Simon Burton (1613–1663), publisher, was baptized on 18 July 1613 in the parish of St

Augustine, Watling Street, London, the eldest child of Francis Burton (c.1578–1617) and
Joane (fl.1597–1617). His father was the son of William Burton of Onibury, Shropshire, and
a freeman of the Stationers’ Company. Formerly an apprentice of Thomas Adams, Francis
Burton sold books from several addresses in St Paul’s Churchyard and was linked to a group
of stationers. In June 1616, shortly before his death, he was admitted to the livery of the
Stationers’ Company. Henry Featherstone acted as overseer of his will.

Simon Burton was bound apprentice on 26 March 1628 to William Aspley, and made free
of the Stationers’ Company on 2 May 1636. His first publication was an English translation
from the Latin of Jacob Rüff’s The Expert Midwife, or An Excellent and most necessary
Treatise of the generation and birth of Man (1637). Copyright for this work was entered in
the Stationers’ Register on 2 August 1637. It was printed by Edward Griffin and sold by
Thomas Alchorn at the Green Dragon in St Paul’s Churchyard. With the death in 1640 of his
grandmother, Joanne Bright, Burton appears to have acquired the lease of the Green Dragon.
One of the shop’s tenants was Octavian Pulleyn, at this time a business partner of the London
stationer George Thomason. Thomason, formerly an apprentice of Henry Featherstone, was
appointed an overseer of Joanne Bright’s will. The other appointed overseer of the will was
Thomas Totney. A freeman of the Fishmongers’ Company, Totney had married Alice Burton
(1615–1648), Burton’s younger sister, by licence, most likely on 25 March 1636; Burton’s
other sister, Joan (1614–fl.1663), married Richard Taylor (c.1606–fl.1663), graduate of
Trinity College, Cambridge, and afterwards clerk of St James’s, Duke’s Place, London, and
vicar of Ramsay, Essex. In the later 1630s Totney was living in the parish of St Katherine
Creechurch, and by 1640 Burton was keeping a publisher’s shop in the parish. The shop was
next to the Mitre tavern near Aldgate, and it was from this address that Burton issued Visions,
or, Hels Kingdome, And the Worlds Follies and Abuses, Strangely displaied (1640), a
translation – with amplifications, additions and deletions – of a French text of Francisco de
Quevedo’s Suenõs y discursos (1627) by Richard Crowshaw, gentleman of the Inner Temple.
This was followed by Hell Reformed or A Glasse for Favorits, a rendering into English of a
French version of de Quevedo’s Èl infierno enmendado (Gerona, 1628) by Edward Messervy.
Perhaps Burton enjoyed modest success as a publisher for on 5 April 1642 he invested £50 in
Irish land; his lot of 111 acres was to fall in the south-west quarter of the barony of Decies,
co. Waterford (Munster province).
 Little is known of Burton’s publishing activities in the Civil Wars. Some time between
December 1645 and September 1646 he married Judith, widow of James Alford, citizen and
grocer of London. In May 1649, together with his brother-in-law Totney, Burton stood bound
by recognizance for £80 for the orphaned children of his wife’s former husband (just over a
decade later he would take one as an apprentice). Burton evidently maintained contact with
Totney for in February 1651 he published a book by Totney, now, after a prophetic
revelation, calling himself TheaurauJohn Tany. This was His Aurora in Tranlagorum in
Salem Gloria. On 13 August 1651 Tany was convicted on the charge of blasphemy at the
London sessions of the peace held at the Old Bailey; Burton, the publisher of the Aurora,
appears to have escaped unpunished.

Though Burton’s whereabouts in 1651 are unknown, it is clear that by March 1652 he was
living in the parish of St Katherine Creechurch; his wife Judith was buried in the church on 3
February 1653. Notwithstanding his failure to pay tithes, Burton served as a parish constable
in 1654, questman in 1655, ancient in 1660, and was twice nominated as a collector for the
poor. On 21 March 1661 he took out a lease for twenty-one years at 40s. per annum for a
shop at the sign of the Green Dragon in St Paul’s Churchyard. When making his will in May
1663, Burton described himself as living in Whitechapel, London. His death some weeks
afterwards was recorded in the obituary of Richard Smith, which described him as ‘an
oyleman wthout Algate, sometime prentice to Mr. Aspley, bookseller’. In accordance with his
dying wish, he was buried on 23 July 1663 in the parish of St Katherine Creechurch. He was
survived by three daughters and a son. These were Alice; Frances (d.1678), who married
Augustine Steward (d.1676), citizen and salter of London; Elizabeth (fl.1677), who married
Thomas Crosse; and Simon (d.1677), who was made free of the Stationers’ Company by
patrimony on 1 April 1672.