Abstract
Charles Cotton was a close friend of Izaak Walton and wrote the second part of The Compleat Angler. It is not surprising that Walton and Cotton shared the common political belief and religious faith, royalist and Anglican. In this paper, it will be suggested that Cotton quite possibly was connected with the Great Tew Circle, an Anglican latitudinarian group, some of the chief members of which were Walton's close friends. Friendship between Walton and Cotton seems to have been long and strong, and the evidence of it is found in Cotton's verse, their epistles, and the second part of The Compleat Angler. Cotton was quite explicit about his zealous royalist opinions in his verses, and celebrated the King's return and the Restoration. Three members of the Great Tew Circle can be mentioned in relation to the life of Cotton. Clarendon, a member and the most influential politician of the Restoration England, was a friend of Cotton's father. Cotton also wrote that he had 'been favoured' by another member of the circle, Sheldon, who was a post-Restoration Archbishop of Canterbury. Lastly, in one of his poems, Cotton severely criticized Edmund Waller, an ex-member of the circle, for writing a panegyric on Oliver Cromwell.
