Introduction 



the life of Izaak Walton, either in the way of fact or reflection. 

 Sir Harris Nicolas has recorded nearly all the facts, and Dr. Zouch 

 and Mr. R. B. Marston have made all the appropriate reflections. 

 In the following resetting of the old narrative, so far as our common 

 nature permits, I shall limit myself to facts, or the conjectures of 

 facts, remembering Walton's admonition that " the mind of man is 

 best satisfied by the knowledge of events." 



Izaak Walton was born at Stafford, in the parish of St. Mary, on 

 August 9, 1593. Till recently two houses competed for the honour 

 of being his birthplace, one a noble old Elizabethan house in Green- 

 gate Street, and the other a humble little house in East Gate Street, 

 pulled down within the last seven or eight years. Tradition 

 and probability were most strongly in favour of the latter. Of his 

 father, Jervis Walton, nothing is known beyond the fact that he 

 died in February, 1596-7, of his mother nothing at all, not even her 

 name, though Dr. Zouch makes out that she was a daughter of 

 Edmund Cranmer, Archdeacon of Canterbury, a statement which 

 seems entirely without foundation, and which probably arose from 

 some traditional confusion due to Walton's own marriage into the 

 Cranmer family. 



A conjectural pedigree of Walton's father is to be found in Sir 

 Harris Nicolas's Life, by which it would appear that he was the son of 

 George Walton, bailiff, of Yoxall, who may have been related to 

 Richard Walton of Hanbury, whose will was dated, 31 October 1557 

 the earliest date in Waltonian genealogy. 



From his baptism (which is thus recorded in the register of St. 

 Mary's: "1593 Septemb. Baptiz. fuit Isaac Filius Jervis Walton 

 21 die mensis et anni prasdict.") till we find him a London 

 apprentice probably at the age of sixteen, and for many years after 

 that, and for occasional long periods all through his life, his history 

 is mainly conjecture. That he was educated at the Grammar School 

 of his native town seems likely. What that education amounted to 

 we can only judge from his writings. Lowell has been somewhat 

 scornful of his poor attainments. Walton " could never have been 

 taught even the rudiments of Latin," he says, with startling erudition, 

 " for he spells the third person singular of the perfect tense of obire, 



xxxi 



