Goes to law as men do to bad houses, to spend his money and satisfy his
concupiscence of wrangling. He is a constant customer to the old
reverend gentlewoman Law, and believes her to be very honest, though she
picks his pockets and puts a thousand tricks and gulleries upon him. He
has a strange kindness for an action of the case, but a most passionate
loyalty for the King's writ. A well-drawn bill and answer will draw him
all the world over, and a breviate as far as the Line. He enters the
lists at Westminster like an old tiller, runs his course in law, and
breaks an oath or two instead of a lance; and if he can but unhorse the
defendant and get the sentence of the judges on his side, he marches off
in triumph. He prefers a cry of lawyers at the Bar before any pack of
the best-mouthed dogs in all the North. He has commonly once a term a
trial of skill with some other professor of the noble science of
contention at the several weapons of bill and answer, forgery, perjury,
subornation, champarty, affidavit, common barretry, maintenance, &c.,
and though he come off with the worst, he does not greatlv care so he
can but have another bout for it. He fights with bags of money as they
did heretofore with sand-bags, and he that has the heaviest has the
advantage and knocks down the other, right or wrong and he suffers the
penalties of the law for having no more money to show in the case. He is
a client by his order and votary of the long robe, and though he were
sure the devil invented it to hide his cloven feet, he has the greater
reverence for it; for, as evil manners produce good laws, the worse the
inventor was the better the thing may be. He keeps as many Knights of
the Post to swear for him, as the King does poor knights at Windsor to
pray for him. When he is defendant and like to be worsted in a suit, he
puts in a cross bill and becomes plaintiff; for the plainant is eldest
hand, and has not only that advantage, but is understood to be the
better friend to the Court, and is considered for it accordingly.