PREMIUM PUDICITIAE, contracts. Literally the price of chastity.

2. This is the consideration of a contract by which a man promises to pay to a woman with whom he has illicit intercourse a certain sum of money. When the contract is made as the payment of past cohabitation, as between the parties, it is good, and will be enforced against the obligor, his heirs, executors and administrators, but it cannot be paid, on a deficiency of assets, until all cred itors are paid, though it has a preference over the heir, next of kin, or devisee. If the contract be for future cohabitation, it is void. Chit. Contr. 215; 1 Story, Eq. Jur. 296; 5 Ves. 286; 2 P. Wms. 432; 1 Black. R. 517; 3 Burr. 1568; 1 Fonbl. Eq, B. 1, a. 4, 4, and notes s and y; 1 Ball & Beat. 360; 7 Ves. 470; 11 Ves. 535; Rob. Fraud. Conv. 428; Cas. Temp. Talb. 153; and the cases there cited; 6 Ham. R. 21; 5 Cowen, R. 253; Harper, R. 201; 3 Mont. R. 35; 2 Rev. Const. Ct; 279; 11 Mass. R. 368; 2 N. & M. 251.

PRENDER or PRENDRE. To take. This word is used to signify the right of taking a thing before it is offered,; hence the phrase of law, it lies in render, but not in prender. Vide A prendre; and Gale and Whatley on Easements, 1.

PROENOMEN. The first or Christian name of a person; Benjamin is the proenomen of Benjamin Franklin. See Cas. temp. Hard. 286; 1 Tayl. 148.

PREPENSE. The same as aforethought. (q. v.) Vide 2 Chit. Cr. Law, *784.

PREROGATIVE, civil law. The privilege, preeminence, or advantage which one person has over another; thus a person vested with an office, is entitled to all the rights, privileges, prerogatives, &c. which belong to it.

PREROGATIVE, English law. The royal prerogative is an arbitrary power vested in the executive to do good and not evil. Rutherf. Inst. 279; Co. Litt. 90; Chit. on Prerog.; Bac. Ab. h. t.

PREROGATIVE COURT, eccles. law. The name of a court in England in which all testaments are proved and administrations granted, when the deceased has left bona notabilia in the province in some other diocese than that in which he died. 4 Inst. 335.

2. The testamentary courts of the two archbishops, in their respective provinces, are styled prerogative courts, from the prerogative of each archbishop to grant probates and administrations, where there are bona, notabilia; but still these are only inferior and subordinate jurisdictions; and the style of these courts has no connexion with the royal prerogative. Derivatively, these courts are the king's ecclesiastical courts; but immediately, they are only the courts of the ecclesiastical ordinary. The ordinary, and not the crown, appoints the judges of these courts; they are subject to the control of the king's courts of chancery and common law, in case they exceed their jurisdiction; and they are subject in some instances to the command of these courts, if they decline to exercise their jurisdiction, when by law they ought to exercise it. Per Sir John Nicholl, In the Goods of George III.; 1 Addams, R. 265; S. C. 2 Eng. Eccl. R. 112.