Severall Parts of Germanie, Denmark, &c.,' has the following passage:
And now because I am speaking of Petty-foggers, give me leave to tell
you a story I mett with when I lived in Rome. Goeing with a Romane to
see some antiquityes, he showed me a chapell dedicated to St. Evona, a
lawyer of Brittanie, who, he said, came to Rome to entreat the Pope to
give the lawyers of Brittanie a patron, to which the Pope replied, that
he knew of no saint but what was disposed to other professions. At which
Evona was very sad, and earnestly begd of the Pope to think of one for
him. At last the Pope proposed to St. Evona that he should go round the
church of St. John de Latera blindfold, and after he had said so many
Ave Marias, that the first saint he laid hold of should be his patron,
which the good old lawyer willingly undertook, and at the end of his Ave
Maryes he stopt at St. Michael's altar, where he layed hold of the
Divell, under St. Michael's feet, and cry'd out, this is our saint, let
him be our patron. So being unblindfolded, and seeing what a patron he
had chosen, he went to his lodgings so dejected, that a few moneths
after he died, and coming to heaven's gates knockt hard. Whereupon St.
Peter asked who it was that knockt so bouldly. He replied that he was
St. Evona the advocate. Away, away, said St. Peter, here is but one
advocate in Heaven; here is no room for you lawyers. O but, said St.
Evona, I am that honest lawyer who never tooke fees on both sides, or
pleaded in a bad cause, nor did I ever set my Naibours together by the
ears, or lived by the sins of the People. Well, then, said St. Peter,
come in. This newes coming down to Rome, a witty poet wrote on St.
Evona's tomb these words:--

'St. Evona un Briton,
Advocat non Larron.
Hallelujah.'

This story put me in mind of Ben Jonson goeing throw a church in Surrey,
seeing poore people weeping over a grave, asked one of the women why
they wept. Oh, said shee, we have lost our pretious lawyer, Justice
Randall; he kept us all in peace, and always was so good as to keep us
from goeing to law; the best man ever lived. Well, said Ben Jonson, I
will send you an epitaph to write upon his tomb, which was--

'God works wonders now and then,
Here lies a lawyer an honest man.'

An important vestige of the close relations which formerly existed
between the Law and the Church is still found in the ecclesiastical
patronage of the Lord Chancellor; and man