XVI INTRODUCTION. 



her, who died in 1640, he had six sons and one 

 daughter, all of whom died in infancy or early child- 

 hood. His second wife, to whom he was married in 

 1646, was Anne, daughter of Thomas Ken, and sister 

 of Dr. Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, one of the 

 stubborn seven sent to the Tower by James II. Of 

 this marriage there were three children, one son, 

 Izaak, who lived but a short time ; a daughter, Anne ; 

 and another Izaak, who survived his father, and died 

 in 1719, a canon of Salisbury and a worthy "brother 

 of the angle." Anne Ken, the second wife, died in 

 1662, as appears by a monumental inscription in the 

 cathedral church of Worcester. Her epitaph, one 

 of the quaintest of its kind and decked with sundry 

 choice flowers of mortuary rhetoric, closes with the 

 pious sentiment : 



"SHE DYED, (ALAS THAT SHE is DEAD!) 



THE I7TH OF APRIL, 1662, AGED 52 

 Study to be like her." 



Of Walton's later life we know little, save that it 

 was well spent. Somewhere about this period (1644- 

 1646) he left London, and, with a fortune far short 

 of what would now be termed a competence, retired 

 to a small estate in Staffordshire, not far from his 

 birthplace. In the words of Wood, "finding it 

 dangerous for honest men to be there, he left the 

 city, and lived sometimes at Stafford, and elsewhere ; 

 but mostly in the families of the eminent clergymen 

 of England, by whom he was much beloved." It 

 will be remembered that the term " honest " had a 

 religious and political import at that time; and that 



