Edward Topsell

Edward Topsell

A puritan pastor who used creation to point people to the Creator.

Puritan Preacher and Compiler of Wonders

Edward Topsell is one of the more unusual figures in the Puritan-adjacent world of late Elizabethan and Jacobean England. A working parish minister who preached and published in the earnest, Scripture-saturated style of the godly movement, he is remembered today almost entirely for something else entirely: a pair of illustrated natural history books filled with elephants, unicorns, and fire-breathing dragons.

Life and Ministry

Born around 1572 in Sevenoaks, Kent, Topsell studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge — a college with strong Puritan associations — before entering the Church of England’s ministry. He served parishes in Sussex, Hertfordshire, and Northamptonshire before settling in 1604 as perpetual curate of St Botolph’s, Aldersgate in London, the post he held until his death in 1625.

At Oxford’s Brasenose College, Bolton was acknowledged as one of the most gifted scholars of his generation — lauded for his command of philosophy, Greek, and Latin — yet by all accounts he was proud, quarrelsome, and entirely given over to worldly pleasures. His friendship with the Puritan Richard Greenham and his encounter with the preaching of Arthur Hildersham and others proved the turning point. The conversion that followed was neither gradual nor comfortable: Bolton described it as an agonizing reckoning with sin, a season of spiritual terror, and an eventual discovery of grace that would shape every line he ever wrote.

Ordained in 1609 and installed as rector of Broughton in Northamptonshire — a living he would hold until his death — Bolton spent over two decades building one of the most celebrated pulpit ministries in England. Northamptonshire itself was a heartland of Puritan zeal, home to figures such as John Dod and William Perkins’s legacy, and Bolton found both a congenial brotherhood of ministers and a congregation hungry for the kind of searching, experimental preaching he delivered.

A Puritan Preacher

Topsell’s religious writings bear all the marks of the Puritan spirit: passionate concern for practical godliness, expository preaching through whole books of Scripture, and a consistent emphasis on God’s sovereignty over all things. His Reward of Religion (1596) — lectures on the Book of Ruth exploring duty, faithfulness, and divine reward — proved popular enough to run to three editions. His Time’s Lamentation (1599), an exposition of Joel, called readers away from worldly vanity toward repentance and sober piety. His Householder, or Perfect Man (1610) applied the same godly vision to the Christian family. Charles Spurgeon’s library of Puritan works includes Topsell, a fitting recognition of his place in the Reformed preaching tradition.

The Bestiary Writer

Then there is the other Topsell. In 1607 and 1608 he published The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes and The Historie of Serpents — enormous illustrated folios drawing heavily on the Swiss naturalist Conrad Gesner’s Latin encyclopedia. Each entry blends genuine natural observation with ancient legend, moral allegory, and Scripture. Weasels, he reports, give birth through their ears. Lemmings graze in the clouds. Elephants worship the sun and moon. Alongside horses and bears stride the Manticore, the Sphinx, the Lamia, and the Unicorn.

Topsell was not a naturalist and knew it. His aim was theological: to show that every creature, real or legendary, proclaimed “the wonderful work of God in their creation, preservation, and destruction.” The books were written, he said, to “profit and delight the reader, whereinto he may look on the holiest deities.” For Topsell, the natural world was God’s second book — to be read alongside Scripture for moral instruction and devotional wonder.

Legacy

The two bestiaries were posthumously combined in a single 1,100-page edition in 1658, with their striking woodcut illustrations (many drawn from Dürer’s famous rhinoceros image), and have been reprinted in various forms ever since. His religious writings, while less celebrated, mark him as a faithful representative of the godly preaching that was reshaping English Protestantism in his era.

What makes Topsell endearing is the confidence with which he held both vocations together. The diligent Puritan pastor and the enthusiastic compiler of ancient wonders were, to his mind, doing the same work — pointing a fallen world back to its magnificent Creator.

Lasting Lesson

Edward Topsell reminds us that believers should never separate creation from its Creator. Every sunrise, every creature, and every aspect of the natural world points beyond itself to the God who made it. Like the psalmist, Topsell encouraged Christians to see God’s glory displayed in the world around them and to respond with worship and gratitude.

Quotes

“The creatures of God are the books wherein His wisdom is read.”

“There is no beast so small but it declareth the power and providence of the Creator.”

“The works of God are worthy of continual meditation.”

Writings

The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes (1607)

The Historie of Serpents (1608)

The Reward of Religion (1596)