Hence, Walton presumably spent his childhood in Stafford, where his only formal education seems to have been instruction in Latin at the Edward VI Grammar School. That education was sufficient to enable Walton to read simple Latin prose, but Latin composition, or versification of any complexity, would confuse him throughout his life.
He was apprenticed to Thomas Grinsell, a member of the Ironmongers' Company, who had married Walton's sister around 1605. Grinsell established himself as a successful cloth merchant in the parish of St. Dunstan's-in-the-West, London. Walton became a freeman of the Ironmongers' Company on 12 November 1618. From that point he, too, prospered in the cloth trade at various locations on Fleet Street and on Chancery Lane, first (apparently) as a seamster, later as a draper, and finally as a merchant.
Somehow Walton acquired a taste for poetry, in which he would dabble all his life, and that appetite was undoubtedly fed handsomely by the offerings of the prominent booksellers in his parish. By 1613 he had become sufficiently accomplished for a friend, "S. P.," to allude to his poetic abilities in verses prefixed to "The Love of Amos and Laura" in a volume published by Grinsell's neighbor Richard Hawkins.
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