jfatbcrs of BnGling 17 



being a freeman and burgess of the same city." For 

 more than sixty years he had practised the art of 

 angling, and " spent many pounds in the gaining of it." 

 At the time when he wrote " The Art of Angling," 

 known also as " Barker's Delight," he was living at 

 Westminster, and made his livelihood by accompanying 

 gentlemen on fishing expeditions or teaching the use 

 of tackle and bait at home. He thus advertises his 

 qualifications in his book : " If any noble or gentle 

 angler, of what degree so ever he be, have a mind to 

 discourse of any of these wayes and experiments, I 

 live in Henry the Seventh's Gifts, the next door to 

 the Gatehouse in Westminster ; my name is Barker : 

 when I shall be ready, so long as please God, to 

 satisfie them and maintain my art during life which 

 is not like to be long." 



One would hope that the old angler, who thus 

 pathetically indicates that his course is nearly run, 

 found pupils enough to render his declining years 

 comfortable. But I doubt whether budding anglers 

 were numerous enough to have made teaching the art 

 a lucrative calling. In looking through the Diary of 

 Nicholas Assheton, of Downham, near Clitheroe, who 

 may, I suppose, be taken as a typical Lancashire 

 squire of the early part of the seventeenth century; I 

 find no mention whatever of angling. All his fishing 

 apparently was done with nets of various kinds a 

 bastard sort of sport which Barker would have viewed 

 with abhorrence. 



To Thomas Barker belongs the discredit, in the eyes 

 of modern anglers, of being the first to advocate the 



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