William Attersoll

Who is William Attersoll?

William Attersoll, was an English puritan divine and author.

Attersoll was apparently for a time a member of Jesus College, Cambridge, when, as he writes in his 'Historie of Balak', his patron of later years, Sir Henry Fanshaw, was 'a chiefe and choise ornament' there. But in that case he must have early passed from it; for he proceeded A.B. 1582 at Clare Hall, and A.M. 1586 at Peterhouse. Attersoll succeeded William Bishoppe in the living of Isfield, in Sussex, soon after 18 January 1599 – 1600, the date of Bishoppe's burial.

In the Epistle-dedicatory to Sir Henry Fanshaw, knight, the king's remembrancer in his highness's court of Exchequer, prefixed to Attersoll's 'Historie of Balak,' he speaks, among other of Fanshaw's acts of kindness shown towards him, 'of the fauour you shewed me at my repaire vnto you, in that trouble which befell me about the poore liuing that now I enioy.' Succeeding sentences state that the 'trouble' was occasioned by a suspicion on the part of Attersoll's parishioners that the new parson was too much of a scholar, and unlikely to be a preacher after the type of their former.

Attersoll was the author of many biblical commentaries and religious treatises.