Edmund Gayton

Edmund Gayton (1608–1666) was an English academic, physician and writer, now considered a hack writer.

Life The son of George Gayton of Little Britain, London, he was born there 30 November 1608. In 1623 he entered Merchant Taylors' School, and went to St John's College, Oxford, in 1625. He proceeded B.A. 30 April 1629, and M.A. 9 May 1633, and was elected fellow of his college.

Gayton visited the wits in London, and claimed to be a "son of Ben", one of Ben Jonson's followers (the sons of Ben). In 1636 he was appointed superior beadle (bedel) in arts and physic in Oxford University, and was in the same year one of the actors in Love's Hospital, or the Hospital for Lovers, a dramatic entertainment provided by William Laud when the king and queen were his guests at St. John's College (30 August 1636). He also produced two Oxford broadsides, Epulæ Oxonienses, or a jocular relation of a banquet presented to the best of kings by the best of prelates, in the year 1636, in the Mathematic Library at St. Jo. Bapt. Coll. (song with music in two parts), and A Ballad on the Gyants in the Physic Garden in Oxon., Oxford, 1662.