40 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



though hunting may be sometimes so taken, yet it is but 

 seldom to be so understood. And let me add this more, he 

 that views the ancient ecclesiastical canons, shall find hunting 

 to be forbidden to churchmen, as being a turbulent, toilsome, 

 perplexing recreation ; and shall find angling allowed to 

 clergymen, as being a harmless recreation a recreation that 

 invites them to contemplation and quietness. 



I might here enlarge myself by telling you what com- 

 mendations our learned Perkins bestows on angling : and how 

 dear a lover, and great a practiser of it our learned Doctor 

 Wliittaker was, as indeed many others of great learning have 

 been. But I will content myself with two memorable men r 

 that lived near to our own time, whom I also take to have 

 been ornaments to the art of angling. 



The first, is Doctor Nowel, sometime Dean of the Cathedral 

 Church of St. Paul's in London, where his monument stands 

 yet undefaced : a man that in the reformation of Queen 

 Elizabeth, not that of Henry VIIL, was so noted for his 

 meek spirit, deep learning, prudence, and piety, that the then 

 Parliament and Convocation both, chose, enjoined, and trusted 

 him to be the man to make a catechism for public use, such 

 a one as should stand as a rule for faith and manners to 

 their posterity. And the good old man, though he was very 

 learned, yet knowing that God leads us not to Heaven by 

 many nor by hard questions, like an honest angler, made that 

 good, plain, unperplexed catechism, which is printed with our 

 good old service-book.* I say, this good old man was a dear 

 lover and constant practiser of angling, as any age can produce : 

 and his custom was to spend, besides his fixed hours of prayer 

 (those hours which, by command of the church, were enjoined 

 the clergy, and voluntarily dedicated to devotion by many 

 primitive Christians) ; I say, beside those hours, this good 

 man was observed to spend a tenth part of his time in angling ; 

 and also, for I have conversed with those which have conversed 

 with him, to bestow a tenth part of his revenue, and usually 

 all his fish, amongst the poor that inhabited near to those 

 rivers in which it was caught ; saying often, " that charity 

 gave life to religion :" and, at his return to his house, would 

 praise God he had spent that day free from worldly trouble ; 



not that 

 Cecil 

 and 



