12 
H. G. FORDHAM-HERTFORDSHIRE MAPS, 
CATALOGUE. 
PartI: 1579-1673. 
1579. Saxton, Christopher. 20 x 15f. Scale, about 
2 miles = 1 inch. Engraved by Nicholas Reynolds, of London 
[1577]. 
Shows the hundreds, rivers, with bridges, towns, villages, 
with churches, hills, parks, and woods (indicated by coarsely- 
figured trees). Plain double-line margin. On scrolls in margin 
“ Septentrio” u Oriens,” “ Meridies” and “ 0 ccidens” Left- 
hand top corner filled by panel with scrolls, bunches of pears, 
grapes, apples, and pendent leaves, and large coat of royal arms 
with imperial crown and supporters, and below, in rectangular 
panel, ‘ ‘ Hartfordice Comitatus nova , vera, ac particularis description 
Anno Dni 1577.” In left-hand bottom corner large, open pair 
of compasses standing on scale of (10) miles, with scroll bearing, 
“ Christoferus, Sa . . . xton descripsit , et Nicholaus Rey . . . 
noldus Londinien . . . sis sculp sit. ” In right-hand bottom corner 
small coat of arms of Thomas Seckford, Master of the Requests to 
Queen Elizabeth (who was patron of Saxton’s undertaking), with 
motto above, “ Industria naturam ornatR 
Erom Saxton’s Atlas of 35 maps of England and Wales, no title, 
London, 1579, folio. 
This is the first set of county maps of England and Wales. 
“ Saxton spent nine years in travelling over the whole kingdom, 
of which he made a general survey, and separate ones of the 
counties. Thomas Seckford, master of the requests to Q. Elizabeth, 
was the promoter of this undertaking, procuring him a licence 
to imprint maps for England or any county therein for ten years.* 
. . . . To the whole set are prefixed 84 coats of arms of the 
nobility, a Latin catalogue of cities, bishoprics, market towns, 
castles, parish churches, rivers, bridges, groves, forests, inclosures 
in each county in England and Wales ; and an alphabetical and 
other index of the maps, and the judges’ circuits.” f The earliest 
of the maps are dated 1574, others 1575, 1576, 1577, and 1578, 
and the map of England and the Title Page are 1579. 
(Reprinted 1645, with the maps unaltered but redated (Herts, 
1642); by Peter Stent in 1652 (?) and 1665 (?); by Philip Lea, 
without date, but subsequent to 1689, the maps being, some of 
them, redated, e.g. Hereford 1665, Somerset 1685, Wilts 1689; 
and perhaps again later. In the reprints after 1645, the marginal 
ornamentation is much cut about and altered in many of the 
counties.) 
* This licence is printed in extemo in a note at pp. 1649-50 of vol. iii of the 
‘ Typographical Antiquities : or an Historical Account of the Origin and Progress 
of Printing in Great Britain and Ireland,’ by Joseph Ames and William Herbert. 
London, 1790, 3 vols., 4to. It is dated 1577. 
t ‘Anecdotes of British Topography’ [Richard Gough], London, 1768, 4to, 
at pp. 40, 41. 
