Born at Thaxted, studied at St. John’s College, Cambridge, and became vicar of Eastwood in 1604, and in 1614 rector of St. Martin’s, Ludgate. His great works were “Purchas his Pilgrimage, or Relations of the World in all Ages” (1613; 4th ed. enlarged, 1626), and “Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes” (based on the papers of Hakluyt, 1625). Another work is “Purchas his Pilgrim; Microcosmus, or the History of Man” (1619).

  This my first Voyage of Discoverie, besides mine owne pore stocke laide thereon, hath made mee indebted to above twelve hundred Authours, of one or other kinde, in I know not how many hundredths of their Treatises, Epistles, Relations, and Histories, of divers Subjectes and Languages, borrowed by my selfe; besides what (for want of the Authors themselves) I have taken upon trust of other men’s goods in their hands.

  This worthy divine, who is by some stiled our English-Ptolemy … being desirous to forward his natural geny he had to the collecting and writing of voyages, travels, and pilgrimages, left his cure to his brother.

  Is not only valuable for the various instruction and amusement contained in it, but is also very estimable on a national and, I may add, a religious account.

  These vast and valuable collections are an honour to the reigns of Elizabeth and James, and, notwithstanding the industry and research of the moderns, have not yet been superseded.

  The “Pilgrimes and Pilgrimage” of Purchas … exhibit a monument of care, diligence, and research, that, of its kind, can hardly be surpassed.

  Imbued by nature, like Hakluyt, with a strong bias towards geographical studies, after having formed an extensive library in that department, and consulted, as he professes, above 1,200 authors, published the first volume of his “Pilgrim,” a collection of voyages in all parts of the world, 1613: four more followed in 1625. The accuracy of this useful compiler has been denied by those who have had better means of knowledge, and probably is inferior to that of Hakluyt; but his labor was far more comprehensive. The “Pilgrim” was, at all events, a great source of knowledge to the contemporaries of Purchas.

  But the work by which alone Purchas’s name is now known is “Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Land-Trauells by Englishmen and others…,” with portrait on the title-page, ætat. 48 (4 vols. 4to, 1625; the fourth edition of the “Pilgrimage” being exactly the same size, is frequently catalogued as the fifth volume of the “Pilgrimes;” it is really a totally different work). This work has never been reprinted, and its rarity, still more than its interest, has given it an exaggerated value to book collectors. The intrinsic value of the book is due rather to its having preserved some record of early voyages otherwise unknown, than to the literary skill or ability of the author. It may fairly be supposed that the originals of many of the journals entrusted to him, of which he published an imperfect abstract, were lost through his carelessness; so that the fact that the “Pilgrimes” contains the only extant account of some voyages is by his fault, not by his merit. A comparison of what he has printed with such originals as remain shows that he was very far indeed from a faithful editor or a judicious compiler, and that he took little pains to arrive at an accurate knowledge of facts. He inherited many of the manuscripts of Richard Hakluyt, but the use he made of them was widely different from Hakluyt’s.