Attersoll was apparently for a time a member of Jesus College, Cambridge, when, as he writes in his "Historie of Balak" (1610), his patron of later years, Sir Henry Fanshaw, was "a chiefe and choise ornament" there.
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.
In the quartos and folio alike there is abundant evidence of wide if somewhat undigested learning, penetrative insight, and felicitous application in the most unexpected ways of old facts and truths to present-day circumstances and experiences.
"A Commentarie upon the Epistle of Saint Pavle to Philemon Written by William Attersoll, Minister of the Word of God, at Isfield in Sussex.
In the Epistle-dedicatory to Sir John Rivers he writes of himself as an old man: "Having heretofore upon sundry occasions divulged sundry bookes which are abroad in the world, whereby I received much encouragement, I resolved, notwithstanding being now in yeares, and as it were donatus rude,[1] preparing for a nunc dimittis, utterly to give over and to enjoyne myselfe a perpetuall silence touching this kind of writing, and content myselfe with performing the other more necessary duty of teaching.
Attersoll was a great influence on the young boy's political and religious beliefs, and taught him up to the age of 16 both Latin and Greek.
As a boy Culpepper became interested in astronomy, astrology, time, his grandfather's collection of clocks, and the medical texts found in Attersoll's library.
In all likelihood the former was the William Attersoll of Calamy, whose name is simply entered under "Hoadley (East), Sussex", as among the ejected of 1662, and so, too, in Samuel Palmer's Nonconformist's Memorial.