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A Distances without Scale and Compass John Adams of The Inner Temple (c 1643–90)
DISTANCES WITHOUT SCALE AND COMPASS:
JOHN ADAMS OF THE INNER TEMPLE (C 1643–90)
By Dr Stephen Gadd
In July 1677, it was announced in The London Gazette that John Adams “of The Inner-Temple” had produced “A New Large Map of England full six foot square”, enabling merchants and armchair travellers for the first time to see at a glance the “computed and measured miles” between market towns and other significant places. Adams presented a copy of his map to The Inner Temple, where it would hang in the Library for many years.
Thomas Palmer had produced a somewhat sketchy roadmap of England and Wales in 1668, but this was based on surveys undertaken by Christopher Saxton (in the 1570s) and John Norden, and errors had accrued with the publication of each successive ‘new’ map, including those of John Speed. Also, as Adams observed, “The Space of One hundred years, and the late Civil War hath much altered the face of the Kingdom; many Castles and Ancient Seats have been demolished, and several considerable Houses since erected, Market Towns disused, and others new made”. Following an extensive survey, John Ogilby published in 1675 the first detailed strip-maps showing the country’s principal roads, but Adams seems to have perceived a need for a more comprehensive and spatiallyrepresentative map.
1692 Reissue of Adams’ 6ft 1677 map
Detail from the above map
John Adams was born in Shrewsbury in about 1643 and followed his four older brothers in attending Shrewsbury School. His eldest brother, William, was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1655 but never progressed to the Bar and settled back in Shropshire where he would later assist John as a surveyor. Following his marriage to Jane Wrottesley in about 1665, John became embroiled in litigation with his brother-in-law concerning his wife’s dowry, an experience of the law which may ultimately have led to his admission to The Inner Temple in 1672. Here Adams will have witnessed the publication of Ogilby’s maps and made contact with one of Ogilby’s surveyors, Gregory King, whom he engaged to engrave his 1677 map.
Aware that he had needed to omit a great many places shown on Saxton’s and Norden’s county maps, Adams began to compile a list of them, and engaged King to supplement this list by extracting place-names from the recently collected records of the Hearth Tax surveyors. The resulting Index Villaris, published in 1680, contains no fewer than 24,000 entries detailing key information about each place, and King engraved a reduced version of the 1677 map to accompany it. The inclusion of geographical co-ordinates for every place, calculated by triangulating the distances between places reported by his correspondents, is testament to Adams’ vision and tenacity.
Within months of being called to the Bar in November 1680, and having decided that his triangulation calculations were inadequately exact, Adams was soliciting subscriptions for an Actual Survey of all the Counties in England and Wales, which was to be done “in a more particular manner than has ever hitherto been attempted”. He was encouraged by Robert Hooke and other members of the Royal Society, and Charles II proclaimed that he was to be helped to “make his observations from all the eminent high lands, hills and steeples for placing the cities, market towns, parishes, villages and private seats in their true positions”.
In 1682, Adams was in Lancashire (where he was admitted as a foreign burgess in Preston), and through his surviving correspondence with Sir Daniel Fleming we learn that he had been surveying in Devon and Cornwall in 1681, and that by the end of September 1683 he had hoped to have “one or more Counties Completed”. A ‘Specimen’ map of Shropshire at the British Library, resembling in form the 1677 map and again engraved by King, may date from this time, and includes some additional post roads, place-names, and adjusted mileages. Within months of being called to the Bar in November 1680, and having decided that his triangulation calculations were inadequately exact, Adams was soliciting subscriptions for an Actual Survey of all the Counties in England and Wales.
BL Maps * 4900.(1.)
By April 1685, Adams had enlisted the financial backing of several hundred subscribers and “made considerable progress”, but needed yet more funds, to which end James II proclaimed his support for “the speedy completing of so good and useful a work”. Following a bout of illness, in late April 1687 Adams asked to be excused from his duties at The Inner Temple and gave up his rooms there, perhaps to devote all of his energies to his survey. Evidently struggling to complete his survey and worried by ill-health, in a letter to Archbishop Sancroft in June 1688 Adams wrote that “if I live I resolve … to do the utmost that lyes in my power for the satisfaction of yor Lordship and the rest of my Encouragers”.
Gregory King recorded that Adams died in 1690 “a Souldier in Ireland”, “before he had perfected any thing” of his survey, but William Gilpin suggested in 1694 that “Mr Adams’ papers (wch I believ may be retrieved) would improve many of ye Maps”. Indeed, it seems quite possible that Adams’ papers had already been acquired by Robert Morden, an engraver who, like King, had been an agent for the sale of Adams’ original map in 1677.
In 1695, without commissioning or undertaking any surveying work himself, Morden published a complete set of English county maps, which ongoing research may show to have benefitted from Adams’ work: curiously, his Shropshire map is especially highly-detailed. Further research might shed light on John Adams’ death in Ireland as a soldier in the year of the Battle of the Boyne.
Dr Stephen Gadd
@docuracy The author is a freelance historical researcher, GIS consultant, and opera singer. His recent engagements have included work for Layers of London and for the British Library’s Locating a National Collection project.
