Robert Pursglove

, received his first breath at a Market Town in Derbyshire called Tideswall, bred in puerile learning for some time there, afterwards in Grammar learning in S. Pauls School in London by the care and charge of his Uncle Will. Bradshaw; where continuing three years was afterwards placed in the Abery called S. Mary Overhee in Southwark. In which place being fitted for the University, he was sent to Corp. Ch. coll. in Oxford, and maintained there by his said Uncle for the space of fourteen years, but whether he took a degree in all that time, it doth not appear in our Registers, neither indeed of hundreds more, that have studied 7 or more years in Oxon, and therefore for that reason, and because we have no matriculation books above the time of Q. Elizab. the memory of many eminent Men in Church and State is lost. After he had left the University, being then esteemed an eminent Clerk, he was received into the Monastery of Gisbourne alias Gisburgh in Yorkshire, where taking upon him the habit of a Canon Regular, was at length elected Prior of that house. Afterwards upon a willing surrender of the said Monastery into the Kings hands, he had a considerable pension allowed to him, was made Provost of Rotheram coll. in Yorkshire, and on the death of Rob. Sylvester about the beginning of Q. Maries Reign, was made Archdeacon of Nottingham, and Suffragan B. of Hull under the Archb. of York, and, had other dignities and spiritualities confer’d on him. After Q. Elizabeth had been setled in the Throne for some time, the Oath of Supremacy was offered to him, but he denying to take it, was deprived of his Archdeaconry and other spiritualities. Whereupon the said Archdeaconry being given to Will. Day M. A. he was installed therein 24. Apr. 1560. as about the same time he was in the Prebendship of Ampleford in the Church of York, on the deprivation of Dr. Alb. Langdale of Cambridge. Pursglove being thus deprived, he retired to the place of his nativity, and with the wealth that he had heaped from the Church, founded a Grammar School there, and an Hospital for 12 poor and impotent people; as also a Grammar School at Gisbourne before-mentioned, the donation or patronage of which he gave to the Archbishop of York and his Successors for ever, an. 1575. This Clerk of great renown, as he is to this day stiled by the Men of Tideswall, 1579 gave way to fate on the second day of May in fifteen hundred seventy and nine, and was buried in the Church at Tideswall. Over his grave was a large monument erected, with twenty rude and barbarous verses in English engraven thereon; which being too many to set down in this place, I shall for brevity sake pass them by.