by Heather Lawrence

This article, which first appeared in The Cartographic Journal (1985) was written by Heather Lawrence shortly before her sudden death in 1984. Mrs Lawrence, who was an avid map collector and owned a manuscript map by Norden, had written several articles about Christopher Saxton and John Speed and was a co-author of Christopher Saxton, Elizabethan Mapmaker (1979).

WHEN JAMES VI of Scotland rode to London in 1603 he inherited not only the crown of England, but also Elizabeth's considerable debts. His life style was extravagant and he had a Queen and family to support in regal splendour. It was soon apparent that he could not live within his income. Funds must be raised from the land.

The sale of crown property was nothing new. From the time of Henry VIII's seizure of the vast monastic estates, he and succeeding monarchs had disposed of his plunder and their inheritance for financial gain. Monarchs were expected to live off their own income and a large proportion of this, an average of £180,000 per annum, came from land revenue. James, in fact, inherited but a fragment of the land once owned by Henry VIII, but he in his turn alienated royal property to the value of £775,000 during his reign.

The majority of the crown lands had been sold in ignorance of their true content or potential value as sources of revenue, and management was often in the hands of corrupt officials to the detriment of the royal coffers. On the other hand crown tenants were in an enviable position, the estates were run uneconomically, were not 'modernised' by enclosure, and tenants paid low rents. Very little surveying had been done of royal estates in Elizabeth's reign, apart from William Hombres¬tone's surveys of confiscated lands, and some possessions in Wales and Cornwall.

Private estates were run much more efficiently, and private landowners frequently employed surveyors to survey and map their estates. Various surveyors, and others, wrote advisory tracts to officials offering suggestions for improving the profita¬bility of crown lands, amongst them Sir Robert Johnson, who wrote to Robert Cecil in 1602 recommending a thorough reformation of practices. He observed that 'whenever 1 have heard of the sale of Her Majesty's Lands, 1 have observed that the value was seldom known', and that 'the chief foundation of mischief has been the want of authentic surveys.' He believed 'that of every ten mannors there is not one perfect survey' [1]

When James I realised, and acknowledged, his poor financial position, he directed Lord Treasurer Buckhurst to discover the true position concerning his estates. In 1603 manorial stewards were required to return details of rents, leases and values of different types of land held, [2] and from 1604 surveyors were employed to survey crown lands. On December 21, 1607 a comprehensive survey of crown woods was ordered and shortly after instructions issued to sell decayed timber. Surveyors were employed here too. During the first five years of his reign James spent £1,000 on surveying woods alone. When Robert Cecil succeeded as Lord Treasurer in 1608 he continued and extended his predecessor's policies and in an endeavour to increase fines on new leases, and raise rents to the current economic value, he commissioned new surveys. It was known as 'The Great Survey' but unfortunately was never completed and the practice of decaying rents and mismanagement continued in many areas. However, the resultant surveys provide us with the most comprehensive view of land and property throughout England and Wales in the post-Reformation period.


A veritable army of surveyors was employed, many of them familiar names to us, such as John Norden, the three Treswells, Aaron Rathbone, John Thorpe, John Hercy and George Owen, but there were dozens more - in fact a rough count produced 125 names. Regretfully, from our point of view, few of their surveys include maps, though maps do survive in sufficient numbers to indicate that they were compiled to accompany many surveys, particularly those of the forests and castles. In the manorial surveys, however, maps were sometimes included to illustrate the land held by a particular tenant, or a group of adjacent fields, rather than the whole manor.

It cannot be stressed too strongly that these surveyors, as they are called in contemporary documentation, were not necessarily cartographers, but men whose duties ranged from stewardship of an estate, to peripatetic viewing and valuing of land generally - from a legalistic point of view. That maps were sometimes included in the surveys is a bonus for us, but it was not a high priority of requirement. It was a time for change, and it is possible to see the emergence from the traditional medieval system enshrined in the law, to the more accurate production of rentals, surveys and maps.

Surveyors of woods were instructed to 'measure & plott out all his Mats coppics' ... 'and the plott you shall certifie and return accordingly [3] In the Great Survey following, one of the surveyors' many listed duties was to discover 'the quantity of the lands by measure mears and bounds' for which Robert Johnson suggested: ‘4 Commissioners ... having competent clarks for the engrossing, are able enough to follow 24 measures, for a skilfull eye will in one day judge of the value of more particulars than a good measurer will measure in 10 days, and ... the leasure of measuring were to multiply the charge above cause or reason ... [4]

About 1616 John Norden advised Fulke Greville, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, that 'it will be found that the plotting of whole manors will prove more chargeable, and more tedious than of necessity, by reason of the time and attendance it will of force require.' He strongly recommended that the demesnes (land belonging to the lord) and improvable waste be mapped in all cases, and estimated that if, as he recommended, the surveyors be paid a fixed sum for a manor, be it large or small, rather than at the customary daily rate, the cost of wholly mapping a manor would be at least double that of a written survey with only the demesnes and wastes plotted [5]

At first the surveyors are recorded as receiving a lump sum for their work and expenses. For instance, in 1607, John Thorpe, Henry Cumings and Israel Amyee were paid £20 for surveying land in Theobalds Park, and in the same year John Herey was paid £100 for surveying plots of land in eight named counties. George Owen, remembered as the author of the map of Pembrokeshire in Camden's Britannia, received £120 for sur¬veying woods in Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire, Glamorgan and Montgomeryshire. The usual daily rate of pay was 15 shillings whilst 'in the field' for surveying woods, 4 shillings during the period of writing up the surveys and drawing maps, and 4 shillings whilst 'attending about the return of the commission.' A bonus was paid on timber sold, listed as 'portage' in the accounts. Payment did vary however, and Aaron Rathbone was paid 22 shillings a day for the 130 days to make up the books which included copies for the steward of each manor. One particularly interesting account, dated 1607, relates to a commission to William Typper to survey 'drowned lands' in Lincolnshire - that is, those left bare and dry by and from the sea. The daily pay for the two Commissioners was 13 shillings 4 pence each, the two surveyors 8 shillings each, the two 'chayne leaders' 4 shillings each, two table carriers 4 shillings each, and a clerk 4 shillings. Detailed accounts had to be submitted and settlement sometimes took years.


Those working for the Duchy of Cornwall fared better for some reason. John Norden received 26 shillings 8 pence a day for himself, servants and horses when surveying Prince Henry's lands in Devon and Cornwall in 1612, and a further £20 for preparing the books for the Prince and his Council. He was still paid the same rate by the Duchy in the 1620s but his son who assisted him only got half as much. As Norden claimed to have surveyed over 176 manors for Prince Henry and Prince Charles in about six years he must have made a steady income, although he does regularly complain of financial hardship and non payment.

It seems that at first surveyors were employed on a fairly casual basis, though they petitioned hard for employment. Norden, for instance, wrote a long theological tract to James I, concluding by offering his services either in continuing his county surveys begun under Queen Elizabeth, or 'That youre Highness would be pleased to imploye the same in the survey of some of your Mats land. [6] There was no shortage of applicants. Accord¬ing to the farmer (in Norden's Surveyor's Dialogue) there were many surveyors soliciting work by pinning their bills upon posts in the streets of London. But at the same time we have it from Norden, Agas, and others that many so-called surveyors were quite incompetent.

Robert Johnson observed in 1609 that 'Though the printed book hath in it worthy directions not to be excepted against and the use of perfect surveior thereby intended, yet it will appear that amongst the 36 surveiours or more of particular Counties not one of them hath ever laboured to perfect his understanding concerning his office. [7] The printed book to which he referred must have been Norden's Surveyor's Dialogue, first printed in 1607, which became the crown land surveyor's manual - indeed it was still recommended reading for the parliamentary surveyors in the middle of the century. However, not all of them should be so condemned, and it is the work of the more skilful who prove Johnson wrong: Norden, the Treswells, Rathbone, and Thorpe in particular and it is they who produced the majority of the maps.

The work undertaken was very diverse and involved far more than the straightforward surveying of woods and land. Norden was to be found surveying and mapping Windsor Castle and Park, providing paling for Farnham Park, overseeing the demolition of a tower at Sandham Castle in the Isle of Wight, holding courts of enquiry and survey throughout the south of England, repairing breaches in the sea wall at Calshot Castle and listing munitions held in various castles. His work for the Duchy of Cornwall was mainly manorial surveying in the South West, but also further afield into Lincolnshire, Yorkshire and Wales. Robert Treswell can be found building lodges in Waltham Forest, enclosing coppices in the Forest of Dean 'from the spoyle and hurt of Cattle and beasts', supervising hedging and ditching to contain the deer, and so forth, in addition to more normal surveying duties, but with rather more 'emphasis on the maintenance of the parks and forests. Aaron Rathbone, best remembered for his book The Surveyor ... published in 1616, was employed chiefly in Yorkshire and Cumbria, from the manor of Bridlington to Carlisle Castle.


At the manorial courts of enquiry held by the surveyors, a list of up to thirty questions was submitted to a chosen jury of tenants. Though most are of little interest to us cartographically, one question is of relevance - how many feet constituted the customary perch in that manor? The answers varied enormously. In manors in Denbighshire it was 24 feet, and in four manors in Devon we find as many different lengths, 16½, 17 and 18 feet, with the reply from Buckfastleigh that 'the measure of their Hundred for land is Sixteen foot and a half one inch and one barley corn square to make a perch.[8] This variation from the standard length must have been very confusing to an inexpert surveyor to say the least. But on maps examined I found there was either no scale given or the land was measured at the standard rate of 16½ feet.

By 1611 several surveyors were sufficiently esteemed to be granted Letters Patent and a pensionable position. Norden's instruction was that he would be granted power and authority to travel into the ten most southerly counties to survey castles, forts, parks, lodges and such forests and chases as were impaled, and to discover 'all decaies ruins and want of reparacons' for which he was to receive an annual pension of £50. However, in the following year this was rescinded and regranted to him and another jointly. Robert Treswell's Letters Patent were similar in content with twenty-one counties north of a line from the Severn to the Thames to his charge and the grant a pension of £50. Upon consideration it was decided that Treswell and Norden could not cope with so many counties. John Thorpe, who lived conve¬niently near the Palace of Westminster so 'may more comodious¬lie upon anie sudden occasion bee readie upon commandment,' was granted ten counties (three of Norden's and seven of Treswell's) which roughly constitute the Home Counties, and a pension of £20.

Busy as these men must have been, many accepted private commissions at the same time. Norden carried out extensive estate surveys, mostly with maps, for Robert Cecil, Sir John Spenser, and others, in addition to writing his 'Surveyor's' Dialogue', compiling his mileage tables published in 1625 as 'England: an intended Guide,' and copying and compiling maps of Ireland for Cecil. As for the maps themselves, the quality varies as much as the subjects; but the best of them were very good.


References:

1. I. Quoted in The Domesda)' oJ Crown Lands by Sidney J. Madge. (1938) p.5!.

British Library. Lansdowne ms. 80/3 1.6
Hatffeld House. Salisbury ms. c.P. 141/293
British Library. Add ms. 38444
State Papers Domestic James I. Vol. 84 0.45
British Library. Royal Ms. TB A XXIII
British Library, Add. I11S. 384-1-11.96
City of London Record Office. R.C.E. 114D

N.B. Norden's manuscript maps plus text were originally together in the Harley Collection Ms. 6252. However. in the eighteenth century. during reproduction of the maps. the originals and text became parted. The manuscript maps were found by Professor Ravenhill in 1972 i.n Trinity College. Cambridge. The text and the reproduction maps are in the British Library. Ed.

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