Kent in Early Road Books of the Seventeen Century

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Mid1ci - I , I , 6'-rr-,-,l- TH•Towneto, ylatcUI afqvarcsi i:cueflh°'am:'- 6 1-4li' 7j,61i "ifioiiT the line, ,.,l!guidcyou: :andiAthcfquarc r•• lh.llfuldc,hc ,,,_ 􀀃-- 9 £guruwhou1. PLATE II. THE TABLE OF DISTJ.NCES FOR KENT FROM NORDEN'$ AN INTENDED GUYDE FOR ENGLISH TRAVAILERS, 1626. (reduced.) KENT IN EARLY ROAD BOOKS. 3 Seven years after 1636, in 1643, in the middle of the Civil War, another publisher, Thomas Jenner" at the South Entrance of the Exchange ", re-issued van Langeren's engraved plates in a new edition of A Direction for the English Traviller.1 In this, the tiny outline map in which towns are indicated by their initial letters only is replaced by a triangular map which fills the corner; this though larger, is still very small, but has the names of the towns in full. After the end of the Civil War, in 1657, Thomas Jenner, who was still " at the South Entrance of the Royal Exchange ", again re-issued van Langeren's engraved tables of distances with the larger map as in A Direction for the English Traviller of 1643, but in a different and larger form, under the new title of A Book of the Names of all Parishes, Market Towns, etc.2 This new book, except for the tables, which were partly engraved, was all printed, as was its new title page, and contained a full gazetteer of Kent with the names of the lathes and the hundreds contained in them and an exhaustive list of cities, market towns, villages, rivers, bridges, bays, piers, etc., with in every case the name of the hundred in ,, which they then were, all in strict alphabetical order. This gazetteer or book of names was copied by Thomas Jenner from the back of the map of Kent in John Speed's Theatre of Great Britain.3 Speed's folio atlas of county maps was first published in 1611, though there were many later editions, but the map of Kent is not dated in any edition. THE TOWNS IN THE TABLE. The table of distances in Kent has the names 0£ twenty-seven towns with the distances in miles between each of the twenty-seven and each and 1 I have not had an illustration reproduced from the edition of 1643 as the title page is the same as that of the 1636 edition, while the table of distances with a larger map is the same as in A Boole of the Names, etc., which I have had reproduced. 1 See Plates VI and VII. 3 The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine . . . divided and described by John Speed, 1611, folio. 4 KENT IN EARLY ROAD BOOKS. every one of the other twenty-six, so that in all the table contains more than four hundred separate distances. It therefore gives much more information about the distances between Kent towns than any earlier road book. Earlier books give the distances between the towns which are the stages on the road from London to Dover or from London to Rye, six on the Dover road and three on the Rye road, but they do not give any distances between towns on the one road and towns on the other, nor between these nine towns and any other towns in Kent. But Norden's table gives all that the earlier books give and much additional information as the illustrations of the tables show. Of the twenty-seven towns in his table, eight were, in 1625, on the Dover road, seven on the Hythe road and three on the Rye road, the remainder being on minor or cross roads. John Leland in his Itinerary,1 in which he describes his rides about Kent between the years 1535 and 1543 when he was surveying England and Wales for Henry VIII, gives more details of distances than any other road book of that century, but whereas Norden's table for Kent has about four hundred separate distances, Leland's Itinerary has only about forty-five, more than half of which relate to places which are not in Norden's table. THE MA.n.KET TOWNS IN THE TABLES. A Direction for the English Traviller has a note as to " the use of all the insueing tables", in which it is said that the market towns are distinguished from the rest " by greate letters ". Three of the twenty-seven towns in the table for Kent are in italics, namely Leedes Castle, Lidde, and Greenwich, so in Simons's estimation these were not market towns. The market. towns in the table were therefore twenty-four. William Smith in his Description of Engla/na,,2 written about 1588, has a list of 1 The Itinerary of John Leland, in or about the yea.rs 1535-1543. Edited by L. T. Smith, 1909, vol. iv, 37-71. 2 The Particidar Description of Engl,and, by William Smith, 1879, from a MS. of 1588. ..,,{ 'DIREC TI OJ/ FOR _tlie. english. , • Tll,,4v I i. 1. &J\... • BJ' -wlia'cf, he sF,at6e i'n,1f(d t" Co,u't 116out .,(( E'ngland 11,1.(walt>s- .AnJ 111/􀀃 to ino,v_ li11,v JJrrt '".( llukc-t ,r n.-re.ible To,vn.t 111 a"f Sh,cc.-. 1.,ttb ont Jrcm an otltt􀅧. Jrd rduthtr tl,, fa,n.t he Eajf-. Wejl Jiurlo.:r S,u,I, Jm• Loa.don . · · · By tht htlf alj·o ,,j 􀀛;, w,rlt on_t ,may l_non:(;n ?L•hat Pai:uh.V􀅫ll•3"·•• lta.aGon hou!􀅬,J11utr It, 􀅭, "' ) Tt'f,., .Shi,􀀘,.••;, t, t•}• dlm'l1• l, •• 1,;, • .,., .,;, ".,...,a. ii/ll,􀀖· t1•􀀗 n It» "'f;J'. Jnfeil,"x cuau􀀘 nulla' S11jitnti11 1rcJcjl .)I. rt to b c So IJ 􀅮J .M􀅯l:t-wf .S,"ron, a 1· thc J'lllm::Lii,dsi Pu_,"li: 1,;.,u_yt􀅰1GJf· Pun: Ill. 1 TITLE-PAGE OF A DIRECTION FOR THE ENGLISH TRAVJLLER, 1636. (actual size,) PLATE I\·. THE CIRCULAR MAP OF EKGLAND A􀀜D \\'AL88 FROM A DIRECTION FOR THE ENGLISH 'l'RA l'lLl.,ER, 1636. (actual size.) KENT IN EARLY ROAD BOOKS. 5 two cities and eighteen market towns, omitting St. Mary's Cray, Bromley, Sittingbourne and Elham, all of which are in Norden's table. Speed, in his England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland Described and Abridged,1 says in the edition of 1627 that Kent has two cities and twenty-four towns, while England's Remarques of 16782 claims twenty-nine market towns for Kent, including in the number Eltham, Westram, Gouldhurst, Folkestone, Tenterden, Smarden and Woolwich, none of which are in Norden's table. Norden's table also omits places which were, it might be thought, of some importance in 1625, for instance Otford, Deal and Folkestone, and also Margate and Ramsgate. But Leland,3 who wrote before Norden, does not mention Otford, and calls Deal " a :fisscher village ", and Margate only " a peere for shyppes but now decayed ", but has a long description of Follrestone. About one hundred years after Norden, John Macky, in his Journey through England,4 which perhaps is less well known than Defoe's famous Tour through Great Brit,ain, 5 calls Folkestone " a miserable fishing town, miserable in its a ppearanoe ", and Margate " a pitiful place ", but Ramsgate was " something better " while Deal (he said) " makes a. pretty good picture ". THE SouRoE OF THE DISTANCES IN NoRDEN's TABLE. Norden in his Preface to his An Intended Guyde describes how he endeavoured to .find " the certaine distances of Townes which if they could be certainly collected without dimensuration · . . they might by this rule be reduced to certainty without error. But for want of perticall dimensuration, I have been enforced, to borrow the helpe, as well · 1 England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland dc$cribed and abridged . . from afarr Larger Voulume, done by John Speed, 1627, p. 23. 2 England's Rema1·ques, giving an exact account of the several slvires, counties, and islands in England and Wales, 1678. 3 Leland, loc. cit. 4 [Macky], A Jom-n81J tlwough England, 1714, i, 54. 6 [Defoe], A Tour through Great Britain, 1724, i, 24. 6 KENT IN EARLY ROAD BOOKS. of mine own Maps which I haue made, by trauail of diuers Shires : now totally finished by the laborious trauailes of Mr. Speede, whose maps together with Mr. Saxton's and mine owne, haue been the principall direction in this tedious worke.'' He goes on to say that " it is not possible . . to deliniate so great . . countrey, and the perticular Townes, and their seuerall distances . , but that some errours of necessitee will be committed, especially by reason of hills, dales, and woods, and other impediments, which intercept the view from station to station. So that the lines of opposition cannot be exactly directed, as upon a plaine and open horizon. But were the distances neuer so truly taken, by the intersection of right lines, yet in riding or going, they may seeme uncertaine, by reason of the curuing crookedness, and other difficulties of the ways. Beare therefore with such defects, as could not be auoyded. For if the distances betweene Townes could certainly be discouered, these Tables might be made most certaine." It would seem from this Preface that Norden did not have his distances between Kent towns measured along the roads as Ogilby did fifty years later, but calculated them by some method from his own map of Kent, which was published many years before in William Camden's Britannia1; possibly, with some help from the maps of his brother cartographers, Christopher Saxton and John Speed, and from his and their surveys of the county. Norden's map of Kent bears the indorsement" Johannes Norden delinauit ", though his name does not appear on the maps of Saxton and Speed. Saxton's map of Kent (with Surrey, Sussex, and Middlesex) which is dated 1575, was published with other maps of the counties in his Atlas of 1579, while Speed's map of Kent (which is undated) was published in 1611 in the latter's Theatre of Great Britain. Neither map ha.B any roads. I find that measuring the distances from town to town in a straight line on Norden's map of Kent and having 1 William Camden, Britannia . . . desoriptio, etc., 1607, fol. KENT IN EARLY ROAD BOOKS. 7 regard to the scale of miles on the map, the distances in miles agree approximately with those given in his table. Sometimes they agree exactly, sometimes they differ, but only by a mile or less. This is true also when the distances are measured on the first issue of Lambarde's Garde of this Skyre.1 Neither Norden's map nor Lambarde's Garde have roads, therefore, so far as they are concerned, roads did not enter into the calculation. Variations in these calculations were at this date common. Even there are inconsistencies in the figures in Norden's own table. Greenwich to Dover according to it is forty-seven miles, but the intermediate stages on the Dover Road given in his table, if added together, amount to fifty miles, and so in other cases. There are, of couxse, roads in maps of Kent published before the date of Norden's table. Symonson2 has roads in his map dated 1596 (or 1576) and so also has the third issue of Lambarde's Garde to which roads were added. 3 I suggested some years ago a date between 1588 and 1596 for this third issue. But Norden would 'have found little help in either of these maps. They both mark the three Great Roads to Dover, Hythe, and Rye, but few other roads ; there are only fifteen cross roads in Symonson and ten in Lambarde. Possibly a-better map of Kent with roads now lost was drawn by Norden himself like his maps of Essex and Surrey. His map of Essex, which has a network of roads, was published in 1840 as part of his Description of Essex, while the unpublished map of Surrey, which also has roads, 'Yas in the possession of a London bookseller some years ago. His Description of Essex (with the map) was published by the Camden Sooiety4 with an introduction by Sir Henry Ellis, who refers to a Survey of Kent by Norden and gives a reference to Gough's British Topograpky4 : 1 Arch. Oant., XXXVIII, 89. 2 .Arch, Oant., XXX, 87. 8 Arch. Oant., XXXIX, 141. 􀁏 Camden Society, 1840, i-."Xii ; Gough's Briti8h Topography, 1780, i, 441. 8 KENT IN E.ARLY ROAD BOOKS. "Norden made a Survey of this county (that is, Kent) still in MS." It is not clear whether the Survey included a map. THE UsE OF NoRDEN's TABLE. The short note in the corner of Norden's table for Kent explains how the table should be used. This note was repeated in the two engraved pages of directions in A Direction for {he English Traviller with further directions how the traveller by the use of the circular map of England and Wales and the tiny outline maps of the counties could, as the title-page declares, "coast about all England and Wales ". If the traveller starting from London wanted to go to Canterbury he was advised to look at the circular map1 and see whether Ca.nterbury was " east, west, south or north " of London, and through what counties he must pass to get there and whether through "the middle or the skirts" of those counties. Then the traveller was advised to turn to the tables of distances for Surrey and Kent, and examine the tiny maps of those counties and see what were the towns in their middle or " skirts ", as the case might be, that it was necessary to pass by. Next, the traveller had to identify those towns by their initial letters, for the maps in the editions of A Direction for the English Traviller 5>f 1635 and 1636 have no names in full.2 Today it is easy, with or without personal knowledge of Kent, by the aid of a map to identify with some certainty the towns indicated by these initial letters only, but it would have been difficult in the early seventeenth century. The rivers marked in the tiny map, though unnamed, supply clues to the identity of some of the towns which are on or near their banks, but the· two Gs on the Thames and the four Ss on the "German Sea" may have been less easily identified by strangers to Kent or its early maps. Yet the rarity of these road books, more especially those of 1635 and 1636, may be thought to be evidence 1 See Plate IV. 2 See Plate V. Kent 􀀂 \: • "' PLATE V. THE TABLE FOR KENT FROM A DIRECTION FOR THE ENGLISH TRAVJLLER, 1636. (actual size.) KENT IN E.ARLY ROAD BOOKS. 9 that in the seventeenth century they were in constant use.1 The map of Kent in those two editions must be, I think, the smallest ever published. A penny piece nearly covers it. The larger triangular map of the edition of 1643 is about half the size of one of Kent by Robert Morden published in his Atlas of 1680 which perhaps comes next in point of size. A COMPARISON OF DrsTANOEs IN KENT, COMPUTED .AND MEASURED. The ;following table compares the distances between some towns in Kent in Norden's table of 1625 with Leland's distances of nearly one hundred years earlier and Ogilby's Britannia of fifty years later. Rochester to Sittingbourne Sittingbourne to Canterbury Canterbury to Dover Wrotham to Maidstone Maidstone to Ashford Ashford to Hythe Bromley to Sevenoaks Sevenoaks to Tunbridge Romney to Hythe Romney to Lydd . . Lydd to Appledore . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . - . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . Lel8lld 1535c. 8 12 12 - - - - - 7 2 7 I Norden Ogilby Brit,a,nnia. Guyde, 1625. corn- measputed. ured. 7 8 11½ 12 12 15¼ 12 12 15¾ 7 8 10¾ 13 14 21 8 8 121 10 9 I 13{· 5 5 6½ 7 - - 3 - - 7 - - 1 These three road books are very rare. Of the great Libraries the British Museum, the Bodleia.n, and the Cambridge University Library have copies of Norden's Guyde, the British Museum has copies of A Direction for the English Traviller for 1636, 1636 and 1643, bttt all three, I think, imperfect. The Bodleian has 1636 but not 1635. The Cambridge Lib1·ary has 1635 but not 1636. I myself have a. copy of the Guyde and of 1636 and 1643, all perfect, and another imperfect copy of 1636. I have also A Boole of the Names, 1668 (imperfect) and 1677 (perfect). The British Museum copy of the latter is imperfect. 10 KENT IN EARLY ROAD BOOKS. The distances in Britannia are calculated by Ogilby both in computed miles and in miles measured by the wheel. The table shows that the distances in Leland's Itinerary and Norden's Guyde are the same or nearly the same as the computed distances of Ogilby. That is, that they were both computed. The measured miles of Ogilby were measured on the roads by a wheel or perambulator, the mile being a modern mile of 1,760 yards. The computed mile was a much longer mile, which the late Sir George Fordham said was 2,428 yards.1 It is, I believe, not agreed how computed miles were calculated, but the measurement is old. Norden gives the distance from Canterbury to Appledore seventeen miles, so does a map of about 1330 in the Bodleian Library which is thought to be of the time of Edward III.2 There were variously named miles in use formerly : computed, customary, and common miles. 8 Ogilby in Britannia heads each separate road mapped by him with its total number of miles calculated by three methods, as in the following table. Direct Horizontal distance Vulgar computation Dimensuration Post-Miles . . . . . . . . . . Dover. Hythe. Rye. 62 54 64 55 49 51 71 69 70 70 - 60 How the direct horizontal distance was calculated is not explained, nor is the method of vulgar computation, but the dimensuration was the distance measured on the road by a mile of 1,760 yards, while post-miles were the miles recognised by the postal authorities for post-horses and guides. 1 The Library, 1925, vi, 157, article on John Ogilby. See also Knight's Eng'Usli CyclopOO(lia, Arts and Scwnces, 1856, vol. v, article "The Mile", and Seebohm Customary acres 1914, 40. Ogilby measured his miles with a wheel dimensurator. There are drawings of a man wheeling the " wheel• dimensurator " in the title-page of Britannia and in the headings of some of his strip-maps. 2 See Gough, Bi·itisk To-pography, 1780, i, 76. 3 The Geographical Jown:wl (vols. 76 and 77) has two recent articles on the old English mile. / A'BOOt//2;./􀀠-,. ".JI £.,e--, \ OF THE ---- ME s, OF ALL Parifhes, Market Towns, Villages> Hamlets, aod ·finallcfl: Places, In ENGLAND and WALES., Alphaberically fet dL>wn, 3S they be in every Shire. With the Names of the Humlreds in which they ate, and how many Towns there are in e􀆺ery Hun<;frcd. So that naming any Town or pla􀆻e in England and Wale,,you may prefently in the Alphab􀆼t find it, and know in what Shire and Hundred it is,and fo kn:nv the difiance from it t theShireTown,and in the JargeTable forShircs inE11gl.J»d, how far toLondon,or from it,to any other Town in England. A wor􀆽 very nec.eJfary / For Travellers, Q!!artermafiers, Gatherers of Breefs, Stran-! gers,Carrier,􀆾, and Mdfcngers with Letters,a11d all othe¾'s: that know the name of the place, but ,can neither tell where, it i,;, nor how to goe unto it. If yoμ would find out a11y Shire, note that the Shires lie Alphabetically, beginning with Bark.:fhire, a11d fo ------fo-.llo.-w· ing .accord-i-ngl-y. ------'--- S11mma c11ique virlUI p11Jcherrim:J mercer. LO ND ON, Print-cd by M. S. for 'Iho. Jenner, at the South-entrance of the R􀆿}•aU Excbangt, 1 6 6 8. PLATE VI. TITLE-PAGE OF A BOOK OF THE NAMES, etc., 1668. ( actual size.) 􀀅Cllt. PLATF. VIL : c"rmut bleane, .t1ug11fl. Cofl"enton, ,1Jldf. •• 4.-;.J Cowden, S1111on,