PURVEY, JoHN, the friend and fellow-labourer of Wycliffe, with whom he lived in his latter years. His denunciations of the errors of the Romish Church, as well as his endeavours to make the Bible accessible to the people at large, by translat ing it into English, drew upon him the severest penalties which it was in the power of the hierarchy to inflict. He was forbidden, by a mandate of the Bishop of Bristol, dated Aug. 1387, to preach in the diocese where he officiated after the death of Wycliffe ; his books were declared as erroneous and heretical, and were among those which the bishops of Worcester, Salisbury, and Hereford were autho rised to seize (May 29, 1388 ; Jan. 18, Dec. 16, 1389). Some years after, however, he made a re cantation at St. Paul's Cross (Sunday, March 6, 1401), and was admitted (Aug. 11, 1401), on the presentation of the Archdeacon of Canterbury, to the vicarage of Westhithe in Kent, which he resigned Oct. 8, 1403. He then returned to the simple teach ing of the Bible, denouncing the erroneous doctrines of the church, for which he was again imprisoned, and, in 1421, recanted a second time at Saltwood before Archbishop Arundel. He is suppcsed to have died about 1427. Purvey immortalised his name through his translation of the Scriptures into English. As the Bible, of late translated by Wycliffe, required correction, he tells us in the general introduction that he undertook to make the version more faithful, intelligible, and popular. The plan which he adopted to effect this, according to his own description, was as follows :—With the assistance of several fellow-labourers he (i.) corrected the Latin text by comparison of Bibles, doctors, and glosses ; Studied the text thus corrected with the gloss and other authorities, particularly de Lyra on the 0. T. [LYRA] ; (iii.),
Made special reference to the works of gramma rians and theologians for the meaning of difficult words and passages ; and (iv.), Did not translate literally hut according to the sense and meaning as clearly as he could, taking care to have many persons of ability present at the correction of the translation. He inserted numerous textual glosses in the 0. T., and only occasionally omitted those of Wycliffe's version, but made no such insertions in the N. T., and carefully excluded all the glosses which were introduced into the former version. That he improved upon Wycliffe's translation is beyond doubt, as may be seen from a comparison of the following passages in the respective versions : Gen. ix. 13 ; Exod. xxix. 2 ; Deut. xxxii. 2 ; xxxiii. 7 ; Josh. v. 15; vi. 25; Job x. 1 ; xi. 12 ; xiv. 12 ; Matt. xii. 5 ; xiii. 52 ; I Cor. iii. ; which are pointed out by the erudite editors, the Rev. Josiah Forshall and Sir Frederic Madden, who for the first time published this early English version, together with Wycliffe's translation, in an entire form, in parallel columns, four volumes 4to, Oxford University Press, 185o. Purvey's translation of the N. T. was first published by Lewis, London 1731, fol., as Wycliffe's transla tion ; it was then erroneously reprinted as Wycliffe's by Baber, London ,8,o, 4to, and by Bagster in the English Hexapla. Comp. Foxe, The Acts and .ilfonuments, Townsend's edition, vol. iii. pp. 285, 292, 822, 826, London 1844 ; and the elaborate preface by Forshall and Madden to their edition of Wycliffe's and Purvey's translations of the Bible.—C. D. G.