"[Maltese cross] Christ is to me as life on earth, and death to me is
gaine,
Because I trust through Him alone saluation to obtaine;
{136}
So brittle is the state of man, so soon it doth decay,
So all the glory of this world must pas and fade away.
"This Robert Pursglove, sometyme Bishoppe of Hull, deceased the 2 day
of Maii, in the year of our Lord God, 1579."
Wood says (_Ath. Oxon._, edit. Bliss, ii. c. 820.), that about the
beginning of Queen Mary's reign he was made Archdeacon of Nottingham, and
suffragan Bishop of Hull; but Dr. Brett, in a letter printed in Drake's
_Eboracum_, 1736, fol., p. 539., says he was appointed in 1552, the last
year of the reign of Edward VI.