io8 Life of Walton. 



Walton, little is known ; .he_did_about 

 three years after Walton was born. Of 

 his mother not even the name has been 

 discovered, and it is doubtful whether 

 she survived her husband. There appears 

 to be no proof whatever for Dr. Zouch's 

 statement in his Life of Walton that 

 his mother was the daughter of Edmund 

 Cranmer, Archdeacon of Canterbury. 



Walton received a fair education, pro- 

 bably at the Grammar^JSchooi of his 

 native town; and though there is no 

 record of his life from the date of his 

 baptism until we find him in London in 

 16.18,- it is fair to infer that his first 

 angling experiences were probably as a 

 youngster at Stafford, wandering with 

 some congenial spirit along the banks of 

 the neighbouring streams, armed with 

 hazel rod and horse-hair line. 



Sir Harris Nicolas says the first re- 

 ference to Walton when a young man is 

 in the dedication of a short poem entitled 

 The Love of Amos and Laura, by S. P.,* 

 published in 1619 (the year before The 

 Mayflower sailed for New England), to 

 which attention was first drawn by T. 

 Payne Collier in The Poetical Decameron, 

 vol. ii., p. in. 



A fact which seems to have escaped 



* Samuel Purchas. 



