of a linen-draper. It further appears by that deed, that the house was in the joint occupation of Isaac Walton, and John Mason, hosier; whence we may conclude, that half a shop was sufficient for the business of Walton. A citizen of this age would almost as much disdain to admit of a tenant for half his shop, as a knight would to ride double; though the brethren of one of the most ancient orders in the world were so little above this practice, that their common seal was the device of two riding on one horse.* A more than gradual deviation from that parsimonious character, of which this is a ludicrous instance, hastened the grandeur, and declension, of that fraternity; and it is rather to be wished than hoped, that the vast increase of the trade of this country, and an aversion from the frugal manners of our forefathers, may not be productive of similar consequences to this nation in general. I conjecture, that about 1632 he married; for in that year I find him living in a house in Chancery-lane, a few doors higher up, on the left hand, than the former, aud described by the occupation of a sempster or milliner. The former of these might be his own proper trade; and the latter, as being a feminine occupation, might probably be carried on by his wife: she, it appears, was Anne the daughter of Thomas Ken, of Furnival's Inn, and sister of Thomas, afterwards Dr. Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells, one of the seven that were sent to the Tower, and who at the Revolution was deprived, and died in retirement. Walton seems to have been as happy in the married state, as the society and friendship of a prudent and pious woman of great endowments could make him; and that Mrs. Walton was such a one, we may conclude from what will be said of her hereafter.t * The Knights Templars. Ashmole's Instit. of the Order of the Garter, p. 55. See the seal at the end of Matt. Paris Hist. Anglicana, edit. 1640. + From one or two entries in the Parish Register of St. Dunstan, Fleetstreet, there is reason to believe that Walton was twice married; a circum About 1643 he left London, and, with a fortune very far short of what would now be called a competency, seems to have retired altogether from business; at which time, (to use the words of Wood,) "finding it dangerous for honest men to be there, he left that city, and lived sometimes at Stafford,† and elsewhere; but mostly in the families of the eminent clergymen of England, of whom he was much beloved.‡ While he continued in London, his favourite recreation was angling, in which he was the greatest proficient of his time; and indeed, so great were his skill and experience in that art, that there is scarce any writer on the subject since his time, who has not made the rules and practice of Walton his very foundation. It is therefore with the greatest propriety that Langbaine calls him "the common father of all anglers."§ The river that he seems mostly to have frequented for this purpose was the Lea, which has its source above Ware in Hertfordshire, and falls into the Thames a little below Blackwall; unless we will suppose that the vicinity of the New River || to the place of his habitation might sometimes tempt him out with his friends, honest Nat. and R. Roe, whose loss he so pathetically mentions,¶ to spend an afternoon there. stance that has hitherto escaped his biographers. Of his first wife nothing is now known, but that her Christian name was Rachell : "Aug. 25, 1640. Rachell wife of Isaack Walton was buried." By this lady he had two sons: Henry, baptized October 12, and buried October 17, 1632; and another son of the same name, baptized March 21, 1634, who was buried Dec. 4. following. See Bliss's ed. of the Athen. Oxon. * See his Will, at the end of the Life. He retired to a small estate in Staffordshire, not far from the town of Stafford. His loyalty made him obnoxious to the ruling powers; and we are assured by himself, that he was a sufferer during the time of the civil wars. The incident of his being instrumental in preserving the lesser George, which belonged to Charles II., is related in Ashmole's History of the Order of the Garter.-Zouch. Athen. Oxon. vol. i. 305. § Lives of the English Dramatic Poets, art. Cha. Cotton, Esq. That great work, the bringing water from Chadwell and Amwell, in Hertfordshire, to London, by means of the trench called the New River, was completed on Michaelmas-day, 1613.-Stow's Survey, fol. 1633, p. 12. Preface to Complete Angler. In the year 1662, he was by death deprived of the solace and comfort of a good wife, as appears by the following monumental inscription in the chapel of Our Lady, in the cathedral church of Worcester. EXTERRIS D. HERE LYETH BURIED so much as could dye of ANNE, the Wife of IZAAK WALTON; who was a Woman of remarkable Prudence, her great, and general Knowledge the 17th of April, 1662, Aged 52. STUDY TO BE LIKE HER. Living, while in London, in the parish of St. Dunstan in the West, whereof Dr. John Donne, dean of St. Paul's, was vicar, he became of course a frequent hearer of that excellent preacher, and, at length, (as he himself expresses it,) his convert. Upon his decease † in 1631, Sir Henry Wotton (of whom mention will be made hereafter) requested Walton to collect materials for a Life of the doctor, which it seems Sir Henry had undertaken to write but Sir Henry dying before he had completed the Life, Walton undertook it himself; and in the year 1640 finished, and published it with a Collection of the doctor's Sermons, in folio. As soon as the book came out, a complete copy was sent as a present to Walton, by Mr. John Donne, the doctor's son, afterwards doctor of laws; and one of the blank leaves contained his letter to Mr. Walton: Verses of Walton at the end of Dr. Donne's Life. ↑ Walton attended Dr. Donne in his last sickness; and was present when he consigned his Sermons and numerous Papers to the care of Dr. Henry King, who was promoted to the see of Chichester in 1641.-Zouch. See Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, octavo, 1685, p. 260. the letter is yet extant, and in print, and is a handsome and grateful acknowledgment of the honour done to the memory of his father. Doctor King, afterwards bishop of Chichester, in a letter to the author, thus expresses himself concerning this Life: "I am glad that the general demonstration of his [Doctor Donne's] worth was so fairly preserved, and represented to the world, by your pen, in the history of his life; indeed so well, that, beside others, the best critic of our later time, Mr. John Hales of Eaton, affirmed to me, he had not seen a life written with more advantage to the subject, or reputation to the writer, than that of Doctor Donne."+ Sir Henry Wotton dying in 1639, Walton was importuned by Bishop King to undertake the writing his Life also; and, as it should seem by a circumstance mentioned in the margin, it was finished about 1644. Notwithstanding which, the earliest copy I have yet been able to meet with is that prefixed to a Collection of Sir Henry's Remains, undoubtedly made by Walton himself, intitled Reliquia Wottonianæ, and by him, in 1651, dedicated to Lady Mary Wotton and her three daughters; though in a subsequent edition in 1685, he has recommended them to the patronage of a more remote relation of the author, namely, Philip Earl of Chesterfield. The Precepts of Angling,-meaning thereby the rules and directions for taking fish with a hook and line-till Walton's time, having hardly ever been reduced to writing, were propagated from age to age chiefly by tradition: but In Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, vol. i. lib. vi. p. 24. In the year 1714, the very book, with the original manuscript letter, was in the hands of the Rev. Mr. Borradale, rector of Market-Deeping, in the county of Lincoln. + Bishop King's Letter to Walton before the Collection of the Lives, in 1670. It is certain that Hooker's Life was written about 1664; and Walton says, in his Epistle before the Lives, that "there was an interval of twenty years between the writing of Hooker's Life and Wotton's, which fixes the date of the latter to 1644." |