The 16th century saw huge advances in mapmaking. It was a perfect confluence of the new mathematical and surveying techniques rediscovered during the Renaissance, mixed with the printing press that made maps popular and useful. They were also items vital to national security. When Sebastian Cabot left the employment of the Spanish for the English, it was seen as a defection in part because of the intelligence around Spanish maps of the New World that he took along with him.
In the late 1530’s Henry VIII began a mapping project in England, in part thanks to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and all the monastic lands that needed to be valued and sold. Elizabeth’s right hand man, William Cecil, wanted to continue that work, and in the 1570’s he found Christopher Saxton, from Osset in Yorkshire, sometimes called the Father of English Cartography.
It is likely that Saxton was apprenticed as a draftsman and surveying to John Rudd, Vicar of Dewsbury (1554-1570) and Rector of Thornhill (1558-1570/78). Rudd had a passion for maps, and was engaged at some time in the 1550s in making a ‘platt’ of England; in 1561 he was granted leave from his duties to travel further to map the country. It is suggested that Saxton accompanied him on these travels, at which time he would have been about 17 years old. Saxton was definitely employed by Rudd by 1570.
The idea of making a survey of the kingdom and its parts in a consistent format developed in the mid Sixteenth Century. Although the first English map of Britain by Matthew Paris had appeared in about 1250, it was not until the mid Fifteenth Century that the principles of mapping were fully understood. The craft of cartography was boosted by the Italian invention of printing maps from copper plates in 1473, while advances in scientific learning helped the Dutch and Flemish to become the masters of map making by the late 1500s: in 1564, Gerard Mercator, the Dutch cartographer, published a detailed map of the British Isles on eight sheets; his friend Abraham Ortelius first published a map of the world in 1570.
From the University of Glasgow Special Collections
In 1574 Saxton was hired to begin his survey of England, and to help pay for the expenses, Elizabeth I granted him a lease at a manor in Suffolk. In 1577 he began his survey of Wales. The maps were produced in the Atlas of the Counties of England and Wales published in 1579, the first atlas of any country. It contained 35 maps, each bearing the arms of Elizabeth I and Thomas Seckford, Saxton’s patron. The maps show hills and mountains but do not provide precise information as to their location or altitude. A variety of symbols show buildings and settlements.
Once Cecil had the maps, he could use them to plan where new defenses needed to be put up, where he needed to build new forts, and where troops could be mustered in an emergency.
Aren’t they just gorgeous?
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, one of the longest running indie history podcasts, going since 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. She writes books, created the original Tudor Planner (a yearly diary filled with Tudor history) and in 2019 created the world's first Tudorcon (you can "attend" online this year!). She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.