TO THE RIGHT REVEREND AND HONOURABLE, GEORGE, LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, PRELATE OF THE GARTER, AND ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S PRIVY COUNCIL.
[Sidenote: Dedication]
MY LORD,
If I should undertake to enumerate the many favours and advantages I have had by my very long acquaintance with your Lordship, I should enter upon an employment, that might prove as tedious as the collecting of the materials for this poor Monument, which I have erected, and do dedicate to the Memory of your beloved friend, Dr. Sanderson: But though I will not venture to do that; yet I do remember with pleasure, and remonstrate with gratitude, that your Lordship made me known to him, Mr. Chillingworth,[1] and Dr. Hammond; men, whose merits ought never to be forgotten.
My friendship with the first was begun almost forty years past, when I was as far from a thought, as a desire to outlive him; and farther from an intention to write his Life. But the wise Disposer of all men's lives and actions hath prolonged the first, and now permitted the last; which is here dedicated to your Lordship,—and, as it ought to be—with all humility, and a desire that it may remain as a public testimony of my gratitude.
My Lord,
Your most affectionate old friend,
and most humble servant,
IZAAK WALTON.
[Footnote 1: William Chillingworth, born at Oxford in 1602, and educated at Trinity College. He was proverbially celebrated there for clear and acute reasoning; but he so much involved himself in the Romish Controversy with John Fisher, a Jesuit, as to become a convert, and enter the College at Douay. His re-conversion was brought about by his godfather, Archbishop Laud, in 1631, when he returned to England; and in 1638, he wrote his famous work called "The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation." Fol. He was zealously attached to the Royal cause, and served at the Siege of Gloucester: but being taken prisoner, he was carried to the Bishop's Palace, at Chichester, on account of his illness, and, dying there Jan. 30th, 1644, was buried in the Cathedral, without any other ceremony than that of his book being cast into the grave by the hand of a fanatic.]