Elton, Edward c.1569-1624

Church of England clergyman, Bachelor in Divinity, and Preacher of God's Word at Saint Marie Magdalen Bermondsey near London.

(The following is from "Old Southwark and Its People" by William Rendle (1878), page 288)
Elton was an eminent Puritan, and was installed (in the pastorate of Saint Marie Magdalens Bermondsey) in 1605. In 1617, Elson came into collision with some of his parishioners as to the Maypole, "which had been used for honest mirth and recreation from the time when the memory of man runneth not to the contrary." Some of these parishioners, with friends, of the Artillery Garden, intended sport, but Parson Elton would not have it so, and desired the constable to strike out the heads of their drums, and he preaced against it many Sabbath days, and called the Maypole people bad names. Further Elton and his people "assaulted the said Maypole, and did, with hatchets, saws, or otherwise, cut down the same, divided it into serval pieces, and carried it into Elton's yard," and from the words, "he kept the same to his own private use, " it is to be feared that he actually lit his kitchen fires with the Maypole. No doubt Parson Elton was a type of those who did not know human nature. A caricature was published in the time of these "unco'righteous," in which the Puritan "is hanging of his cat on Monday for killing a mouse on Sunday." Elton seems to have caught little of this spirit, rather than that which was in Chaucer's poor parson.

(The following is from The Boxmaker's Revenge: 'Orthodoxy', 'Heterodoxy', and the Politics of the Parish in Early Stuart London (2001) by Peter Lake)
On 13 February 1625 two books by the recently deceased puritan minister of Bermondsey in Southward, Edward Elton, were publicly burned at the Cross. The two books in question -- Elton's God's Holy Mind, a cetechetically organised explication of the ten commandments, and a pendant Plain and Easy Exposition of the Lord's Prayer -- were dispatched to the flames as 'scandalous and seditious, tending to innovation and to the subversion of the religion and piety which is received amoung us'. According to a newletter to Joseph Mede of 18 February the books had been burned for 'containing schismatical doctrine of the Lord's day and the administration of the sacrament'. The errors attributed to Elton included a denial of the lawfulness of private communion, a number of extreme sabbatarian opinions, a ban on marriage with papists, suspect notions about the validity of infant baptism and a denunciation of the use of the Lord's Prayer and music in the worship of God.
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An Exposition of the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Colossians, Delivered in Sundry Sermons, Preached by Edward Elton, Minister of God's Word at St. Mary Magdalens Bermondsey, neere London: An now by him published, intending the further good of his charge, and the profit of as many as shall please to reade it. The Second Edition, revised and corrected by the Author - 1620
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