Supplementary Note on Early Kent Maps

( 140 ) SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON EARLY KENT MAPS BY CANON G. M. LIVETT. SUBSEQUENT to the pubHcation of my paper on E.K.M. in the 1937 volume of Arch. Cant, my friend the Reverend Herbert Poole has drawn my attention to the work of Laurence NoweU, whose claim to consideration as a cartographer has only recently been discussed by modern writers. The date of Laurence NoweU's bhth is not known. He was the younger brother of .Alexander NoweU, the Protestant Reformer, who was born about 1507 and became Dean of St. Paul's in 1559. In that same year Laurence became Dean of Lichfield. He was also Archdeacon of Derby, Rector of Haughton and Drayton Basset in Staffordshire, and Prebendary of both York and Chichester. His ecclesiastical duties, however, weighed lightly upon him, for in the early 'sixties he spent most of his time in London. He acted as tutor to Edward de Vere, who in 1562 at the age of twelve succeeded to the earldom of Oxford and became a royal ward in Sh WUHam CecU's household in the Strand. This brought him into touch with CecU (afterwards Lord Burghley), whose hobby was the coUection of historical manuscripts and of MS. maps of the properties of dissolved monasteries. At that time Cecil was master of the Court of Wards, of which another brother of Laurence Nowell, Robert by name, a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, was attorney. Doubtless it was in Robert's chambers that Laurence became associated with WUHam Lambarde, who in 1558 at the age of twenty had become a member of the Inn and was a pupU of Laurence in the study of Anglo-Saxon. Laurence NoweU was a dUigent and erudite antiquary : his great aim was the revival of the Old EngHsh language and Hterature ; and there is no doubt that Lambarde based his Dictionarium Anglice Topographicum et Historicum (" .Alphabetical /.116v. reduced from 5J inches 5 4 ' 'WCF p WTp^JSn C^K* 5 r (>o'Jw*»» "jw..* —TjUWKSK DTKkn 5K>J\>naf«. Bu/ir«" Cji*nl>fi • tf • e » 4 t » IvpUo-t^ |<~/.113v. A4.C, VOL. L. /.113v. THE KENT SECTIONS OF NOWELL'S MAPPAE GEOGRAPHICAE ANGLLE. [Photo : Brit. Mus. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON EARLY KENT MAPS. 141 description of the chief places in England and Wales— London, 1730, 4to ") largely, but without due acknowledgement, upon voluminous transcripts of Saxon and mediseval MSS. made by Nowell for a simUar work.1 A letter by NoweU written in Latin and addressed to " the right honorable and his singular good maister Sh WUlm CecUl Knight the Quens Maj'ties principaU secretarie" is preserved in the British Museum (MS. Lansdowne, VI, f. 135), endorsed " June 1563—Lawrent NoweU to my master . . . . . . . Proposing to frame an exact map of England." There is no evidence that CecU responded to this appeal for his patronage and support, but a smaU 8vo volume of assembled manuscripts in NoweU's script, also preserved in the British Museum (MS. Cotton. Dom. A. XVIII), contains a series of twenty-six sectional maps on thirteen openings, covering the whole of England and Wales, on which a complete map of Saxon England might be based. As Dr. Robin Flower observes, the aim of this dissected map was to serve as an outline for the recording of Old Enghsh names of places. The county of Kent is comprised in two of the openings (113v./ll4 and 116v./ll7), and the relevant portions of these are here reproduced by the kindness of the editor. The series bears no date, but it may confidently be assigned to the later part of NoweU's period of intense labour in London which seems to have ended in 1566. He died ten years later. The first thing that strikes the eye in studying these charts is theh division by lines of ' squaring'. Such squaring is an old device adopted for purpose of reference or for copying a map or picture. The engraver of the " AAnonymous " map headed " The Shyre of Kent . . . " (reproduced in E.K.M.) probably used it in copying the Kent portion of Saxton's map of the four south-eastern counties. Remains of it are visible on Robert Glover's MS. map drawn c. 1571 (also reproduced in E.K.M.). Glover must 1 Eor full details of his life and work the reader is referred to a valuable Paper by Robin Plower, entitled " Laurence Nowell and the Discovery of England in Tudor Times ", read before the British Academy in 1936 and printed in the Academy's Proceedings, Vol. xxi—published as a separate pamphlet by Humphrey Milford. 142 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON EARLY KENT MAPS. have worked upon an earher map of the county, not improbably " The Carde of the Shyre " to which Lambarde referred in the first draft of his Perambulation in 1570, seeing that, with one exception (Rother flu), Glover inserted no rivernames. 1 But in the case now under review NoweU may have used the device simply for the purpose of showing the relation of his sections to one another. The distance from Land's End to the longitudinal line of the east coast of Kent, as measured on a modern map, is 310 statute mhes, and in NoweU's sections it is comprised in fifty-seven squares : this yields a measure of approximately 5|- statute mhes for each square. The Hues of the squares are numbered from south to north and from west to east, carrying on from one section to another so that a complete map of the country could be buUt up of tracings. For the accompanying reproduction the relevant portions of photographs of the two sections were fitted together according to the numbering of the vertical lines ; but for obvious reasons it was felt inadvisable to cut a strip off each section to make the two horizontal lines numbered 13 coincide. The resulting county map, if it may be so caUed, has httle cartographic value : the plotting of place-sites is very inaccurate; the course of rivers and the lines of coast are very erratic. The north coast from Reculver to Margate is drawn a Httle above the latitudinal level of St. Paul's, London, whereas it reaUy runs nearly ten mUes below that level. This error occurs again in Glover's map ; whUe in Saxton's and later maps it is only somewhat less pronounced. Again: Dungeness is plotted ten miles east of its true position, and the coast-line running up from the Ness towards Hythe and Folkestone is drawn roughly straight, so that the great bay of Dymchurch disappears—errors that are also seen in Glover's map, whUe in Saxton's the Ness is some 1 In a recent visit to Egypt I was interested and astonished to find abundant evidence showing that from the earliest period onwards the painters of the scenes that decorate the tombs of the longs worked upon a system of squares marked upon the walls, which enabled them to follow certain canons of proportion in drawing the human figure. The whole subject is treated in detail in Miss M. A. Murray's Egyptian Sculpture (1929), and by Ernest Mackay in a paper entitled " Proportion Squares ", published in the Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. iv, Part 2 (1917). SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON E.ARLY KENT MAPS. 143 five mUes too far eastward, though the bay is shown. But the difference between the Glover and NoweU maps in other respects is too great to suggest a common source. The results of a careful analysis can be stated here only very briefly. The chief interest Hes, as the author intended, upon the spelling and lettering of the place-names. In the original draft the names, with two or three exceptions (e.g. Charing and Chart), were inscribed in the Saxon or Old EngHsh form of letters. Mailing (line 51) shows the capita] initial M, and the / stands for either f, as in words ending in ford, or v, as in Hever (11) and Dover (12). Ospring (14) shows the old form of s, r and g. The ge has the sound of y in such names as Gealdig (51, for Yalding) and Oxleage (Boxley, on line 13 in both upper and lower sections). Hithe (57 and 11, for Hythe) shows the peculiar form of the voiced sphant, as in " ^ine ", not always easy to distinguish from the Saxon w in Wi (for Wye, line 55), in Witshm (for Wittersham, 10), and Ewell (57). The author added to his original draft a few names in the script of his age. S. Margaret on the east coast (58) is a clear example. Much less carefuUy written are the names of the places in Thanet: S. Nicolas, S. Jhon (in error for S. Thorn), Mar gat, S. Peter e, S. Laurence and, in the mouth of the Stour, Reptacest(er) with Rut(api&e) underneath it (for Richborough), the coast-line of the North Foreland being cut off by the edge of the page. Below Sandwic, west of Deil, there is Worboro, which must represent Woodnesborough; and on the Little Stour (not named) there is Winghm. Why was this part of the map so imperfectly drawn in the first instance I1 The clarity of the map elsewhere was ensured by the paucity of the place-names : in the space between the Medway and the Stour there are only fourteen as compared with more than forty on Glover's map. jAnd one wonders what guided the author in his 1 In the Welsh section, the fruit of a survey in 1664 in which Nowell seems to have taken part, the names are all written in his modern script, those of the counties and some districts in larger lettering like Bumenea marshe in the Kent section, while the adj oining parts of the English counties in those sections appear in the Old English script. One of the Welsh sections is reproduced in a paper on " The Map of Wales " by Dr. J. J. North (Arch. Cambrencis, Vol. xc, 1935). 144 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON EARLY KENT MAPS. choice of those he included. It may here be noted that the names L. Mountague and Erl of Arundell added to f. 113 appear through the paper in 113v. There are only two river-names : Medway. f. written in the author's modern script on both banks of the river west of Tunbrug (Tonbridge), and Dert. f. (12) which was also an addition, as indicated by the modern / , though Dert is in Saxon script. In two cases a place-name is repeated, being inscribed on either side of the binding that separates the two sections of an opening: on f. 116v. Eltham is plotted in its true position SE. of Grenwic (Greenwich), and on 117 it appears on the bank of the Thames near the mouth of the Dart; and Elham is plotted on line 56 in f. 113v. and hah way between 56 and 57 in 114. In two other cases a name on line 13 of the lower section is repeated on that line in the upper: Oxleage, which has previously been mentioned; and Aeglesford (Aylesford) on the lower section, which appears again as Alisford on the upper. The more important places NoweU indicated by an elaboration of his usual Httle dotted chcle. In the case of Aeglesford and Lewe (Lewes in Sussex) he surmounted the chcle by a cross, and in other cases, by what can only be described as a scrawl—e.g. Hrofceaster (Rochester), Medweastun (Maidstone), Loidis (Leeds), and Sondwic (Sandwich). As to Canterbury, he plotted the symbol approximately in its correct position, but he omitted to inscribe the name. The charts were not based upon a personal field-survey— they were intended, as Dr. North suggests, for historical rather than geographical purposes, so that one may not be surprised at the errancy of the plotting of place-names. It does not caU for analysis, though repetition of Wardun (Warden), at opposite corners of Sheppey, may be remarked. But considering the object NoweU had in view one would expect to find greater accuracy in his spelling of some of the old forms. Lamberthurt and Godhurt (Goudhurst) may be mere haste or carelessness, while Wade (under 15) for Iwade and Hohtun (55) for Boughton under Blean may be misreadings of his source—though he writes Bohtun (52) for SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE ON EARLY KENT MAPS. 145 Boughton Monchelsea. On the other hand Havochurst (Hawkhurst) and Rotherbrig (Robertsbridge on the Rother) are instructive, as also is Lime (Lymne) with Limemuth at the mouth of the Rother, and Oldfrestun for -Ahriston in Sussex. Wudcirce (55) and Iuecirce (56) may be mentioned —the latter (Ivychurch) supplying the only instance in which u the Saxon form of v is used. Here this analysis must come to a close—with an expression of hope that someone more competent may be led to embark upon a comparison of the Old Enghsh place-names of Kent to be found in early maps and manuscripts. ADDENDA AND NOTES TO EARLY KENT MAPS, VOL. XLIX. p. 252. I have come to the conclusion that Glover did not make an independent survey, but that, as indicated by bis squaring, he based his map on an earher one, making perhaps some additions. As to Saxton and his methods Mr. Lynam, in an article contributed to The Times oi December 17th, 1932, wrote :— Triangulation of a crude sort was known in England, and for instruments Saxton had the astrolabe, compass, and cross-staff (a kind of sextant) ; and possibly also the surveying instrument described in Cuningham's Cosmographical Glasse (1559) or Leonard Digges's Theodelitus. The length of his base fines was probably paced or computed. No meridians or paraUels are given on the county maps, but Saxton evidently foUowed Mercator, who drew his prime meridian through the island of St. Michael in the Azores. Prof. E. G. R. Tayler in Tudor Geography (Methuen, 1930), has an instructive chapter entitled " Practical Surveying and Navigation in the Sixteenth Century ". It is Ulustrated by six plates of the instruments then in use. p. 257. " Carte de I'Angleterre . . ." This is an English version of a colophon which was engraved by Rocque on one of the six plates of the " Quartermaster's map " in 1752, when the map came into his possession and was published by him. .As originaUy engraved by HoUar in 14 146 SUPPLEMENTAARY NOTE ON EARLY KENT MAPS. 1644 and sold by Jenner it was accompanied by a separatelyprinted title, describing it as " Portable for every Man's Pocket. Usefull for aU Commanders for Quarteringe of Souldiers, and aU sorts of Persons, that would be informed, where the .Armies be ", showing that it was intended for the use of both Royal and Parhamentary Forces in the field, and was not made, as Rocque's colophon asserts, " by Oliver CromweU's order for the use of his Armies " only. See a paper by Sh George Fordham in the Geog. Journ. for July 1917. p. 265, line 23, for " must therefore" read " may perhaps ". p. 266. After line 13 read (with reference to the anon, map) " probably made by the device of squaring ". It may here be remarked that in the process of copying for engraving a map must be drawn so that " east is west and west is east"—this is the explanation of the footnote on page 254.