Samuel Purchas and Pilgrims

Detail from the title page of Samuel Purchas Hakluytus posthumus or Purchas his pilgrimes (London: Henry Fetherstone, 1624).

Reproduced partly because of the emphasis in the inscriptions on pilgrimage and pilgrims. The banderole over his head reads Advena sum ego et peregrinus in terris sicut patres. Psal: 39. Heb: 11 (‘I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were’, Psalm 39:12, King James version). Hebrews 11:12 reads confitentes quia peregrini et hospites sunt super terram (‘They ... confessed [lit. ‘confessing’] that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth’). At the top of the title-page is an image of the Israelites and their tents (Numbers 9:17), and above is the cloud which they follow, rolled back to show the New Jerusalem, with the inscription ‘Thes were strangers and pilgrims on the Earth. God hath prepared for them a Citty. Heb 11’. Hebrews 11:16 reads ‘But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city’.

This image available at Wikimedia and many other similar websites. It is not clear however what its copyright status is in Britain: we would be glad of further information.

A better and enlargeable image of the title page as a whole is available online from several repositories in the USA, including The Folger Shakespeare Library Luna website. Images of the modern ‘pilgrims’ including Drake and Hawkins are in the panel on the right above the Atlantic globe.