52 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



mendations our learned Perkins bestows on angling : and 

 how dear a lover, and great a practiser of it our learned 

 Doctor Whittaker was, as indeed many others of great 

 learning have been. But I will content myself with two 

 memorable men, that lived near to our own time, whom I 

 also take to have been ornaments to the art of angling. 

 The first, is Doctor Nowel, sometime Dean of the 

 Cathedral Church of St. Paul's in London, where his 

 monument stands yet undefaced : a man that in the 

 reformation of Queen Elizabeth, not that of Henry VIII., 

 was so noted for his meek spirit, deep learning, prudence, 

 and piety, that the then Parliament and Convocation 

 both, chose, enjoined, and trusted him to be the man to 

 make a catechism for public use, such a one as should 

 stand as a rule for faith and manners to their posterity. 

 And the good old man, though he was very learned, yet 

 knowing that God leads us not to Heaven by many nor 

 by hard questions, like an honest angler, made that good, 

 plain, unperplexed catechism, which is printed with our 

 good old service-book.* I say, this good old man was a 

 dear lover and constant practiser of angling, as any age 

 can produce : and his custom was to spend, besides his 

 fixed hours of prayer (those hours which, by command of 

 the church, were enjoined the clergy, and voluntarily 

 dedicated to devotion by many primitive Christians) ; I 

 say, besides those hours, this good man was observed to 

 spend a tenth part of his time in angling ; and, also for 

 I have conversed with those which have conversed with 

 him, to bestow a tenth part of his revenue, and usually 

 all his fish, amongst the poor that inhabited near to 

 those rivers in which it was caught ; saying often, " that 

 charity gave life to religion : " and at his return to his 

 house, would praise God he had spent that day free from 



* The Catechism bound up with the Book of Common Prayer, is 

 not that compiled by Dr. Nowel. He drew up, at the request of 

 Mr. Secretary Cecil (temp. Eliz.), a larger Catechism, which was 

 sanctioned by Convocation, and not by Parliament, in 1562. 



