John Purchas
John Purchas was a tanner of Much Waltham in Essex. A tanner turned raw hides into leather by soaking them in pits with ground oak bark.
He made his will on 27 March 1585, "being grown in age and trobled with disease." He asked to be buried in the churchyard of Much Waltham, "with such costs as shalbe thought mete by myne executor and my wief." On the day of his burial ten of the poorest householders were to have five shillings. The will was proved on 11 October 1585 by his son John, so he died between those dates.
To Margaret his wife he left half of his movable goods within the houses and thirteen pounds six shillings and eight pence. His eldest son John had six pounds eight shillings and four pence, and that John's three children, John, William and Alice, six shillings and eight pence each at twenty one or marriage. His youngest son George had forty pounds. If George died before he received it, twenty pounds of it was to go to "John my younger son," ten pounds to "Thomas my son," and the other ten pounds to "Mary my daughter, wife of John Warnard."
Mary's two children, "Thomas Warnar and Mary Warnare," had six shillings and eight pence each at eighteen or marriage. A separate line gave five pounds "To Mary my daughter, wife of John Warner." Thomas's daughter had ten shillings. His sister's daughter Joan Downham had ten shillings at twenty three or marriage, and "my sister Sandford's daughter Mary" five shillings.
The residue went to "John Purchas my youngest son," whom he made executor, with his son Thomas as overseer. The witnesses were Thomas Edwards and Richard Pond, "the writer of the same." So the will names two living sons called John, the eldest and a younger one, and it calls both George and the younger John his youngest son.
His daughter Mary had married John Warner at Little Dunmow in 1578. John was the son of a husbandman of the same parish, who had died the summer before. The couple later settled at Hatfield Broad Oak, and their son Andrew went to New England in 1633. When John Warner made his own will in 1614, one of the two overseers was an Abraham Purcas.
The 1919 Warner family book called the Purchas family "one of the most distinguished of the Essex families." It pointed to Samuel Purchas, the clergyman who wrote Purchas his Pilgrimage, born at Thaxted in 1577. It shows no link between Samuel and this tanner.
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Cite: Heirology, "John Purchas (d. 1585)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-purchas-1585-5a467a.