John Dee and Christopher Saxton's survey of Manchester (1596)

Northern History

Volumn 42, Issue 2, 2005, Pages

  Bowd, Stephen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Chorography; Christopher saxton; Henry Savile; John Dee; Manchester; Sixteenth century

Indexed keywords

EID: 34347264428     PISSN: 0078172X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1179/174587005X68405     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography, 1485-1583 (1930), chs 5-7; Antoine de Smet, 'John Dee et sa place dans l'histoire de la cartographie', in My Head is a Map: Essays & Memoirs in Honour of . V. Tooley, ed. Helen Wallis and Sarah Tyacke (1973), pp. 107-13;
2. and William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst, 1995).
3. John Dee, 'Mathematicall Praeface', in THE ELEMENTS OF GEOMETRIE of the most auncient Philosopher EVCLIDE of Megara ⋯ With a very fruitfull Praeface made by M. I. Dee, specifying the chiefe Mathematicall Sciences, What they are, and whereunto commodious: where, also, are disclosed certaine new Secrets Mathematicall and Mechanicall, untill these our daies greatly missed (London, John Daye, 1570).
4. On Saxton's career, see principally Ifor M. Evans and Heather Lawrence, Christopher Saxton, Elizabethan Map-Maker (Wakefield and London, 1979);
5. see P. D. A. Harvey, Maps in Tudor England (1993), pp. 54-65, 113;
6. and Victor Morgan, 'The Cartographic Image of "The Country" in Early Modern England', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, XXIX (1979), 129-54.
7. Tyacke and Huddy, Christopher Saxton, pp. 24-31.
8. In general, see Peter Barber, 'England I: Pageantry, Defense and Government: Maps at Court to 1550' and 'England II: Monarchs, Ministers and Maps 1550-1625', in Monarchs, Ministers, and Maps: The Emergence of Cartography as a Tool of Government in Early Modern Europe, ed. David Buisseret (Chicago, 1992), pp. 26-98.
9. On the survey see the judicious summary in Evans and Lawrence, Christopher Saxton, p. 100.
10. Dee, Diaries, 13, 20 Aug. 1596.
11. Sarah Bendall, 'Draft town maps for John Speed's Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine', I(mago) M(undi), LIV (2002), 30-45. I am grateful to Dr Bendall for sending me an offprint of her article.
12. See also Christopher Haigh, 'Puritan evangelism in the reign of Elizabeth I', English Historical Review, XCII (1977), 41-45.
13. On Rogationtide processions, see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven and London, 1992), pp. 136-39.
14. Chetham's Library, Manchester, MS Mun.C.6.63, Dee to William Langley, Manchester, 2 May 1597.
15. Dee, Diaries, 4 May 1597.
16. Evans and Lawrence, Christopher Saxton, pp. 99-101, 105-06, 118-19.
17. T. S. Willan, Elizabethan Manchester, CS, 3rd series, XXVII (1980), 8-9.
18. Arthur Redford, assisted by Ina Stafford Russell, The History of Local Government in Manchester, I, Manor and Township (1939), part 1, esp. chs 1-3. The township comprised of 1646 acres, and measured roughly two miles by three at its widest points: see Willan, Elizabethan Manchester, pp. 3-4.
19. The Court Leet Records of the Manor of Manchester, ed. J. P. Earwaker, 12 vols (Manchester, 1884), II, 110 n. I owe this insight to Peter Barber who was kind enough to discuss the matter with me. Several surviving medieval surveys have been edited and published: Mamecestre: being chapters from the early recorded history of the barony; the lordship or manor; the vill, borough, or town, of Manchester, III, ed. John Harland, CS, old series, LVIII (1862), 476-532 (rental of manor of Manchester, May 1473); and Three Lancashire Documents of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries ⋯ CS, old series, LXXIV (1868).
20. Andrew McRae, 'To Know One's Own: estate surveying and the representation of the land in early modern England', Huntington Library Quarterly, LVI (1993), 332-57.
21. John Norden, The Surveyors Dialogue. Divided into five Bookes: Very profitable for all men to peruse, that have to do with the revenues of land, or the manurance, use, or occupation thereof: as also and especially for such as indevor to be seene in the faculty of surveying of Mannors, Lands, Tenements, & c. (London, printed for Hugh Astley, dwellin at S. Magnus Corner, 1607), p. 3.
22. Dee, 'Mathematicall Praeface', in Elements of Geometrie, sig. aiiijr.
23. P. D. A. Harvey, 'Estate surveyors and the spread of the scale-map in England, 1550-80', Landscape History, XV (1993), 37-49. Saxton drew up a written survey and map for a new landowner in 1599: see Evans and Lawrence, Christopher Saxton, pp. 108-09.
24. Willan, Elizabethan Manchester, pp. 9-17. For comparable examples of gentlemen - especially newcomers like Mosley - exploiting tenants see Felicity Heal and Clive Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales, 1500-1700 (Basingstoke, 1994), pp. 103-16, 123-25.
25. Claim to the Duchy Court by the burgesses quoted in Willan, Elizabethan Manchester, p. 12.
26. T. D. Kendrick, British Antiquity (1950), esp. ch. 3.
27. Dee, Diaries, 19 Jul. 1600.
28. Henry Savile of Blaithroyd is called of 'the Banke' in the 1584/5 visitation of the Somerset Herald Robert Glover: see The Visitation of Yorkshire made in the Years 1584/5, by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald; to which is added the subsequent Visitation made in 1612, by Richard St. George, Norroy King of Arms ⋯, ed. Joseph Foster (1875), p. 329, with an authoritative note: 'Teste me Henricus Savillus'. He is referred to as 'nuper de Shay hill in Skircoat' in the administration of the will granted to his son in 1607/8: see Andrew G. Watson, The Manuscripts of Henry Savile of Banke (1969), p. 3.
29. Watson, Manuscripts of Henry Savile, Appendix III.
30. Michael Hicks, 'John Nettleton, Henry Savile of Banke, and the Post-Medieval Vicissitudes of Byland Abbey Library', Northern History, XXVI (1990), 212-17.
31. Camden, Britannia (1600 edition), pp. 616, 620; idem, Britannia (1607 edition), pp. 567-68. In neither case was Henry Savile's efforts acknowledged. In fact, only Sir John Savile 'of Medley' (i.e. Methley manor) (1546-1607) was praised for his contributions to Camden's enterprise, perhaps because he was a far more important figure than his distant relation, and possibly because Camden had been embarrassed by the scandal of the faulty Alfredian manuscript supplied by the elder Savile. On Camden and Sir John Savile note Leslie W. Hepple, 'William Camden and early collections of Roman antiquities in Britain', Journal of the History of Collections, XV (2) (2003), 164.
32. Jean Manco, 'Henry Savile's Map of Bath', Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society Proceedings, CXXXVI (1992), 127-39. I am grateful to Ms Manco, who identifies the younger Henry as the surveyor, for discussing this interesting map with me. It is now in a private collection.
33. On Thomas Savile and Camden, see F. J. Levy, 'The Making of Camden's Britannia', Bibliothèque d'humanisme et Renaissance. Travaux et documents, XXVI (1964), 84-85. For their correspondence, 1582-93, see BL, Add. MSS, 36294, fols 3r-9r. Thomas Savile was also widely travelled and his range of interests, including astronomy, Greek, and English antiquarianism, would also have made him congenial company for Dee. On 1 Dec. 1590 the astronomer Tycho Brahe wrote to Thomas Savile: 'Saluta quoque meo nomine officiose nobilissimum et excellentissum dominum Johannem Dee, quem in patriam feliciter reversum audivi, ipsique hoc nomine congratulor, omniaque prospera opto ⋯'. He asked Savile to give copies of his new book to Dee and Thomas Digges: see BL, Harl. MSS, 6995, fols 21-22. On 3 Feb. 1583 Dee noted in his diary that 'Mr Savile, Mr Powel, the younger, travellers, Mr Ottoman his son, came to be acquainted with me' at Mortlake. This is almost certainly a reference to Sir Henry Savile (1549-1622), later Warden of Merton College and Provost of Eton, who had been travelling on the Continent since 1578 and was in Italy in 1581 and Nuremberg the following year before returning to Oxford. Robert B. Todd, 'Henry and Thomas Savile in Italy', Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, LVIII (1996), 439-44. See also the letter from Alvise Lullini to Henry Savile, Venice, 20 Apr. 1582, which discusses Savile's manuscript collecting, and is endored 'the year I came out of Italy': Calendar of State Papers Foreign, 1581-82, p. 633, discussed in J. R. L. Highfield, 'An Autograph Manuscript Commonplace Book of Sir Henry Savile', Bodleian Library Record, VII (2) (1963), 73-83. Savile travelled in a party that included Robert Sidney (1563-1626), younger brother of the poet Sir Philip. Dee's close connection with the latter helps explain how this meeting came about. On Dee and the Sidney circle, see French, John Dee, ch. 6. 'Mr Powel' was probably the Oxford graduate David Powel (1549/52-98), who was Sir Henry Sidney's private chaplain between 1584 and 1586. He published The Historie of Cambria (1584) and an edition of Giraldus Cambrensis (1585) (dedicated to Sir Henry Sidney). For the former he borrowed manuscripts of unpublished chronicles from Stow: see Beer, Tudor England, p. 15; and McKisack, Medieval History, pp. 52-53, 58-59.
34. See Woolf, Social Circulation, pp. 151-52; and Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1995), p. 43 (Britannia was recognized 'as a touchstone of achievement which gave focus to research into the origins and development of the nation and its institutions, and established a standard for British antiquarian studies in the future'.).
35. R. A. Skelton, 'Tudor Town Plans in John Speed's Theatre', Archaeological Journal, CVIII (1951), 109-20. Speed's correspondence with Cotton of c. 1609 regarding chronicles of Kings Henry IV and Henry V, and the preparation of wood engravings of Roman coins and altars for his Theatre is in BL, Cotton MSS, Julius C III, fols 354-58.
36. Linda Van Norden, 'Sir Henry Spelman on the Chronology of the Elizabethan College of Antiquaries', Huntington Library Quarterly, XIII (1949-50), 147-48, Table. On Cotton and the Society see Kevin Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586-1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1979), ch. 1.
37. Savile's tomb inscription apparently recorded: 'Ac Italiam Deinceps, Galliam Germanium ardore quodam Amoris quo Literes est prosecutus peragrasset, tandem Londoni post reditum bene Diu Beateque vivens ⋯'. It is now lost, but see Watson, Manuscripts of Henry Savile, p. 2 n. 1.
38. Norwich Library Roll, formerly Gurney MS XXII, Macro 105.2, fol. 65: cited by inda Van Norden, 'The Elizabethan College of Antiquaries' (unpub. Ph. D. thesis, Univ. of California, 1946), p. 155, microfilm.
39. Middle Temple Records, ed. Charles Henry Hopwood, 4 vols (1904), I. Minutes of Parliament of the Middle Temple, trans. and ed. Charles Trice Martin, 336. But see McKisack, Medieval History, p. 158, where it is suggested that Sir Henry's elder brother Sir John Savile (1546-1607) is the more likely candidate. He was certainly in the Middle Temple by 1565, but is not on any known list of the Society's membership: Hopwood, Middle Temple Records, I, 336; R. J. Schoeck, 'The Elizabethan Society of Antiquaries and Men of Law', Notes and Queries (October 1954), 420.
40. Perhaps to be engraved by Augustine Ryther, thought to be a native of Leeds, who worked on Saxton's Atlas and on plans of Oxford (1588) and Cambridge (1592-93). Or perhaps William Rogers who provided the title-plate and several illustrations for Camden's Britannia in 1600, as well as Speed's map of Cheshire c. 1604. Or even Remigius Hogenberg: he also engraved maps for Saxton's Atlas, as well as a plan of Exeter (1587) after a drawing by the city's chamberlain. Arthur M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries: A Descriptive Catalogue with Introductions. Part 1. The Tudor Period (Cambridge, 1952), pp. 138-49, 258-80, 64-78.
41. J. B. Harley, 'Meaning and ambiguity in Tudor cartography', in English Map-Making, 1500-1650: Historical Essays, ed. Sarah Tyacke (1983), pp. 22-45.