Walton was born at Stafford; the register of his baptism gives his father's name as Jervis, and nothing more is known of his parentage.
He settled in London as an ironmonger, and at first had one of the small shops, in the upper story of Thomas Gresham's Royal Burse or Exchange in Cornhill. In 1614 he had a shop in Fleet Street, two doors west of Chancery Lane. Here, in the parish of St Dunstan's, he gained the friendship of Dr. John Donne, then vicar of that church. His first wife, married in December 1626, was Rachel Floud, a great-great-niece of Archbishop Cranmer. She died in 1640. He married again soon after, his second wife being Anne Ken — the pastoral Kenna of The Angler's Wish—step-sister of Thomas Ken, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells.
Read The Complete Angler, by Izaak Walton, published in 1653, one of three of his works available free from Project Gutenberg.
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