CHAPTER II

(1) WALTON AS A ROYALIST

"And they shall scoff at the kings, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them."-HAB. i. 10.

"The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint."

ISAIAH i. 5.

It is necessary that the reader should regard the state the country was in when Walton lived, if he would estimate rightly the man.

S. T. Coleridge wrote:

"I know no portion of history which a man might write with so much pleasure as that of the great struggle in the time of Charles I., because he may feel the profoundest respect for both parties. The side taken by any particular person was determined by the point of view which such person happened to command at the commencement of the inevitable collision, one line seeming straight to this man, another line to another. No man of that age saw the truth, the whole truth; there was not light enough for that. The consequence, of course, was a

violent exaggeration of each party for the time. The King became a martyr, and the Parliamentarians traitors and vice versa."

It has been well said that it is the privilege of posterity to adjust the characters of illustrious persons, and to set matters right between those antagonists who by their rivalry for greatness divided a whole age into factions.

We wonder if Walton ever hesitated as to

He says,

which party he would side with. in his Life of Bishop Sanderson: "I praise God that He prevented me from being of the party which helped to bring in this Covenant, and those sad confusions that have followed it."

However, his hesitation, if the sentence really means he ever thought twice on the subject, was not for long, as he became a strong partisan and the trusted friend of the Royalists.

After the Battle of Worcester, the Royalists who took part in it dispersed. The following extracts taken from Boscobel, or, The Compleat History of His Sacred Majestie's Most Miraculous Preservation after the Battle of Worcester, 3rd September 1651, by Sir Thomas Blount, follow the account of the King's hiding in the neighbourhood of Worcester: "His Majesty having put off his garter, blue riband, George of diamonds, buff coat, and other princely ornaments,

committed his watch to the custody of the Lord Wilmot, and his George to Colonel Blague, and distributed the gold he had in his pocket among his servants, etc., did advertise the company to make haste away.' And, quaintly adds the writer: "Thus David and his men departed out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go" (1 Sam. xxiii. 13).

"Colonel Blague remaining at Mr Barlow's house at Bloorpipe, about eight miles from Stafford, his first action was, with Mrs Barlow's privity and advice, to hide his Majesty's George under a heap of chips and dust; yet the Colonel could not conceal himself so well, but that he was here, soon after, taken and carried prisoner to Stafford, and from thence conveyed to the Tower of London. Meantime the George was transmitted to Mr Robert Milward, of Stafford, for better security, who afterwards faithfully conveyed it to Colonel Blague in the Tower by the trusty hands of Mr Isaac Walton." Most biographers of Walton give an account of the George incident with the reference Ashmole's History of the Order of the

to

Garter.

Charles II., after an exile of twelve years, landed in England on the 25th May 1660, and five days later Walton wrote a joyous eclogue to Mr Alexander Brome (one of Ben Jonson's sons) on

the event. By an Act of Parliament of 1660, those of the parish clergy who had been turned out of their benefices during the Civil War were reinstated. In 1661 the New Parliament assured the Church in possession of all the property which she had held at the outbreak of the Civil War, and replaced the bishops in the House of Lords.

(2) WALTON AS THE RELIGIOUS MAN

"Pectus est quod facit theologum."-NEANDER'S MOTTO.

Walton's friendship appears to have been confined almost entirely to Churchmen and Royalists, though it is true he informs us in his will he had a very long and true friendship with some of the Roman Church. Very likely Dr Donne, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral,1 and Vicar of St Dunstan's Church, Fleet Street, introduced him to a "set" among the bishops and certain of the learned clergy, in return, perhaps, for Walton's undertaking various parochial duties. With the "taint of trade" upon him Walton must have found him

1 St Paul's Cathedral which in 1643 was completely restored, suffered at the hands of the Puritans, but was being repaired again in 1663 when in 1666 it was entirely destroyed by the Great Fire. The present St Paul's Cathedral was commenced in 1675. It was begun and completed under one architect, Sir Christopher Wren, under one Bishop of London, Dr Henry Crompton, and under one master-mason.

self sometimes like a fish out of water in company with the high-born and cultured Cotton, and in that of scholars and Church dignitaries. He had, says Lowell, "a genius for friendships and an amiability of nature ample for the comfortable housing of many at a time; he had even a special genius for bishops, and seems to have known nearly the whole episcopal bench of his day." Lowell gives us his own explanation of what he means by "genius."

We may imagine that Walton was as good a listener as he was a great converser and a maker of good talk "across the walnuts and the wine," never making harsh remarks; a repeater of reminiscences, though no mere man of anecdote, a man full of bonhomie. If these conjectures are right such a man would have been a welcome guest anywhere, but especially among the clergy.

Dr Johnson said: "It was wonderful that Walton, who was in a very low situation in life, should have been familiarly received by so many great men, and that at a time when the ranks of society were kept more separate than they are now." Yet Johnson might have wondered how it was that he was similarly treated by his superiors. It is never recorded that Walton was on terms of intimacy with any of the leading nonconformists of his day. He might have known John Milton,