Royal in 1737, was organist of St. John's, Hackney, from 1753 to 1764.
[Purcell, in the Great Musicians Series, by W. H. Cummings, is the most complete biography that has yet appeared; see also Grove's Dict. of Music, ii. 183, iii. 46–52; Hawkins's Hist. ed. 1853, pp. 743–5; Old Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal, ed. Rimbault; Chester's Westminster Abbey Registers; Pedigree of Purcell family in Visitations of Shropshire; Downes's Roscius Anglicanus; Companion to the Playhouse, vol. ii.; Advertisements in London Gazette, &c.; Musical Times, November and December 1895; prefaces and compositions in Musical Antiq. Soc. and Purcell Soc. editions; printed and manuscript compositions in Brit. Mus., Royal Coll. of Music, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, private collections, &c.; Gentleman's Journal and Monthly Miscellany, 1692; Cat. of Portraits in the Music and Inventions Exhibition, 1885, and in the exhibition of Purcell relics, Brit. Mus. 1895; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. x. 210; information from Mr. W. Barclay Squire.]
PURCELL, JOHN (1674?–1730), physician, was born in Shropshire about 1674, and in 1696 became a student of medicine in the university of Montpellier, where he attended the lectures of Pierre Chirac, then professor of medicine, for whom he retained a great respect through life (Of Vapours, p. 48). After taking the degrees of bachelor and licentiate, he graduated M.D. on 29 May 1699. He practised in London, and in 1702 published ‘A Treatise of Vapours or Hysteric Fits,’ of which a second edition appeared in 1707. The book is dedicated to ‘the Honourable Sir John Talbott, his near relation,’ and gives a detailed clinical account of many of the phenomena of hysteria, mixed up with pathology of the school of Thomas Willis [q. v.] His preface is the latest example of the type of apology for writing on medicine in the English tongue so common in books of the sixteenth century. He shows much good sense, pointing out that there are no grounds for the ancient belief that the movement of the uterus is related to the symptoms of hysteria, and supports the statement of Sydenham that similar symptoms are observable in men. Their greater frequency in women he attributes to the comparative inactivity of female life. He recommends crayfish broth and Tunbridge waters, but also seeing plays, merry company, and airing in the parks. In 1714 he published, at J. Morphew's, ‘A Treatise of the Cholick,’ dedicated to his relative, Charles, duke of Shrewsbury, of which a second edition appeared in 1715. This work shows less observation than his former book, but contains the description of an autopsy which he witnessed at Montpellier, giving the earliest observation in any English book of the irritation produced by the exudation in peritonitis on the hands of the morbid anatomist. On 3 April 1721 he was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians of London. He died on 19 Dec. 1730.
[Munk's Coll. of Phys. ii. 77; Astruc's Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de la Faculté de Médecine de Montpelier, Paris, 1767; Works.]
PURCELL, RICHARD (fl. 1750–1766), engraver, was born in Dublin, and there studied mezzotint engraving under John Brooks and Andrew Miller. Between 1748 and 1755 he executed in Dublin a few plates, all now extremely rare, which include portraits of Michael Boyle, archbishop of Armagh, after Zoest: William King, archbishop of Dublin, after Jervas; Oliver Cromwell, after Lely; Samuel Madden, D.D., after Hunter; and three of William III, after Kneller and Wyck. In 1755 or 1756 Purcell settled in London. His abilities were sufficient to have enabled him to take a high position in his profession; but his vicious and extravagant habits kept him in poverty, and delivered him into the hands of Sayer, the printseller, for whom he worked almost exclusively. Sayer employed him chiefly to execute copies of popular prints by McArdell, Watson, Houston, Faber, &c., from pictures by Reynolds and others, and on many of these he used the aliases Charles Corbutt and Philip Corbutt. Purcell's original plates comprise portraits of the Rev. Thomas Jones, after M. Jenkin; John, earl of Bute, after A. Ramsay, 1763; and John Wilkes, after R. Pine, 1764; various subject-pieces after H. Morland, R. Pyle, G. Dou, G. Metsu, G. Schalken, Rembrandt, and others; and some caricatures. Purcell also etched a portrait of a man seated with a print in his hand, from a picture by Rembrandt, 1766; this is the latest date on any of his works, and is probably the year of his death.
[Chaloner Smith's British Mezzotinto Portraits; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists.]
PURCHAS, JOHN (1823–1872), divine and author, eldest son of William Jardine Purchas, captain in the navy, was born at Cambridge on 14 July 1823, and educated at Rugby from 1836. He proceeded to Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1844 and M.A. 1847. He was curate of Elsworth, Cambridgeshire, from 1851 to 1853, curate of Orwell in the same county from 1856 to 1859, curate of St. Paul's, West Street, Brighton, from 1861 to 1866, and perpetual curate of St. James's Chapel, Brighton, in 1866. Into the services of St. James's Chapel, Purchas introduced
