CHRISTOPHER SAXTON AND BELFAST LOUGH
J. H. ANDREWS
Trinity College, Dublin
Among the Irish maps collected by Lord Burghley and now in the
Public Record Office, London, is an anonymous undated sketch (M.P.F.
77) of Belfast Lough, usually assigned to about the year 1570, showing
the town of Camckfergus with the nearby castles and abbeys and including curious notes on local resources of stone and timber as well as a
good selection of place-names. In itself this map is of minor interest
except to local historians, but it suddenly assumed a new importance in
1950 when a second copy, bearing the inscription ' Christopher Saxton
after Michael Fitzwilliams 1569 ' was reported in a posthumously published
article by Edward Lynam, Superintendent of the Map Room at the
British Museum.1 Such a map, if genuine, would shed light on a period
of Saxton's life and an aspect of his cartographic personality that are
otherwise entirely unknown, and Lynam's account of it has quickly
established itself in the literature of cartography.2 No subsequent writer
has claimed a first-hand acquaintance with it, however, and in spite of
some hard searching (notably by the staff of the Public Record Office of
Northern Ireland) no clear trace of any such map can now be found.
Whether Lynam saw the map for himself has thus become a question
of some importance. Before the evidence on this point is considered, it
may be useful to quote his published description in full :
' A map recently discovered in a private collection in Ulster shows him
[i.e. Saxtor] however in a different light. This is a coloured"chart, drawn on
vellum; of Belfast Lough and its coasts from Belfast to the sea. It has no title,
but is endorsed " Baie of Cragfargus " and signed " Christopher Saxton after
Michael Fitzwilliams 1569 ". Another manuscript copy of it, bearing neither
title nor date, was formerly in Sir William Cecil's collection and is now in the
Public Record Office (M.P.F. 77. S.P.'64/1. No. 10). It is not in Saxton's hand
nor, so far as I can discover, in that of Fitzwilliams, who was Surveycr-General
of Lands, Plantations and Mines in Ireland, 1552-73. The fact that Saxton
was employed, to copy a document of such political and military importance
proves that already in 1569 he had won a reputation as a cartographer and that
Seckford selected him for that reason. I understand that the owner of this map
will present the original or a reproduction of it to the Public Record Office at
Belfast.'
When one remembers Lynam's flair for conveying the look of a map in a
few well-chosen words, the second and third sentences of this passage
I
seem curiously lifeless. Still more remarkable is the absence from them
of any comment on the handwriting of the Saxton version, an omission
made more glaring by the reference, almost immediately afterwards, to
the writing on the less important and already well-known Record Office
copy. Even if there were no other evidence, this omission would make
it hard to believe that Lynam was writing from first-hand knowledge.
But other evidence is forthcoming, and it is not.reassuring. Lynam's
article was based on a lecture delivered to the Royal Geographical Society
on the 26th of April, 1948, but it is clear that the passage quoted above
was added later while he was expanding and revising the text for publication, for in a letter written in the following year (29 April)3 he gives the
impression of having only just heard of the new map. With this letter,
addressed to a friend in the Public Record Office, he enclosed a cutting
from the Belfast Telegraph of 24 March, 1949, in which the Saxton map
was described by an Ulster historian, Mr. C. J. Robb. Lynam described
how the cutting had reached him from an unnamed friend in Belfast and
added that the map referred to was apparently the original of one in the
Record Office. He also asked for a brief description of the latter map for
use in his forthcoming article, but said nothing to suggest that he had either
seen or had any prospect of seeing the Saxton version. It is possible, of
course, that he saw it at some time between March 1949 and his death
in January 1950, though there is nothing in his surviving official correspondence to suggest this. It is at least clear, however, that he cannot
have seen the map by applying to Mr. Robb, the author öf the Belfast
Telegraph article, because according to Mr. Robb's information both the
map and its owner had been in Australia for many years.
Certainly, there was little or nothing in what Lynam finally wrote that
could not have been derived from his friend's cutting. The Telegraph
article had begun :
' Among the contents of the library of Mulroy House, Carrigart, Co. Donegal,
the seat of Lord Leitrim, sold over twenty years ago, was a folio of maps.
The present owner has recently called my attention to this collection, which
is mainly estate maps containing little of interest, bar a time-worn and crumpled
parchment sheet.
On this is delineated the chart of Belfast Lough and its maritime terrain,
from Belfast out to the open sea. It bears the endorsement " Baie of Cragfargus "
and is subscribed "Christopher Saxton after Michael Fitzwilliams, 1569".
Thé cartographical features and lettering are identical with those of the old
chart in the Public Record Office, London, whose origin ard date have been
the subject of much controversy in the past, and there is no doubt that it is the
original map, the London copy being a duplicate '.
Mr. Robb went on to identify Saxton and Fitzwilliams and to describe
the contents of the new map in terms which,- with two inconclusive exceptions4, could apply equally well to M.P.F. yy. He added : ' The
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writer has advised the custodian of this original parchment chart to consider presenting it in full deposit either to the Public Record Office, Belfast,
or Municipal Museum and Art Gallery, and is happy to state that this
step is likely to be taken in the not distant future '. The two writers thus
differ slightly about the prospects of the new map. Perhaps Lynam sought
further information from Mr. Robb, though the latter now has no recollection of this. An equally good explanation is that having sent his cutting
to the Record Office, Lynam was writing either from memory or from a
rough precis of its contents. The same circumstance may account for
the other discrepancies between the two accounts, namely Lynam's
reference to vellum where Mr. Robb mentions parchment, and Lynam's
substitution of ' signed ' for Mr. Robb's ' subscribed '. The latter difference, it must be admitted, seems a crucial one, but if Lynam intended
' signed ' to mean that the handwriting had been positively identified
as Saxton's he would surely have laid more emphasis on this point. In
fact it seems unlikely that Lynam had inspected even the relatively
accessible. M.P.F. 77 in the course of preparing his article ; had he done so,
he would hardly have followed Mr. Robb in applying the word ' chart '
to what is essentially a landsman's map.
Had he lived, Lynam would undoubtedly have taken the matter further.
As it is, there is no strong reason for supposing that he knew any more
about the Saxton map than he could have got from Mr. Robb, and it is on
Mr. Robb that we are thrown back. To his published account of the
matter, already quoted, he has since added the following points. From
Lord Leitrim's library (which was sold in 1927) the map passed, through
channels that cannot now be traced, to a Mr. R.B. Bailie of Ballynahinch,
Co. Down. Later, probably in 1929, Bailie loaned it for a few days to Mr.
Robb, who made notes (now lost) but took no copy. Bailie died in 1934,
after selling the map to Basil Boyd, a member of a Ballynahinch family
now resident in Australia. It now appears that Mr. Robb's article of March
1949 was part of his general programme of historical writing and not, as
the article itself seems to suggest, prompted by any recent disclosure.
There are several difficulties here. One can find no obvious reason why
the Clements family (later the Earls of Leitrim) should possess an official
map of any part of Elizabethan Ireland ; they had no connection with the
country before the middle of the seventeenth century and were never,
apparently, systematic collectors of manuscript maps. A few maps were
sold from their library in 19275, but there is no corroborative evidence
that the Saxton map was among them. Bailie's niece, who took possession
of his papers at his death, knows nothing of any such map and considers
that it is unlikely to have passed through her uncle's hands. Basil Boyd
died in 1952 without ever having left Australia ; his son and executor, Mr.
3
Oswald Boyd, is convinced that he was never in possession of. the map.
Searching inquiries among Australian librarians have produced no result.
In short, the only living person who can be found to have a first-hand
knowledge of the matter is Mr. Robb, who would not pretend to more
than a local historian's expertise in early cartography, and he was shown
the map over thirty-five years ago without having an opportunity to
investigate either its earlier or its subsequent history. In view of the lack
of corroboration where corroboration should surely be forthcoming, the
account of this history that he received from Bailie seems likely to have
been mistaken.
Since the map cannot now be found, two further questions must be
considered. Is it probable, on a priori grounds, that Fitzwilliams and
Saxton made a map of .Belfast Lough ? And if not, can the map under
discussion be explained in any other way ? On the first of these questions,
the following considerations seem relevant. It is most unusual for any
signature or contemporary attribution of authorship to appear on Irish
regional maps of the 1560s and 1570s. Of some thirty such maps known to
the writer, only two carry what purports to be the cartographer's name.
And the phrase ' Christopher Saxton after Michael Fitzwilliams ' is in
any case hard to accept as it stands : the preposition ' after ' in this context has a modern rather than an Elizabethan look. Fitzwilliams's name
appears in various forms in the Irish State Papers, but never, so far as
has been discovered, in its modern spelling ; and Saxton seems to have
preferred to sign himself as ' Christof er '.6 The presence of Fitzwilliams's
name, however spelt, is in itself surprising. Whatever their official title
might suggest to a modem reader, there appears to be no evidence that
Elizabethan Surveyors-General concerned themselves directly with
cartography. Their chief business was with the legal and fiscal aspects
of crown property, and if they dealt with maps at all it would have been
with content surveys of the ' estate map ' type rather than with military
or topographical sketches such as M.P.F. 77. Fitzwilliams was perhaps
more versatile than some other holders of his office and if, as he claimed,
he saw action against the Scots he almost certainly visited north-east
Ireland.7 Nevertheless, it seems questionable whether an important
personage like the Surveyor-General, commanding an annual salary of
£100 in addition to his fees,8 would be prepared to linger in a remote part
of the country practising a craft which, in Ireland at least, belonged
normally to men of lower status. And we already have a candidate for
the authorship of M.P.F. 77 in the surveyor Robert Lythe, who is known
to have made two plans of Carrickfergus in September 1567 and then to
have spent some time attempting to map the surrounding region.9 For
the present-day student of Anglo-Irish cartography, the intrusion of
4
Fitzwilliams and Saxton is thus unnecessary and indeed embarrassing.
If the map described by Mr. Robb was not authentic, how can its
existence be explained ? One possibility is that the words ' Christopher
Saxton after Michael Fitzwilliams 1569 ' represent a comparatively modern and highly conjectural attribution. Whether the rest of the map was
also modern is a matter on which it is not necessary for the present
purpose to offer an opinion, though it may be noticed that modern
facsimiles of M.P.F. yy have long been familiar to Ulster readers, a wellknown example being the reproduction in George Benn's History of the
town of Belfast (1877). For an inexpert reader, any Elizabethan Irish
map might plausibly be attributed to an official with the title SurveyorGeneral, and Fitzwilliams's name could have been easily found in the
Liber Munenim or the Calendar of Irish State Papers. For co-author,
the leading English map-maker of the period would have been a natural
choice, especially if our hypothetical ' editor ' was at work in the late
1920s when Saxton was becoming widely known through the writings of
Sir George Fordham ; and a particularly inviting choice if we charge him
with the admittedly rather sophisticated error of confusing Thomas
Seckford, the Surveyor of the Victuals in Ireland (who was closely associated with the town of Carrickfergus), with his elder brother of the same
name, who is of course well known as Saxton's patron.10 Finally, it is not
difficult to find a reason for dating such a map to 1569 : Benn's widely
known book assigns M.P.F. 77 to c. 1570, so it would be natural for the
owner of what purported to be the original of this map to place his copy
one year earlier.
There is little to be gained by carrying such arguments further at the
present juncture. It is to be hoped that the publication of the foregoing
remarks may elicit further information about this elusive map, for in the
light of the facts so far available there seems room to doubt whether it
deserves its present place of honour in the literature of English cartography.
REFERENCES
1
E. Lynam, 'English maps and mapmakers of the sixteenth century ', Geogr.
Jour. CXVI (September 1950), pp. 12-13, reprinted as Chapter III of Lynam's book,
The
mapmaker's art, 1953, pp. 63-64.
2
G. R. Crone, Maps and their makers, 1953, p. 180. Idem, Geogr. Jour. CXXI
(1955), p. 105. Idem, Early maps of the British Isles, A.D. 1000—A.D. 1579, 1961,
p. 29. E. G. R. Taylor, The mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England,
1954, pp. 32, 175, 187. Eadem, Geogr. Jour. CXXVII (1961), p. 551. G. R. Batho,
'Two newly discovered maps by Christopher Saxton', Geogr. Jour. CXXV (1959),
pp. 71, 73. J. H. Andrews, ' "Ireland in maps" : a bibliographical postscript',
Irish Geography, IV (1962), pp. 236, 241. A. H. W. Robinson, Marine cartography
in Britain, 1962, p. 150. G. A. Hayes-McCoy, Ulster and other Irish maps, c. 1600,
1964, p. xii.
5
2 This "letter (P.R.O. 7490/1949) was inspected by special authority of the Keeper
of Public Records. Another indication that the reference to the Belfast. Lough map
was a late addition to the script comes in the remark, later in the same paper, that
' b u4 t for Seckford, Saxton might have remained an estate surveyor all his life.'
One of the notes on M.P.F. 77 begins, ' Along this river by the space of 26 miles
groweth much wood, as well oaks for timber as other woods '. In Mr. Robb's transcript, the word ' and ' replaces the second ' as '. On M.P.F. 77 the words ' baie of
Cragfargus ' appear (in this spelling) not as an endorsement, but as part of the note
just
quoted.
5
The sale was reported in some detail in the Deny People and the Londonderry
Sentinel and a printed catalogue was issued by the Dublin firm of Battersby and Co.
Lot 746 was catalogued as 'Old Irish maps (4)', but there is no record of the character
or authorship of these items. A number of manuscripts are said to have been sold
privately
before the auction, but no maps are reported to have been among them.
6
It appears that the spelling ' Christofer ' is to be found on every MS map bearing
Saxton's name (Batho, op. cit., P.D.A, Harvey, ' A manuscript estate map by
Christopher Saxton ', British Museum Quarterly XXIII (1961), p. 65). Mr. F.W.
Smith, Borough Librarian of Dewsbury, tells me that this spelling, and not ' Christopher ' as stated by Mr. Batho (following Fordham), appears in Saxton's map of
Dewsbury;
7
P.R.O. S.P. 63/37/47.
8
Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniae, 1824, Part II, p. 56.
9
R. Dunlop, ' Sixteenth-century maps of Ireland ', English Historical Review
XX (1905), pp. 327 (No. 89), 331-32. As Dunlop points out, M.P.F. 77 is closely
similar in style to a number of other maps that appear to be products of Lythe's
surveys.
10
I am indebted to Miss E. J. Redstone of Woodbridge, Suffolk, for information
about the Seckford family.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author is indebted for useful information and comment to Mr. Brian Trainor,
Mr. R. A. Skelton, Mrs. D. Middleton, Professor D. B. Quinn and Mr. G. R. Crone.
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