Highmore Skeats. In 1830 he succeeded Bennett as organist of New College, Oxford, and won repute for his skilful playing. He became Mus. Bac. Oxon. 1831, and Mus. Doc. 1838. He was organist of St. Mary's (University) Church, and from 1846 organist of St. John's College. While Dr. Crotch held simultaneously the offices of professor of music and choragus at Oxford, Elvey acted as his deputy in all professorial matters for some years before Crotch died at the end of 1847. In 1848 the offices were divided. Sir Henry Bishop becoming professor, and Dr. Elvey choragus. He retained his appointments until his death, October 1800, at the age of fifty-five.
Elvey made a few but not unimportant contributions to sacred music. The well-known 'Evening Service in continuation of Croft's Morning Service in A,' since re-edited by Dr. Martin, dates from about 1825, when Elvey was lay-clerk at Canterbury Cathedral. The 'Oxford Psalm Book,' 1852, containing six original tunes, was inspired by the 'increasing attention to music shown by the congregational character of the singing before university sermons,' and 'The Psalter, or Canticles and Psalms of David, Pointed for Chanting upon a Now Principle,' 1856, followed by 'The Canticles,' 1858, have gone through many editions. The author's earnest care and tact in these compilations helped to effect improvement in the conduct of the services of the established church.
[Stephen Elvey's Musical Works, mentioned above; Oxford Calendars: Alumni Oxonienses; Gent. Mag., 1860, ccix. 557; Jackson's Oxford Journal, 12 Feb. 1848; Grove's Dict. of Music, i. 487]
ELVIDEN, EDMUND (fl. 1570), poet, was the author of three poetical works of extreme rarity:
- 'A Neweyere's gift to the Rebellious Persons in the North partes of England; primo Januar. 1570,' sm. 8vo, black letter, pp. 20, 'printed at London in Powles Churchyard, at the signe of Love and Death, by Richard Watkins.'
- 'The Closit of Counsells, conteining the advyse of Divers Wyse Philosophers touchinge sundrye morall matters in Poesies, Preceptes, Prouerbes, and Parables, translated and collected out of divers aucthours into English verse,' 1569, 8vo, London.
- 'The most excellent and pleasant Metaphoricall History of Pesistratus and Catanea,' 8vo, London, n.d. The only known copy of the latter work, which is quoted by Todd in his edition of Milton, is in the library of the Earl of Ellesmere; the British Museum possesses none of the three books. Of Elviden's personal history nothing is known. From the closing lines of his 'Neweyere's Gift,'
This wrote your frende, a wyshynge frende
Unto his natyve soil,
it would seem that he was a north-countryman.
[Corser's Collect. Anglo-Poet. pt. vi. p. 341; Lowndes's Bibliograph. Man.]
ELWALL, EDWARD (1676–1744), Sabbatarian, born at Ettingshall, a hamlet in the parish of Sedgley, Staffordshire, was baptised on 9 Nov. 1676, his parents being Thomas and Elizabeth Elwall. According to his own account his ancestors had been settled in Wolverhampton 'above 1,100 years.' Marrying in his twenty-third year, he went into business in Wolverhampton as a mercer and grocer. Dr. Johnson calls him an ironmonger. He frequented the Bristol and Chester fairs, became popular as an honest tradesman, and made 'an easy fortune.' Out of his gains he built a block of eighteen houses, half a mile from Wolverhampton, in the Dudley Road, known as Elwall's Buildings, and taken down about 1846. Elwall and his wife were presbyterians; he gives a graphic description of the attack on the presbyterian meeting-house at Wolverhampton by a high church mob in 1715. He headed a party of seven or eight who defended the building from being pulled down. The rabble threatened his house, but his wife threw money from the window, and the marauders were content with drinking the health of James III on his doorstep. As he rode down Bilston Street he was fired at, from political rather than personal ill-will; at the coffee-house and town meetings he had been a prominent supporter of Hanoverian politics.
His visits to Bristol seem to have brought about his first religious change. A baptist minister immersed him and his wife in the Severn. He did not then cease attending the presbyterian congregation (of which his wife was always a member). One John Hays of Stafford 'put notions about the Trinity' into his head, and he became a unitarian. John Stubbs, the presbyterian minister at Wolverhampton, preached against him, and Elwall became, according to his wife's account, 'a churchman.' He wrote six letters to the Archbishop of Canterbury (Wake), and received four in reply, without being convinced on the subject of the Trinity. He was probably drawn towards the quakers through sympathy with Penn's views on this topic; he adopted some of their modes of thought and peculiar turns of expression. But his scripture studies led him to a close if
