Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography/Purchas, Samuel

PURCHAS, Samuel, English clergyman, b. in Thaxted, Essex, England, in 1577; d. in London in 1628. He was educated at St. John's college, Cambridge, and in 1604 became vicar of Eastwood, Essex. Removing to London, he compiled from more than 1,300 authorities a work entitled “Purchas, his Pilgrimage; or, Relations of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered from the Creation unto this Present” (4 parts, folio, London, 1613; 4th ed., 1626), and “Hakluyt's Posthumus; or, Purchas, his Pilgrimes,” for which he used Hakluyt's manuscript collections, and which preserves the original narratives of the early English navigators and explorers of the western world (5 vols., folio, 1625-'6). He also published “The King's Tower and Triumphal Arch of London” (1623) and “Microcosmus, or the Historie of Man,” which is sometimes called Purchas's “Funeral Sermon” (1627).