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not some peculiar circumstances, which I am now about to relate, called him from this umbratili vitá, to the elevated station in the Church which he afterwards filled, with so high and eminently a Christian character.

Morley, translated from Worcester, was Bishop of Winchester, when Ken came to reside, and he found domesticated at the new palace, his own brother-in-law, Isaak Walton, the author of the "Complete Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation."

But whence arose the extraordinary interest and attachment which Morley shewed to Ken, during the time of his residence at Winchester, and through life, till he died?

I now speak from living traditional information, that of Dr. Hawes, the nearest relation of Ken existing, having already mentioned Isaak Walton's PRAYER-BOOK, in his possession. I shall therefore proceed to narrate some singular and interesting circumstances, which procured for Ken the especial patronage and friendship of Morley, and which eventually led to the connection with Charles the Second, and to the high episcopal station which he subsequently filled, and relinquished.

When the Episcopal Clergy were persecuted, as we have seen in the last chapter, how many examples of piety and learning were left desolate on the world, for refusing to take the Covenant! Morley partook of the same bread of adversity.

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Though the PRAYER-BOOK was suppressed, many pious and good men were still found, in various parts of the country-many warm though secret friends attached to the same holy formulary, and devoted to the same altars. We have stated that Jeremy Taylor found an asylum at Golden Grove, a seat belonging to Lord Carbery, near Carmarthen, where some of his beautiful and eloquent discourses were preached. Hammond lived till he died at Sir John Packington's seat, in Worcestershire. We cannot tell where many of these exemplary men

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found shelter, but, from undoubted authority, I am enabled to state, for the first time, the origin of the singular friendship which lasted uninterrupted till death, between Morley, Bishop of Winchester, Ken's first and most ardent patron, and the comparatively poor, but honest and virtuous, Isaak Walton, Ken's brother-in-law.

Morley, having been ejected from his Canonry of Christchurch by Parliamentary precept, March 1648-being denounced, with Hammond, also Canon of Christchurch, as " malignant and contumacious" by the Visitors, and being at the same time deprived of his living of Mildenhall, near Marlborough — and, in short, of every thing but his conscience had the world before him, utterly destitute, nor knowing where to lay his head.

When, in his happier days, he associated with

Lord Falkland and Cotton, and when Isaak Walton was a hearer of Dr. Donne at St. Dunstan's, it is probable, from circumstances, that his acquaintance with that singular and good man, Isaak Walton, commenced, as his father lived in London.

In the desolation to which, for conscience sake, he was now exposed, where did he find refuge? Not in the halls of the great, but at the humble cottage of poor Walton. Here they read their Prayer-book together; that very Prayer-book of which I have spoken, the sad memorial of those days of trial, but of affectionate intercourse.

The honest Angler, who had left London in 1643, when the storm fell on the communion to which he was so ardently attached, and when, as Wood says, he "found it dangerous for honest men to be there," in those days of Presbyterian persecution, he retired from his shop at the corner of Chancery-lane, and having a cottage near the place where he was born, he removed his humble Lares

- his affectionate and pious wife, the sister of Ken, -and retired with his angle to his obscure and humble habitation, his own small property, near Stafford.

Here, after a placid day spent on the margin of the solitary Trent, or Dove, musing on the olden times, he returned at evening to the humble home of love to the evening hymn of his wife, to his infant daughter, afterwards wife of Dr. Hawkins to his Bible and to the consolation of his pro

scribed Prayer-book.

This humble and affectionate party was joined by Morley, after he had been expelled from ChristChurch, March 1647-8. In his Lives of Herbert and Hooker, written under Morley's splendid roof, and published 1670, Walton speaks of the knowledge derived from his friend, with whom he had been acquainted "forty years." And now, with congenial feelings, in his day of adversity, Morley passed the year before he left England in the cottage of his humble, pious, honest friend Isaak.

Here was the proscribed service of the Church of England performed daily in secrecy, by the faithful minister of Christ and his Church, "now fallen on evil days;" and we can hardly conceive a more affecting group- the simple, placid, apostolic Piscator-Kenna, his dutiful, pious, prudent, and beloved wife, the sister of Ken the infant child—and the faithful Minister of the Church, dispossessed of all worldly wealth, and here finding shelter, and peace, and prayer.

As we have had, of late, some interesting "Imaginary Conversations and Colloquies," I trust, on a circumstance so remarkable as the origin of the friendship between Morley, "my Lord of Winton," and the poor, honest fisherman, the brother-in-law of Ken, and founder of his future fortunes, I may be allowed to sketch a little scene, and introduce an imaginary colloquy between Isaak,

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