[UN-1 12.]

1

  † 1.  Unlawful (or disloyal) conduct. Obs.

2

c. 1500.  Melusine, i. 14. Ye ne oughte to retche ne care more of the vnlawfulness [F. desleaulté] & falshed of oure fader.

3

1531.  Tindale, Exp. 1 John (1537), 53. That the Englyshe calleth here vnryghteousnesse the Greke called Anomia, vnlawfulnesse or breakynge ye lawe.

4

1613.  Purchas, Pilgrimage (1614), 28. The Formall part of sinne, being nothing else but a deformitie … and vnlawfulnesse in our naturall condition.

5

  2.  The quality of being unlawful; illegality.

6

1593.  Sidney’s Arcadia, III. (1922), II. 48. Now that love … had awaked her spirits, and perchance the very unlawfulnes of it had a litle blowne the coale.

7

1631.  Gouge, God’s Arrows, I. § 18. 25. That shewes the frailty of the person, not the unlawfulnesse of the action.

8

1673.  S. Dugard (title), Marriages of Cousin Germans, Vindicated from the Censures of Unlawfullnesse and Inexpediency.

9

1720.  Wodrow, Corr. (1843), II. 522. The treatise I sent you of the Unlawfulness or Limited Episcopacy is answered.

10

a. 1779.  Warburton, Alliance, II. Wks. 1788, IV. 190. The unlawfulness of tithes,… the unlawfulness of oaths.

11

1824.  Mackintosh, Sp. Ho. Comm., 1 June, Wks. 1846, III. 415. The unlawfulness and nullity of the proceedings.

12

1874.  Motley, Barneveld, II. xviii. 86. Doctors ever wanting to prove the unlawfulnesse of law which interferes with the purposes of a despot.

13

  b.  Illegitimacy. (Todd, 1818.)

14