"Virginia's Verger", by Samuel Purchas (Hardwick MS 56)

This manuscript is Samuel Purchas' text on "Virginia's Verger". This scribal copy is dedicated to the Right Honorable Henry Earl of Southampton, Barron of Titchfield, Knight of the Honorable Order of the Garter, Governor of the Isle of Wight, one of his Majesty's Privy Council and Treasurer of Virginia. The dedication is written in Samuel Purchas' hand and signed by him. The main body of the text is handwirtten by a scribe.

After the dedicatory epistle the book begins with Greek text and ends with "Be though the Alpha and omega of England's plantation in Virginia, O God." "Virginia's Verger," is an ideological justification for English settlement in Virginia in the wake of the Powhatan uprising of 1622 and formed part of the printed publication, "Pilgrimes" by Purchas, published in 1625. This copy includes topics of the text added to the margins and detailed notes added to pp. 14-15 by another hand.

A printed version of the text can be found in: Purchas his Pilgrimes, contayning a History of the World in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells, by Englishmen and others (4 vols.), (1625). Reprinted in 1905-1907 in 20 volumes. An online version of the published text is availabel from Cambridge University Press: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781316050736.016.

Mention of this volume is made in TheRoyal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Third Report (1872) p.44.

Samuel Purchas, (born c. 1577, Thaxted, Essex, Eng. died 1626, London), English compiler of travel and discovery writings who continued the encyclopaedic collections begun by the British geographer Richard Hakluyt in Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas his Pilgrimes; Contayning a History of the World, in Sea Voyages and Lande Travells, by Englishmen and Others (4 vol., 1625; 20 vol., 1905- 07).

Purchas studied at St. John s College, Cambridge, and at the University of Oxford. He was vicar first of a Thames-side parish in Essex and later in London, and he met many seafarers in the course of his duties. As an editor and compiler he sought to interest the general public of his day. During a time when travel literature had the patriotic purpose of inspiring Englishmen to engage in overseas expansion and enterprise, his collections were read with enthusiasm. Though Purchas lacked the editorial genius of Hakluyt, his collection is frequently the only source of information on important questions relating to geographical history and early exploration. Nearly two centuries after it was first published, Purchas his Pilgrimes was the favourite reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

[Source: Samuel Purchas, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Purchas [Accessed 3 June 2021]]