IZAAK Walton's association with the river lea. 



187 



house on the north side, two doors west from Chancery I.ane, at 

 least as early as 1618 — two years after the death of Shakespeare 

 (whom, strange to say, he never once mentions or quotes), and in 

 1626 he married Rachel Floud, of Canterbury, who died in London 

 in 1640. Six years later he married for his second wife Ann Ken 

 (the daughter of an attorney), who also predeceased him. 



Considering his comparatively humble station in life, and the 

 number of influential persons he could count amongst his friends 

 and correspondents, it is evident that he must have been a man of 

 some attainments and conversational ability, and of singularly affable 

 character. The respect and esteem in which he was generally held 



Fishing House un thi; Ri\i;i; Li:a. 



{ Re />mduccd hy permission of Robert Basister, Esq., from an etching by Thomas, after 

 John Linncll.) 



may be inferred from his acquaintance with such men as Dr. Donne, 

 Vicar of St. Dunstan's, whose " Life " he wrote ; Dr. Gilbert 

 Sheldon, Warden of All Souls, Chaplain to King Charles L ; and 

 after the Restoration, Archbishop of Canterbury, through whom in 

 1662 he obtained a lease of a house in Paternoster Row, adjoining 

 the "Cross Keys," which he subsequently left by will to his son-in- 

 law, Dr. John Hawkins, together with the house in Fleet Street ; 

 Bishop Sanderson, who attended Charles L at Carisbrook, and 

 of whom we get a peep as he stands " in sad coloured clothes '" 

 talking to Izaak Walton, near a bookseller's shop in Little Britain, 

 and then taking shelter from the rain in a corner under a pent house. 



