PURCELL, HENRY, eminent English musician, born at Westminster; was successively organist at Westminster Abbey and to the Chapel Royal; excelled in all forms of musical composition; was the author of anthems, cantatas, glees, &c., which attained great popularity; he set the songs of Shakespeare’s “Tempest” to music (1658-1695).

PURCHAS, SAMUEL, collector of works of travel and continuator of the work of Hakluyt, in two curious works entitled “Purchas his Pilgrimage,” and “Hakluyt’s his Posthumous, or Purchas his Pilgrimmes,” and was rector of St. Martin’s, Ludgate, and chaplain to Archbishop Abbot (1577-1626).

PURGATORIO, region in Dante’s “Commedia” intermediate between the Inferno, region of lost souls, and the Paradiso, region of saved souls, and full of all manner of obstructions which the penitent, who would pass from the one to the other, must struggle with in soul-wrestle till he overcome, the most Christian section, thinks Carlyle, of Dante’s poem.

PURGATORY, in the creed of the Church of Rome a place in which the souls of the dead, saved from hell by the death of Christ, are chastened and purified from venial sins, a result which is, in great part, ascribed to the prayers of the faithful and the sacrifice of the Mass.  The creed of the Church in this matter was first formulated by Gregory the Great, and was based by him, as it has been vindicated since, on passages of Scripture as well as the writings of the Fathers.  The conception of it, as wrought out by Dante, Carlyle considers “a noble embodiment of a true noble thought.”  See his “Heroes.”

PURIM, THE FEAST OF, or LOTS, an annual festival of the Jews in commemoration of the preservation, as recorded in “Esther,” of their race from the threatened wholesale massacre of it in Persia at the instance of Haman, and which was so called because it was by casting “lots” that the day was fixed for the execution of the purpose.  It lasts two days, being observed on the 14th and 15th of the month Adar.

PURITAN CITY, name given to Boston, U.S., from its founders and inhabitants who were originally of Puritan stock.

PURITANS, a name given to a body of clergymen of the Church of England who refused to assent to the Act of Uniformity passed in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, because it required them to conform to Popish doctrine and ritual; and afterwards applied to the whole body of Nonconformists in England in the 16th and 17th centuries, who insisted on rigid adherence to the simplicity prescribed in these matters by the sacred Scriptures.  In the days of Cromwell they were, “with musket on shoulder,” the uncompromising foes of all forms, particularly in the worship of God, that affected to be alive after the soul had gone out of them.

PURSUIVANT, one of the junior officers in the Heralds’ College, four in England, named respectively Rouge Croix, Blue Mantle, Rouge Dragon, and Portcullis; and three in Scotland, named respectively Bute, Carrick, and Unicorn.