JET. 53.] LIFE OF IZ A AK WALTON'. xxxix 



was Anne, the daughter of Thomas Ken, an attorney in the Court 

 of Common Pleas, by (his first wife) Jane, daughter of Rowland 

 Hughes, of Essenden, in Hertfordshire, but the exact date of his 

 marriage has not been discovered. 1 The family of Ken 2 is of 

 considerable antiquity in Somersetshire, and has attained celebrity 

 by having produced Thomas Ken, Bishop of Bath and Wells, a 

 prelate distinguished for his learning, piety, and virtues. 



Anne Ken could not have been less than five-and-thirty when 

 she gave her hand to Izaak Walton, who was seventeen years her 

 senior, he having then attained the mature age of about fifty-three. 

 Of her personal attractions nothing is known, but her talents and 

 acquirements were of a very superior order. She was eminently 

 prudent, possessed very extensive information, and was of " the 

 primitive piety," merits which, her husband states, were " adorned 

 with true humility and much Christian meekness." Walton's 

 marriage tended materially to increase his happiness, and the 

 fifteen or sixteen years of their union seem to have been passed 

 in the enjoyment of every comfort 



According to Anthony Wood, 3 who was well acquainted with 



1 The record of the licence for their marriage cannot be found, and the registers of 

 Cripplegate and of St Andrew's, Holboin, having been searched without success, there 

 is no clue to the place where it was celebrated. 



2 By his first wife, above named, Thomas Ken had three children, viz., Anne, who 

 was born about 1610 ; Jane, who married John Symons ; and Thomas, who is called 

 "eldest son by the first wife" in the pedigree which his father entered in the Herald's 

 Visitation of London in 1634, and who was buried at Cripplegate in February 1636. Mr 

 Ken married, secondly, Martha, daughter of Jon Chalkhill, of Kingsbury, in Middlesex, 

 by whom (who died in March 1641) he had John Ken, born in June 1627, who died 

 unmarried in 1651 ; Jon, born in July 1632, became treasurer to the East India Company, 

 married Rose, sister of Sir Thomas Vernpn of Coleman Street, and was living in 1683 ; 

 Martha, born in June 1628 ; Mary, born in February 1630, who appears to have died 

 before 1638 ; Margaret, born in March 1631 ; Elizabeth, horn in April 1635 ; another 

 Mary, born in August 1638, and died in December 1639; Martin, born in March 1641 ; 

 and Thomas, born at Berkhamstead in July 1637, who became Bishop of Bath. Of 

 Margaret, Elizabeth, and Martin Ken, nothing more has been discovered. So parti- 

 cular an account of the children of Thomas Ken is rendered necessary for the purpose 

 of correcting an error which Mr Bowles, the latest biographer of Bishop Ken, has com- 

 mitted by stating that he was the issue of his father's jfirst wife, and consequently that 

 he was brother of the whole blood to Mrs Walton. This mistake is the more remarkable, 

 because Mr Bowles professes to correct the statement of Hawkins, the grand-nephew 

 and executor of the bishop, who says in his memoir of the prelate, printed only two years 

 after his death, that he was "the youngest son of Thomas Ken, of Furnival's Inn, by 

 Martha, his wife." A more experienced genealogist than Mr Bowles might, however, 

 have been misled by finding that in the pedigree registered by his father in 1634, a 

 Thomas Ken is expressly stated to have been his " eldest son by the first wife," but a 

 comparison of dates at once shows that the bishop was a different person. The birth 

 ot Hishop Ken is p^ved by the certificate of his admission to Winchester College in 

 January 1651, when he was thirteen years old, to have taken place about 1637, whereas 

 if he had been the Thomas who is mentioned in the Herald's Visitation of 1634, he must 

 in 1651 have been at least twenty-five, because John Ken, his half-brother, and the issue 

 of his father's second marriage, was baptized on the 7th of January 1627. The certificate 

 of the burial in February 1636, of the Thomas Ken who was living in 1634 (which has 

 only lately been obtained), places the point beyond dispute. 



3 Athen. Oxon. by Bliss, I. 698. 



