Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 30.djvu/365

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Kelsey belonged to the party in the army which followed the lead of Fleetwood and Lambert (Ludlow, Memoirs, p. 240, ed. 1751, folio). He was one of the officers who presented the army petition of 13 May 1659 to the restored Long parliament (Mercurius Politicus, May 1659, p. 437). That body appointed him one of the commissioners of the admiralty (30 May 1659), and confirmed him as captain of Dover Castle, 18 July 1659 (Commons' Journals, vii. 669, 723). On the royalist rising in August of that year Kelsey was empowered to raise a regiment of a thousand men in Kent, and was employed in arresting Kentish conspirators (ib. vii. 749; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1659–60, pp. 50, 68, 84). On 12 Oct. 1659 he was deprived of his commission by parliament for his share in the army petition, and supported Lambert in his expulsion of parliament (Commons' Journals, vii. 796). On the triumph of parliament Kelsey was consequently deprived of the government of Dover and of his regiment, and ordered to repair to his house in the country furthest from London under threat of arrest, 9 Jan. 1660. In March 1660 he engaged himself to the council of state not to do anything prejudicial to the then government (ib. vii. 806, 812; Mercurius Politicus, 19 March 1660). On the Restoration he thought necessary to fly to the continent, and lived at Arnheim, Rotterdam, and other places in Holland (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1663–4, pp. 88, 257, 266, 279). On 21 April 1666 the English government published a proclamation ordering Kelsey and others to return to England on penalty of incurring the punishment of high treason (ib. 1665–6, pp. 342, 358). A letter to Sir Robert Paston in February 1672 states that Kelsey and Desborough had obtained by the intercession of Mr. Blood the king's permission to return to England (Hist. MSS. Comm. 6th Rep. p. 368; cf. 7th Rep. p. 464). Wood states that Kelsey ‘took upon him the trade of brewing in London,’ lived ‘at least twenty years’ after the Restoration, and ‘died but in a mean condition’ (Fasti, ed. Bliss, ii. 111). Kelsey married the sister of John Graunt [q. v.] (Wood, Life, ed. Clarke, i. 433).

[Authorities cited in the text.]

C. H. F.

KELTON, ARTHUR (fl. 1546), versifier, seems to have been son and heir to Thomas Kelton of Shrewsbury, by Mary, daughter of George Ponsbury. Wood says that he was thought to be a Welshman, but this may easily be reconciled with a Shropshire origin. He was for a time a student at Oxford, though his name does not appear in the registers. He applied himself to history. ‘But being withal very poetically given, he must forsooth write and publish his lucubrations in verse; whereby, for rhime's sake, many material matters, and the due timing of them, are omitted, and so consequently rejected by historians and antiquaries.’ He was alive in the reign of Edward VI, and married Joan, daughter of Richard Morgan, by whom he had a son, William. Kelton published: 1. ‘Book of Poetry in Praise of the Welshmen,’ printed probably by Grafton in 1546. No copy seems now accessible; from the extracts supplied by Bliss, Kelton seems to have been of the reforming party in church matters. It was dedicated to Sir William Herbert (fl. 1604) [q. v.] 2. ‘A Chronicle with a Genealogie declaring that the Brittons and Welshmen are … dyscended from Brute,’ b.l., London, 1547, 12mo. The genealogy traces the descent of Edward VI, to whom the book was dedicated, from Brute. The chronicle appears to have been written in the reign of Henry VIII.

[Wood's Athenæ Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 73; Tanner's Bibl. Brit. p. 451; Brit. Mus. Cat. of Early Printed Books; Ames's Typogr. Antiq. (Herbert), p. 523.]

W. A. J. A.

KELTRIDGE, JOHN (fl. 1581), divine, matriculated in 1565 at Trinity College, Cambridge, and proceeded B.A. 1571–2, M.A. 1575. On 14 July 1579 he was incorporated M.A. at Oxford. He was a good preacher, and an ordination sermon by him at Fulham (16 May 1577) attracted notice; on 20 July 1577 he was presented by Queen Elizabeth to the vicarage of Dedham, Essex, but resigned the living before 20 Dec. 1578. In 1579 he was sent by Aylmer, bishop of London, to Cookham, Berkshire, to supply the place of a puritan minister who had been suspended by the ecclesiastical commission, but ‘one Welden, a person of some note in Cookham,’ seems to have prevented him from officiating. In 1581 he describes himself as ‘a preacher of the Word of God in London,’ and was residing in Holborn. His death appears to have taken place in the Norwich diocese.

Keltridge is the author of: 1. ‘The Exposition and Readynges of John Keltridge … upon the wordes of our Saviour Christe, that bee written in the xi. of Luke. Imprinted at London by William How, for Abraham Veale,’ 1578, 4to, b.l. Prefixed is a dedication to Aylmer and a long letter to the reader by the author, together with a Latin epistle and a copy of elegiacs addressed to the author by Cambridge friends. After the ‘Exposition’ follows, at p. 219, the sermon preached at the ordination in 1577, which