespeare, and in no Shakespearean play can they find half as many. Was Lily then a lawyer? If Shakespeare’s plays exhibit a professional knowledge of conveyancing, what inference, once more, are we to draw from this series of conveyancer’s phrases in a single play of Ben Jonson’s?

The thing is for recovery of drown’d land

Whereof the crown’s to have a moiety

If it be owner; else the crown and owners

To share that moiety, and the recoverers

To enjoy the t’other moiety for their charge.

     The Devil is an Ass, ii, 1.

He keeps more stir

For that same petty sum, than for your bond

Of six, and statute of eight hundred.

     Id. ii, 3.

Then we grant out our process, which is diverse

Either by chartel, Sir, or ore tenus.

     Id. iii, 1.

Have your deed drawn presently,

And leave a blank to put in your feoffees

One, two, or more, as you see cause.

     Id. iii, 2.

Get the feoffment drawn, with a letter of attorney

For livery and seisin.

     Id. iv, 2.

But, sir, you mean not to make him feoffee.

     Id. ib.

Sir Paul Eitherside willed me give you caution

Whom you did make feoffee; for ‘tis the trust

Of your whole state.

     Id. ib.

He has a quarrel to carry, and has caused

A deed of feoffment of his whole estate

To be drawn yonder.

     Id. iv, 3. [116]

I am ready

For process now, Sir; this is publication.

     Id. ib.

By which means you were

Not compos mentis when you made your feoffment.

     Id. v, 3.

Move in a court of equity.

     ld ib.

In Jonson, as in Lily, we have one of the law terms erroneously ascribed by Grant White to Shakespeare:

I’ll be his Statute staple, Statute-marchant
Or what he please.
The Staple of News, iii, i.

We find it in Nashe:

. . . The Divell used to lend money upon pawnes, or anything, and would let one for a need have a thousand pounds upon a Statute Marchant of his soul, or . . . would trust him upon a bill of his hand. . . .
Pierce Penilesse his Supplication to the Divell. Works, i, 161.

It occurs also in at least two stories of Greene’s:

Lends him money and takes a fair statute-marchant of his lands before a judge.
Life and Death of Ned Browne. Works, xi, 30.

Vie must bind over his lands in a statute marchant or staple.
Quip for an Upstart Courtier. Works, xi, 277.

And this particular law term occurs in one of the old morality plays:

Bounde in statute marchante.
Impatient Poverty (1560), Rep. 1909, 1. 191,

—with other legalisms such as "surety," "bill of sale," "writ of privilege," and the maxim that "the law is indifferent to every person" (I. 6)—all going to show that legal phraseology and discussion pervaded Elizabethan drama from its earliest stages.

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* Hopkins' sixteenth-century version of this Psalm, still retained in Scotland. Tate and Brady (1696) give a changed rendering. back

** Bacon uses the word in its modern sense thrice in the Essay Of Usury. back