OF IZAAK WALTON; INCLUDING NOTICES OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES. BY THOMAS ZOUCH, D. D. F. L.S. PREBENDARY OF DURHAM. THE LIFE OF ISAAC WALTON. SAAC, or, as he used to write it, IZAAK WALTON, was born of a respectable family, on the ninth day of August, 1593,' in the parish of St. Mary's, in the town of Stafford. Of his father, no particular tradition is extant. From his mother, he derived an hereditary attachment to the Protestant religion, as professed in the Church of England. She was the daughter 1 The date of Walton's birth rests on the authority of Anthony à Wood, in his Athena Oxon., who possibly obtained it, in a direct manner, from Walton. The parish register of St. Mary's, Stafford, records his baptism in the following words:"1593. Septemb. Baptiz. fuit Isaac filius Jervis Walton, 21o. die mensis et anni prædict." Of the B of Edmund Cranmer, Archdeacon of Canterbury, sister to George Cranmer, the pupil and friend of Richard Hooker, and niece to that first and brightest ornament of the Reformation, Dr. Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury. No vestiges of the place or manner of his education have been discovered; nor have we any authentic information concerning his first engagements in a mercantile life. It has indeed been suggested, that he was one of those industrious young men, whom the munificence of Sir Thomas Gresham, the founder of the Royal Exchange, had placed in the shops which were erected in the upper building of his celebrated Burse. However this may be, he soon improved his fortune by his honesty, his frugality, 2 elder Walton, it is true, that no particular tradition is extant,’ beyond the presumption that he was in easy circumstances: a reference, however, to the same register, informs us that he died in February, 1596, when his son Isaac was little more than two years old.-ED. 2 Sir John Hawkins, in his Life of Walton, prefixed to the Complete Angler, 1760, 8vo., positively asserts, that "his first settlement in London, as a shop-keeper, was in the Royal Burse, in Cornhill, built by Sir Thomas Gresham, and finished in 1567 ;" and that he continued there" till some time before the year 1624." Sir John, and Dr. Zouch, however, seem equally to have forgotten that Sir Thomas Gresham died in 1579, fourteen years before Walton was born: and though much has been said of "the economy observed in the con. struction of the shops over the Burse, which scarce allowed him and his diligence. His occupation, according to the tradition still preserved in his family, was that of a wholesale linen-draper, or Hamburgh merchant.3 elbow room, being but seven feet and a half long, and five feet wide," there does not appear to be any conclusive evidence that he ever did occupy a shop at the Exchange.—ED. 3 Tradition, at best a dubious authority, has not even hinted at the period when Walton might be supposed to have first settled in London. A deed, bearing date 1624, formerly in the possession of Sir John Hawkins, but no longer extant (being destroyed by fire, with Sir John's library and residence, in Queen Square, Westminster, in 1770), stated him to be then following the trade of a linen-draper, in a house which, it further appeared in that deed, was jointly occupied by him and John Mason, hosier; " whence," observes Sir John, 66 we may conclude, that half a shop was sufficient for the business of Walton." It is no improbable conjecture, that this was Walton's first outset in life, as there is evidence to prove his marriage in or about 1624, when, possibly, unwilling to incur the expense attendant on keeping the whole house, it was equally proportioned between Mason and himself. The deed expressly describes Walton's residence to have been "on the north side of Fleet-street, in a house two doors west of the end of Chancery-lane, and abutting on a messuage known by the sign of the Harrow." The curiously decorated house at the west corner of Chancery-lane, said to have been the oldest building in Fleet-street, being erected in the reign of King Edward VI. for an elegant mansion, at a time when there were no shops in that part of the city, was long distinguished by the sign of the Harrow. Queen Elizabeth, |