Elton

Elton, CHARLES ISAAC, of Whitestaunton, Somerset, an eminent jurist and ethnologist, was born in 1839, maternal grandson of Sir Charles Abraham Elton (1778–1853), of Clevedon Court, Somerset, poet and translator of Hesiod. He had his education at Cheltenham and Balliol College, Oxford, became Fellow of Queen's College in 1862, was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1865, and afterwards became Q.C. He was returned to parliament in the Conservative interest for West Somerset at the bye-election in 1884, was defeated for the West or Wellington division of Somersetshire at the general election of 1885, but again returned at the election the year after. He had already made a reputation as a jurist by his books, The Tenures of Kent (1867), A Treatise on Commons and Waste Lands (1868), A Treatise on Copyholds and Customary Tenures of Land (1874), and Custom and Tenant Right (1882), when he placed himself in the front rank of English ethnologists by his Origins of English History (1882). Not the least merit of this learned and ably reasoned work is its vindication of the Celtic element in the English race, which had been unduly minimised by the predominant Teutonic school of English history. The dissertation on Borough English (q.v.) is a masterpiece of learning and lucidity.