Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Kelton, Arthur
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.]