( 48 )
TWO SIXTEENTH CENTURY MAPS OF KENT
WITH FURTHER NOTES ON EARLY
ROAD-BOOKS.
BY E. G. BOX.
THE two maps are (1) the thumb -naU map of Kent on a Playing
Card dated 1590,1 and (2) the map of Kent in a smaU
atlas of great rarity engraved by Peter Keer, dated 1599.*
I have added some further notes on Kent in three
seventeenth century road books about which I wrote in Arch.
Cantiana, XLIV, including a suggestion that the new maps
in A Direction for the English Traviller, published in 16433
were prepared for mihtary use by officers of the Parhamentary
armies in the Civil War which commenced in August, 1642.
IncidentaUy I have described the Quartermaster's Map,
dated 1644 which was engraved and sold expressly for use in
the Civil War.
{1) THE PLAYING CABD MAP OE KENT.
This thumb-naU map is engraved on a Playing Card,
one of a sheet of fifteen cards, thirteen of which have engraved
on them simUar thumb-naU maps of the Enghsh counties.
This sheet, with two others simUar, has lately been acquired
by the Royal Geographical Society, who have had two of
the sheets reproduced, including the one with the map of
Kent.
The date 1590 is engraved on one of the fifteen cards.
There was originaUy a fourth sheet now lost. No other
copy of these Playing Cards is known.
1 Plate I.
2 Plate II. These two plates are reproduced (by leave of the Trustees)
from copies in the British Museum.
3 Arch. Cant., XLIV. Plate VII reproduces the map of Kent in
A Book of the Names, etc., 1665. This map is the same as in A Direction,
1643, being from the same engraved plate.
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PLATE II. PETER KEERVS MAP OF KENT. SUSSEX, SURREY AND MIDDLESEX. 1599.
(Reproduced by leave of the Trustees of the British Museum.)
Harl. 3813, No. 7. f. 32. (Actual size.)
WITH NOTES ON EARLY ROAD-BOOKS. 51
Atlas, 1579. Its title in Keer's atlas is " Cantu, Southsexiae,
Surriae et Middlesexiae Co."
The map measures less than 4f inches by 3 | inches. By
itseU the map of Kent is very smaU, measuring only 2f by
1\ inches.
I have a copy of this atlas with forty-four maps, the copy
in the British Museum having only thirty-seven. Neither
copy has a title page. The authorship of the atlas and its
date has been inferred from the fact that aU the maps (including
that of Kent) were engraved by the same hand and
some of the maps are signed by Peter Keer—" Petrus Kaerius
caelavit " and some are dated 1599. The map of Kent,
etc., is not signed nor dated.
The maps of Scotland are derived from Ortelius's map,
1595, and the maps of Ireland from Boazio's map, 1578-80.
There is an uncoloured copy of Keer's map of Kent, etc.
in Camden's Angliae, Scotiae Hiberniae, etc. . . . Descriptio,
1617, and a larger map of Kent by itseU in Speed's
England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, Described and Abridged,
etc., 1627, which also it would seem was engraved by Keer.1
A DIRECTION EOR THE ENGLISH TRAVILLER, 16432 AND
THE CIVIL WAR, 1642-1648.
An interesting question in connection with the new
edition of A Direction pubhshed in 1643 is whether its larger
maps were prepared for the use of soldiers in the CivU War.
It is well known that Thomas Jenner,8 the London
bookseUer who had it prepared for sale in 1643 prepared
1 See Chubb's Atlases, 1627, p. 16 et seq. The date, 1620, assigned to
a copy of Speed's book is certainly incorrect. The copy to which this date
is assigned in the British Museum has the title page cropped, losing the date,
but I have a copy not cropped with the date 1627, whioh corresponds
in collation to Chubb's No. XI and does not correspond to Chubb's XII.
2 See Arch. Cant., XLIV, Plate VII. The map of Kent in A Book of
the Names, 1668, is the same as the map of Kent in A Direction, 1643.
3 Thomas Jenner was a London bookseller who sold tracts and books
for the Parliament. He has been described as " one of the Commonwealth
men" (Plomer, English Printing, 1900, p. 190). He printed some of
Milton's Tracts ; Also Three Letters out of the North, 1648 ; A Copy of the
Letter from the Lord-Qenerall Cromwell, 1656, and Former Ages never heard of,
and After Ages will Admire, or A Brief Review of the most Materiall
Parliamentary Transactions, 1656.
5 2 TWO SIXTEENTH CENTURY MAPS OF KENT,
expressly for military use the Quartermaster's Map. This
large map of England and Wales in six sheets is dated the
foUowing year (1644). Its title page declares that the map
be " VsefuU for aU commanders for Quarteringe of souldiers
& aU sorts of Persons that would be informed where the
armies be."1 But the new title page of A Direction makes
no such claim. It only repeats with an altered date and the
name of a new pubhsher the title page of the earher edition
of 1636,2 which declared that the thumb-naU maps and tables
of distances would enable the traveUer " to coast about aU
England and Wales." In 1643, however, there can have been
few peaceful traveUers who wanted new maps wherewith to
coast about England and Wales.
The need of the moment was for maps for mihtary use.
The Civil War began in August, 1642, and soon aU England
was taking sides either on behaU of King or of the ParUament.
It would seem probable that if Thomas Jenner was
employing Wencelaus HoUar to engrave his Quartermaster's
Map for express mihtary use to be published in 1644, he is
hkely to have employed him or some other engraver to engrave
the smaller maps of A Direction to be published in 1643
for a similar purpose.
There must have been soon after August, 1642, when the
Civil War began, an urgent demand for maps of those counties
in which there were Ukely to be mihtary operations. At that
date there were few maps in existence which could have been
used by mUitary commanders. The great foUos of Saxton,
Speed and Camden could not have been used in the field.
Keer's Atlas of 15993 or the maps in Speed's abridged descriptions
of England of 1627 might have been used, but the
maps are not much bigger than the new ones in A Direction.
These when folded and bound in a compact form could have
been more easUy carried in a coat pocket than any others
known to have been in existence in 1643.4 In none of the
1 Geographical Journal, 1927, p. 60, an article by Sir George Fordham.
2 Arch. Cant., XLIV, Plate III.
3 Plate II.
4 My copy of A Direction, 1643, measures only 6 inches by less than
3 inches.
WITH NOTES ON EARLY ROAD-BOOKS. 53
maps mentioned are marked any roads, but the smaUest of
them indicate what was the relative position of towns.
This, in the absence of roads, must have been their main use.
The strongest evidence that Thomas Jenner in 1643
brought out the new edition of A Direction for mihtary use
is the fact that it was brought out in a hurry. This hurry is
evidenced by the fact that though the pubhshed catalogues1
of road-books describe one edition only of A Direction, 1643,
there were in fact in aU three issues of that edition, two of
which were prior to the editions recorded in the books. These
two are not mentioned in any book.
Both of these earher issues were issued in an incomplete
form, one after the other, with an interval between their
pubUcation. Both contained two kinds of maps, some the
new better maps, and some the old thumb-naU maps of the
edition of 1636.2
The maps of the counties in these three issues are as
foUows :—
1. Twenty-five new maps, and thirteen old ones.
2. Thirty new maps and eight old ones.
3. Thirty-eight new maps, and no old ones.
I know of two copies only of these two early issues, one
which is a copy of the first issue, is in private hands, the other
which is a copy of the second issue, is in the Bodleian Library.
It is certain that Thomas Jenner would not have sold
incomplete issues of his new edition unless there was an
urgent demand for the new maps, which in 1642-1643 could
only have been a demand for military use.
AU the new maps, hke the old ones, were engraved.
When the engraver had engraved twenty-five maps and had
thirteen left to do, some demand caused Thomas Jenner to
bind up the book with the twenty-five new maps in it and
thirteen old ones. At a later date when the engraver had
engraved only five more of the new maps a further demand
arose and Thomas Jenner bound up the thirty new maps
which then were ready, with eight old thumb-naU ones. At
1 Chubb, Atlas, 1927, 54 ; Fordham, Catalogue of Road-books, 1924, 8.
2 Arch. Cant., XLIV, Plate V.
54 TWO SIXTEENTH CENTURY MAPS OF KENT,
a stiU later date, when the engraver had had time to engrave
the remaining eight new maps, the book in a complete form
with its thirty-eight new maps was bound up and sold in the
form recorded in the books.
It must have been an urgent demand which induced a
bookseUer who had begun to re-engrave a new edition of a
road book of 1636, to seU two incomplete issues of his new
venture.
That the War was the cause of this demand is proved, I
think, by the fact that the new maps were not re-engraved in
the alphabetical order in which they are both in the earher
edition of 1636 and in the edition of 1643 in its final form,
but were engraved to some extent in accordance with the
course of the War.
The twenty-five new maps of the first of the two incomplete
issues, included aU the southern counties except Devon
and Somerset. Essex was a new map, but not the rest of
East Anglia. These would have been the maps most in
request by the officers of the armies of the Parhament in
the Autumn of 1642 and the Winter of 1642-1643. The
eastern counties were mainly for the Parhament and were
undisturbed by war, but the southern counties were either
entirely for the King or were the scene of active warfare.
In the second incomplete issue Devon and Somerset
were new maps.
In both of the early issues the five northern counties
and Herefordshire, Staffordshire and Suffolk were stUl the
old thumb-naU maps.
These eight counties were represented by new maps in
the final issue of the new edition of 1643.
This progressive pubUcation seems to agree to some
extent with the course of the War. It must have been a
somewhat slow business. Not only had thirty-eight maps
to be engraved, but part of each old engraved plate had to be
erased, including not only the old thumb-naU maps, but
part in most cases of the Tables of Distances which in the
edition of 1635 and 1636 reproduced the original tables
invented and pubUshed by John Norden in 1625.
WITH NOTES ON EARLY ROAD-BOOKS. 55
It is clear that in his new edition, Thomas Jenner thought
the maps to be more important than the rest of the book.
The engraver was aUowed to erase any part of the Tables
which interfered with the new maps including even the outer
hne of figures which gave the distances to London from the
twenty-six towns in each county and which had been added
to A Direction in the second issue of the edition of 1636
only seven years earher.
In this way the engraver in most cases (though not in
the case of Kent) erased figures even in the midst of the tables
in order to insert outlying names of towns. In one case he
erased ten out of fifteen columns of figures. This was for
his new map of Essex, but this, in its mutilated form, is
included only in one of the two early issues. In the final issue
of 1643 these erased columns and figures were re-engraved
and squeezed in among the names of towns.
These erasures did not provide sufficient room for the
new maps to be properly orientated, so that these were in
most cases placed diagonaUy and even in one case upside
•down.
There is perhaps other evidence of hurry discernible in
the new maps in their want of uniformity. A third of the
thirty-eight maps are different in one or two respects to the
others, having the names of the counties inserted in the
middle of the maps, and in some of these maps the names of
the adjoining counties or of some of them inserted at the sides.
Kent, however, is not peculiar in these respects, nor have
the figures of the Table of its Distances suffered as in most
of the other maps.1
The fact of the issue of the new edition in three consecutive
forms suggests that though the title page bears the
•date 1643, the new maps were in course of engraving at an
earher date. The precise date of the appearance for sale
of the new edition in 1643 is not, so far as I know,
recorded, but it may be that Thomas Jenner instructed the
engraver in the Autumn or Winter of 1642, soon after the
1 See Arch. Cant., XLIV, Plate VII. The map reproduced from A
Book, 1668, is the same engraved map as in A Direction, 1643.
5 6 TWO SIXTEENTH CENTURY MAPS OF KENT,
commencement of the CivU War. This is conjecture, but the
facts stated seem to support it.
How long the process of erasure of the old and engraving
of the new thirty-eight maps lasted is again a matter for
conjecture only, but it lasted long enough to make it worth the
whUe of Thomas Jenner to bind and seU the new maps in two
incomplete forms.
The copy of the first of the two early issues which I have
seen, though incomplete, is carefuUy bound and is, I think,
in its original sheep-skin covers.
The Quartermaster's Map, 1644, must have been of much
more use to soldiers than A Direction though much more
cumbersome to carry in the field. The map of Kent in it is
twice as large as the one in A Direction, 1643. The latter
embraces tiny bits of Essex, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex,
while the sheet of the Quartermaster's Map which includes
Kent, includes parts of Essex and WUtshire, Middlesex,
Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and aU of Sussex,
Surrey, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
The map which is one of England and Wales in six sheets
was intended for use out of doors. It was sold bound " in
a veUum case eight inches long by three inches broad . . .
fit for the pocket."
My copy of the later edition of 1688 corresponds to the
advertisement of the first edition of 1644, except that its
original covers are of rough leather with the original metal
clasps stiU intact. But each of the six sheets is tattered and
torn by hard usage. Eight inches of each is stUl fastened
to the covers, but the rest, though surviving, was long ago
torn from the upper portion of each sheet.
Copies of the map of 1644 used by Quartermasters on
active service must soon have become simUarly torn and
battered, for Quartermasters who were commissioned officers
had the onerous duties of the quartering, that is biUeting the
army, obtaining provisions and forage, and sometimes searching
and obtaining horses.1
1 Peacock, Army Lists of Roundheads and Cavaliers, 1863, pp. 22-28 ;
Firth, Cromwell's Army, 1902, p. 42 ; Designs of tlie Rebels in Kent, 1648.
WITH NOTES ON EARLY ROAD-BOOKS. 57
It is difficult to estimate the use of these maps in the
CivU War. Very few maps had any roads marked on them.
Symonson's map of Kent of 1596 is an exception, but it
could hardly have been used out of doors. Yet in the seventeenth
century even the thumb-nail maps of A Direction,
1636 were thought to be of use to the peaceful traveUer, and
therefore not without use to the soldier. If these skeleton
maps with the position of the towns indicated only by their
initial letters were useful, the soldiers of 1643 must have
found the larger maps of the edition of 1643 more useful, and
yet more useful the still larger Quartermaster's Map. It
may be that the use of these roadless maps, even the smaUest
of them, was to indicate the position of towns in relation to
natural features such as hUls, woods and rivers and to other
towns.
In Kent, in 1642, a troop of horse was sent from London
by the Parhament to search the houses of suspected malignant
squires for arms and horses. Many vUlages in West
Kent are named in contemporary orders sent by the deputylieutenants
to a chief agent at Tonbridge. Hadlow, Pembury,
Peckham, Teston, Earleigh, Aylesford, MaUing, Ightham are
named as places to be searched for malignants.1
The map of Kent in A Direction marks none of the
villages named except MaUing, though it marks Tonbridge,
Maidstone and Rochester. Keer's map of 1599 gives no more
help. Symonson has aU the names but is too big for outdoor
use. The Quartermaster's Map, not in existence in 1642 or
1643, marks most of the vUlages.
Lambarde's Carde of this Shyre, though a smaU map,
marks aU the vUlages named and folded in a case would have
been convenient to carry on horseback in a pocket.
At a later date in the CivU War, when Fairfax marched
from Eltham to the " storming of Maidstone " along the hne
of the Dover Road, and turned south at Northfleet and
marched south in two days by Meopham and MaUing to
Farleigh Bridge over the Medway, the map of Kent in A
Direction, 1643 would have given his officers their direction,.
1 Proceedings in Kent, 1642-1646, Camden Miscellany, Vol. 3.
5 8 TWO SIXTEENTH CENTURY MAPS OF KENT,
though neither Meopham nor Farleigh are in the map. The
Quartermaster's Map, 1644, then avaUable and probably
to be found in the knapsacks of every Quartermaster, would
have been useful, as it gives ah the places his army touched.1
LIST OF EARLY ROAD-BOOKS CONTAINING MAPS
OF KENT.
1. 1635. A Direction for the English Traviller.
Imprint: " sold by Mathew Simons."
Map : Thumb-nail (engraved) names of places indicated by
letters only.
(See Arch. Cant., XLIV, 1.
Chubb : Atlases, 1927, p. 53, XLIV.
Fordham, Catalogue of Road-books, p. 8.)
2. 1636. The same, with same imprint and map. Two issues,
one with additional figures giving the distances to London.
(See Arch. Cant., XLIV, 1 and p. 49, ante; Chubb, p. 53,
XLV, Fordham, p. 8.)
3. 1643. The same, with same imprint, but larger map with
names of places in full.
(See Arch. Cant., XLIV, 1 and p. 50 ante; Chubb, p. 54,
XLVI. Fordham, p. 8.)
As to two early issues containing both thumb-nail maps and
larger maps, see ante, p. 53 et seq.
[As to editions of A Direction, 1645 and 1650, with the larger
maps, and imprint, " John Garrett," see Chubb, p. 54. These
are not in Fordham which gives two editions of 1677 and 1680
from the Term Catalogues. The editions 1645 and 1650
(Chubb, p. 54, XLVII and XLVIII), whose title pages are
undated, are probably wrongly dated, as Garrett's name
is not in the Term Catalogues until 1676.]
1 The " storming of Maidstone" on a wet June evening—the fight
lasted from 7 till 1 a.m.—was, so Fairfax said in his report to the Parliament,
through narrow streets—' 'the strongest fortified and stoutliest defended
of any I have known in the late unhappy wars." The royalists, badly led,
had not fortified Farleigh bridge, but even across the Medway the fight
was for a mile through " barricaded lanes," by hedges " loyn'd with
Musqueteers " and house by house, where the royalists " shot out of
windows and at doors." The royalists lost 200 men killed and 1,400 taken
prisoners. (Contemporary Tracts, 1648 ; Arch. Cant., IX, 31; Hasted, IV,
.269 ; Gardiner, Great Civil War, 1893, IV, 139-142.)
WITH NOTES ON EARLY ROAD-BOOKS. 59
4. 1657. A Book of the Names of all Parishes, etc.
Imprint: " M.S. for Thomas Jenner."
Map : The same engraved map as No. 3.
This edition, and the two foUowing 1662 and 1668, has the
engraved title page with date 1643 as in No. 3, and the printed
title page, dated 1657.
(See Arch. Cant., XLIV, 1, Plates VI and VII. Chubb
p. 54 ; Fordham, p. 10.)
NOTE.—Copies without the printed title page are probably
defective.
5. 1662. The same as No. 4 with same imprint and map, and
two title pages.
(See Arch. Cant., XLIV, 1 ; Chubb, p. 55 ; Fordham, p. 10.)
6. 1668. The same as No. 5 and same references.
7. 1677. The same as No. 5, but imprint" S.S. for John Garrett."
(See Chubb, p. 56. Fordham, p. 10.)
