IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 79 



Hall/ Oxford. He was entered in 1592 as a 

 student at Lincoln's Inn with the intention of be- 

 coming a barrister. His tutors were instructed " to 

 instil into him particular principles of the Roman 

 Church." He early began seriously "to survey 

 and consider the body of Divinity as it was 

 then controverted betwixt the Reformed and the 

 Roman Church." Having a good competence, 

 he spent a large part of it in travelling abroad. 

 A runaway match, in 1601, with the third daughter 

 of Sir George More of Loseley in Surrey, caused 

 him to be committed to the Fleet Prison, and 

 also caused him to lose an appointment which 

 he held as a secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, 

 Keeper of the Great Seal of England. He sent 

 his wife a letter acquainting her with his dismissal 

 which ended thus : — 



"John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone."^ 

 The idea of taking Holy Orders appears to 

 have first been put into his head by Dr Morton, 

 who became Bishop of Durham, and who at the 

 great age of ninety-four, enjoyed, as Walton 

 describes it, "perfect intellectuals and a cheerful 



• Hart Hall was so called from Elias de Hertford, who lived in 

 the reign of Edward the First. In 1312 the name was changed to 

 Stapledon Hall. In 1739 it was by a Royal charter erected into a 

 college by the name of Hertford College in the University of Oxford. 

 ^ Donne was very fond of making puns on his name. In some 

 verses to Sir Henry Wotton he ends thus : — 

 "But if myself I've won, 

 To know my rules I have, and you have Donne." 



