Two Newly Discovered Manuscript Maps by Christopher Saxton

Abstract

Not surprisingly, Saxton has been the subject of close interest by students of the history of cartography. Yet he remains a dimly-delineated figure. The date of his birth is not precisely known; he himself in depositions to which two of his manuscript maps are attached makes conflicting statements as to his age which would give the year of his birth as either 1542 or 1544.2 Sir George Fordham made out a good case for Dunningley, between Leeds and Dewsbury in Yorkshire, as his place of birth and his grant of arms refers to him as Saxton of Dunningley, gentleman, but Wakefield has more recently claimed him as one of its sons.3 His death is presumed to have occurred in 1611 but all that can be said with certainty is that he died after 1610, when he was named as a legatee in the will of his elder brother Thomas, and before 1626, when the will of his son, Robert, was proved.4 There is not a single reference by either Saxton or his patron Seckford to his atlas, though admittedly it is possible, as Fordham and Lynam have demonstrated, to follow the general progress of the survey for the atlas and of the printing of the maps. Know? ledge of Saxton's extant manuscript maps has been even more hardly won. In 1928 Fordham could list only six manuscript maps known to be his and the work of the intervening thirty years has culled a mere seven more. Eleven signed maps are recorded and two unsigned maps have been identified as his work; of the signed maps one is lost and another survives only in an eighteenth century copy. The discovery of two hitherto unrecorded manuscript maps by Christopher Saxton among the papers of the Duke of Northumberland at Alnwick Castle is, therefore, exciting on account both of the cartographer's importance and of our relatively scanty knowledge of his career and work. 5