Introduction 



text is precisely the same in both editions, any obligations to Walton 

 acknowledged by "S.P.," in 1619, must have been equally due in 

 1613; from which he further deduces that, " as Walton was only 

 twenty years of age in 1613, the love of literature, which never 

 deserted him, must have commenced at a very early period of his 

 life." 



The date of Walton's first coming to London, and the business in 

 which he became engaged, have been matters of much speculation 

 and research. The usual statement has been that at about the age 

 of twenty he was apprenticed to a kinsman of his, Henry Walton, a 

 Whitechapel haberdasher. The only authority I can find for this 

 statement is Sir Harris Nicolas's elaborate genealogical guess. There 

 was a Henry Walton, haberdasher, in Whitechapel about this time, 

 whom we come at through the will of a cousin Samuel Walton, of 

 St. Mary's Cray, in Kent, and whose connection with Staffordshire 

 is further deduced from the same document. Henry Walton may 

 have been a kinsman of Izaak Walton, and Izaak Walton may have 

 been his apprentice, and there are other mays and mights still more 

 conjectural. One fact against the haberdasher or "sempster" theory 

 is that the records of the Haberdashers' Company do not contain the 

 names of Henry or Izaak Walton, between 1600 and 1630, whereas 

 it has been discovered that the records of the Ironmongers Company 

 for 1618 do contain the name of Izaak.* Still more conclusive is 

 the fact dwelt upon by Mr. Marston, that in his marriage licence 

 with Rachel Floud, dated December 27, 1626, he is described as of 

 the "Cittie of London, Ironmonger." Why a man who was a 

 haberdasher should describe himself as an ironmonger in his marriage 

 licence is certainly difficult to determine except on the unlikely 

 theory that Rachel Floud had a partiality for ironmongers. 



Sir John Hawkins had supposed that Walton first settled in 

 London as a shopkeeper in the Royal Exchange, under the patronage 

 of Sir Thomas Gresham, but this seems to be a fable. Haberdasher, 

 sempster, " wholesale linen draper, or Hamburg merchant," these 



* " 1618. 1 2th November. Isaac Walton, late apprentice to Thomas Grinsell, 

 was now admitted and sworne a free brother of this companie, and paid for his 

 admittance xiij d , and for default of presentm' and enrollment X s ." 



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