THE FIRE KINDLERS - CHAPTER 5

PURCHAS, HIS PILGRIMES

In the year 1577 at the Vicarage of Thaxted in Essex there was born a son to the Rev. George Purchas whom he called Samuel. He was destined to become one of the most distinguished men who ever bore the Fire Kindler's name. For such it was. Those were the days of liberty in spelling and we find his name spelt "Purcas" in the Registers of the Stationer's Company, while in the minutes of the East India Company it is spelt "Purkas". Samuel himself spelt it both "Purcas" and "Purchas" in various places but on the title pages of his colossal works it is always "Purchas" and as Samuel Purchas his name has gone down in history. Nevertheless many of his descendants now spell their name Purkis or Purkiss. There are, however, some bearing the name spelt Purchase to-day who are descended from the same branch of the family. He was connected with the London family of Sir William Purches who were at that time prominent in the East India Company.

Rev. Samuel Purchas graduated from St. John's College, Cambridge, and after taking holy orders became curate of Purleigh, near Maldon, Essex. He married about this time.

It appears that some of his biographers have got mixed up with another man of the same name, for one says that he was married in Suffolk in 1601 where he was engaged as butler to a country parson and that he married a maid-servant employed by the same gentleman. The age is given as twenty-three. Rev. Samuel Purchas was a year older, a clerk in holy orders, single and living at Purleigh at the time, he was, however, married in the same year. Others have claimed that he "wrote himself poor", that the cost of his voluminous productions got him into financial difficulties and that he died in a debtors' prison. There may have been a Samuel Purchas who died in a debtors' prison about the same time. But the Rev. Samuel Purchas was buried in the old Church of St. Martin's, Ludgate, of which he was rector, on September 30th, 1626, and his will proved on October 21st, 1626, shows him to have been fairly wealthy.

In 1604 he became vicar of Eastwood and in 1614 he was appointed Chaplain to the Archbishop of Cantabury and Rector of St. Martin's, Ludgate. He was the author of several minor works but his "Pilgrimage" and "Pilgrimes" are outstanding.

In the year of his death, '1626, the fourth, edition of his "Pilgrimage" was published in a volume of the same size and style as the four volumes of his "Pilgrimes". The five volumes are said to contain about five and one-half million words! Without a doubt it was at that time the biggest work that had ever been printed and still is possibly the largest literary work ever written and edited by one man. Copies of this work are now looked upon as rare bibliographical treasures and command fabulous prices whenever they happen to be sold. His learning and skill were so deep and versatile that he was called "our English Ptolemy".
In 1613 he published his first great work entitled "Purchas His Pilgrimage or Relations of the World and the Rel igions, Observed in All Ages and Places Discovered from the Creation unto this Present". It was a stout volume of 800 pages and was so popular that a second edition was required in the following year and yet another one during the year after. Besides being a study in comparative religion and customs, it contained much geography and history. It has been called a "world gazetteer". In 1619 he published another great book called "Purchas His Pilgrim: Microcosmos, or the Historie of Man". This was a work of a religious character.

In the course of his early life he made the acquaintance of and became associated with Archdeacon Haklyut the author of "Principall Navigations of the English Nation", who is said to have been appointed Historiographer to the East India Company in 1601. It looks strange from the distance of our times to see two clergymen devoting their lives to the geographical enlightenment of their fellow men, but the underlying cause was a religious one.

The King of Spain who claimed to be the lord of all the Indies was the champion of the Catholic cause. The young cause of Protestantism depended for its extension and development upon exploration to open up new fields for colonization and the development of foreign commerce so as to enlarge t h e sphere of England's domination and influence to such an extent that England should ever be capable of defying the power of Spain. So with a truly religious zeal Haklyut applied himself to his practical task. In 1616 he died, leaving a large collection of material out of which he intended to publish another volume, and he appointed his friend Samuel Purchas as "his editorial successor". In addition to this wealth of material he had a great deal that he had himself collected and through the family conne c tion with the East India Company he was successful in obtaining access to their records. As his stock of material accumulated, the idea of continuing Haklyut's work gave way to the more grandiose conception of a complete history of travel in all ages. The task was colossal; in dedicating the work to the Archbishop of Cantabury, he says that he had drawn upon more than 1,300 authors, and besides consulting all the printed works and manuscripts he could find, he had obtained many oral testimonies from those who had been on voyages of exploration themselves. However he began his stupendous task with high courage and continued with perseverance against hardships, ill health, and slender means until at last on January 10th, 1625, he was able to appear before t he Court of Committees of the East India Company to proudly exhibit his finished work of four folios, containing 4,262 pages, each of which held on the average 1,000 words. He was given a gratuity of one hundred pounds and the company purchased three set s of his volumes. Some idea of the scope of the work can be gained from the quaintly worded and elaborately engraved title page. The complete title reads-"Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas His Pilgrimes, containing a History of the World, in Sea Voyages and Land-Travell by Englishmen and Others. Wherein God's Wonders in Nature and Providence, The Actes, Arts, Varieties and Vanities of Men, with a World of the World's Rarities are by a World of Eyewitnesse-Authors, Related to the World. Some left written by Mr. Hakluyt at his death, More since added, His also persued and perfected. All examined, abreviated, illustrated with Notes, Enlarged with Discourses, Adorned with Pictures and Expressed in Mapps. In Fower Parts. Each containing five Bookes. By Samuel Purchas, B.D.".

The composition of the title page itself is some reflection of the author's ingenuity. The lengthy title is flanked by thirty medallion portraits of the world's great travellers, beginning with Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob including Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus of Persia, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Saint Paul, Constantine, Tamberlain, Canute, Richard I, Christopher Columbus, Cabot, Magellan, Drake, John Davis and others of his own time. In the centre at the top is a picture of the Israelites marching through the desert with the Shekinah before them and the Tabernacle in the foreground; above, in the clouds as a vision is the New Jerusalem, a four-square city, with the text "These were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. God hath prepared for them a city." Heb. II. This is flanked on the left with full portraits of King James I and Prince Charles with the United Kingdom in the background, and on the right with a picture of Prince Henry weeping beside Queen Elizabeth's tomb. Below in the centre are two small pictures representing the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot and the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

Below the title and the portraits of the world's great voyagers is a portrait of the author (aetat 48) with the name spelt Samuel Purcas and an anagram formed therefrom "Pars sua celum". This is flanked by illustrated maps of the two hemispheres, pictures of the sun, moon and stars, the compass and the globe. The entire page is plentifully labelled with apt quotations from Scripture in Latin, English and Hebrew. At the foot of the page is the publisher's mark: "Imprinted at London for Henry Fetherston, at the signe of the Rose in Paul's Churchyard, 1625."

The illustrations in the book are mostly maps by Hondius and others including Baffin's map of India.

The printing of the work began in 1621 and it came off the press in instalments during four years. The first book of the first volume dealt with the travels of the Apostles; the second with Circumnavigation; the third, fourth and fi fth with English voyages to the East Indies; the sixth and seventh with Africa; the eighth with Palestine and Turkey; the ninth with Persia, Arabia and India, and the tenth with Japan, India, Persia, Turkey, Malay Peninsula and Brazil. The first two book s of the second volume deal with Tartary, China and the Phillipines; the third and fourth with the search for the Northeast and Northwest Passages, as well as with Russia, Iceland and Spitzbergen; the fifth, sixth and seventh with West Indies, Mexico and S o uth America; the eighth with Florida, Mexico, Central America and Canada; the ninth with Virginia and Bermuda; and the tenth with New England, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. Indeed, it would be tiresome to barely indicate the entire contents of the four v olumes. Of course, it contains a full account of the contest with Spain, the conquest of the Armada, the expeditions of Drake and Cabot.

In 1626 a fifth volume was added, of 1,100 pages and over a million words. It contained a fresh edition of his former book "Purchas, His Pilgrimage" as well as considerable material that had been collected since the publication of the first four volumes. One of its interesting features is an epitome of the "Saracenical Historie" of Al-Makin, from the Latin version published at Leiden in 1625.

The amazing fact about this enormous task was that all the work of editing, copying, annotating, and abridging was done by Samuel Purchas, himself aided only by his young son, for he tells us that he was unable to afford to keep " a subordinate scribe". He had to preach in St. Martin's on Sundays and occasionally he gave lectures during the week in order to augment his income, for, after he had plunged into the expensive project, his brother-in-law died leaving him executor of a tangled estate and the obligation of providing for the destitute family.

The work was done in Chelsea College, a foundation for the use of clergy devoted to the task of defending the established religion or writing the annals of their times. Chelsea Hospital now stands on the site once occupied by the college. "It had not beene possible," he writes, "for me in London distractions to have accomplished so great a designe, but for the opportunities of His Majesties' Colledge at Chelsie, where these foure last summers I have retired myselfe to this worke."

King James 1 and Prince Charles took a great interest in the work, the former promised him a deanery shortly before he died with the promise unfulfilled, the latter informed him that the reading of the "Pilgrimes" " would be his nightly task".

Possibly the friendship of the Stuarts is in some measure the reason for the uncharitableness of his critics of the Commonwealth period. They all sang the praises of Haklyut, who inclined towards Puritanism and belittle d and censured the works of Purchas. Most modern biographers seem to have repeated those criticisms without consideration of their merit. There is no doubt that he showed poor judgment in attempting a task so much greater than he could execute with efficiency. As a result the early part of his work is filled with trivial notes and editorial comments while in the latter parts the narratives are sometimes slashed and pared to the bone for the sake of brevity. Moreover he admits that he did not always find time to read proofs.

It is small wonder that some of his accounts do not exactly correspond with the manuscripts from which they were taken or in such a huge undertaking under the direction of one man, that a few valuable documents should have been mislaid. But to brand him as untruthful and careless on those accounts, and to say because his name appears in his titles and his picture on the title page that he was conceited and self centred, and that his motive for attempting so great a task was self-agra ndisement, sounds to me more like the voice of passion and prejudice, so loudly proclaimed in those stormy days, than the voice of justice and reason.

Only a few months after the great work was completed he died, exhausted by his unremitting labours. He was buried in St. Martin's Church, Ludgate, of which he was Rector. This church was destroyed in the great fire of London and when it was rebuilt there was no monument placed therein to commemorate him. He had given his whole life, and all his intellectual powers as well as his physical powers to the performance of his great task.

The torch he caught from Haklyut's hands he had held high and it burned yet more brightly as he ran his swift, short race. How great have been the fires kindled by the sparks that fell therefrom! His tales of travel blazed the trail and kindled the imagination of those brave men who in the next two centuries pushed Britain's commerce to the uttermost parts of the earth. He lit up the way for those missionaries who bore the tor ch of the Gospel into the depths of India, to darkest Africa and far across the seven seas. Few have there been more worthy of the name he bore. May some small sparks of his dauntless enthusiasm, his indefatigable energy inflame our own souls.