Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/55

 Archbishop Scott, and held this office till the suppression of the college at the beginning of Edward VI's reign. On 29 Jan. 1550 he was installed archdeacon of Nottingham, in succession to Dr. Cuthbert Marshall.

His tenure of the bishopric of Hull continued under Holgate and Heath, the successors of Archbishop Lee, and the registers at York contain entries of numerous ordinations by him. But he was deprived of the office, as well as of his archdeaconry, in 1559 for refusing to take the oath of supremacy. Privy council commissioners under Elizabeth represent him as 'stiff in papistry and of estimation in the country.' He had no successor as bishop suffragan of Hull till the consecration of Archdeacon Blunt in April 1891.

In 1559, the year of his deprivation, Pursglove obtained letters patent from Elizabeth to found a grammar school at Tideswell, dedicated, like St. Paul's, to the child Jesus. Some of his statutes contain provisions resembling those of Colet, and a work of Erasmus is appointed as one of the textbooks. In the 'Return of Endowed Grammar Schools,' 1865, the income of this school is stated to be 206l. On 5 June 1563 he also obtained letters patent to found a similar school, bearing the same name, and also a hospital, or almshouse, at Guisborough. His deed of foundation, probably in his own hand, is dated 11 Aug. in that year. He placed both institutions under the visitatorial power of the archbishop of York, proof, apparently, that he finally acquiesced in the Elizabethan settlement of religion.

Pursglove resided in his last years partly at Tideswell and partly at Dunston in the same county, from which are dated a number of deeds of gift to his school and hospital at Guisborough (Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. App. pp. 348-9). He died on 2 May 1579, and he was buried in Tideswell church, where a fine brass marks his resting-place, and bears a long biographical inscription in doggerel.

[Wood's Athenae (a confused account); Lansdowne MS. 980, f. 127; Ord's Cleveland, 1846, pp. 189 sqq.; Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. App. pp. 348-9; Le Neve's Fasti; Tickell's History of Hull, p. 157; Pursglove, by R. W. Corlass, Hull, 1878; Gent. Mag. 1794, ii. 1101; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. vii. 135, 5th ser. v. 11, 12; Church Times, 28 July and 4 Aug. 1882 (containing two valuable letters from J. R. Lunn); letter in Morning Post, 8 April 1891; information from R. C. Seaton, esq., and from the present vicar of Tideswell, the Rev. Canon Andrew.]  PURTON, WILLIAM (1784–1825), stenographer, born in 1784, was the earliest known teacher, and in all probability the inventor, of one of the seven systems of stenography now practised by professional shorthand writers in the houses of parliament and the supreme court of judicature. He kept a school at Pleasant Row, Pentonville, and only taught shorthand to some favourite pupils. The earliest professional exponent of the system was Thomas Oxford, who learnt it from Purton in 1819, and it was subsequently improved by him and Mr. Hodges. Purton died in London about Christmas 1825, and was buried at Elim (baptist) Chapel, Fetter Lane, Holborn.

Purton did not print his system, but it was used by some of the most expert practitioners of the stenographic art. It is sometimes called Richardson's system; sometimes Counsell's. It was not till 1887, when Mr. Alexander Tremaine Wright printed a pamphlet on the subject, that the origin of this angular, ‘roughhewn, and unfinished’ system was traced to Purton. The alphabet, with the ‘arbitraries,’ was not published till the following year, when Mr. John George Hodges appended it to his work entitled ‘Some Irish Notes, 1843–1848, and other Work with the Purton System of Shorthand, as practised since 1825,’ London, 1888, 8vo.

[Wright's Purton System of Shorthand, London, 1887; Shorthand and Typewriting, November 1895.] 

PURVER, ANTHONY (1702–1777), translator of the bible, born in 1702, was son of a farmer at Hurstbourne, near Whitchurch, Hampshire. He showed much promise as a pupil at the village school; and, while serving as apprentice to a shoemaker, who was also a farmer, fell to studying Hebrew, after reading the ‘Rusticus ad Academicos’ of Samuel Fisher [q. v.] At twenty years of age he opened a school, but gave it up after three or four years to come to London, where he published his ‘Youth's Delight,’ 1727, continued his study of Hebrew, and became a quaker. About 1733 he began translating the Old Testament, an undertaking which occupied him at intervals for the rest of his life. He preached to quakers' meetings in London, Essex, and elsewhere; but about 1739 he married Rachell Cotterel, mistress of a girls' boarding-school at Frenchay, Gloucestershire, and, moving thither, recommenced teaching. In 1758 he returned to Hampshire, and died at Andover in July 1777, being buried in the Friends' burial-ground there.

About 1742, when Purver had completed