Add MS 71126

Scale bar of 3 [miles? = 210mm.] Scale circa 1:23040. Oriented with East at the top; cardinal points inset into decorated border. The towns of Kings Lynn and Wisbech are shown in perspective; houses, churches and windmills are also marked. Rivers and drainage ditches are in blue, drove roads and pasture commons in green, and the Ouse estuary features five ships and a whale (possibly a memory of the whale sighted near Kings Lynn in 1555; see B. Mackerell, The history and antiquities of the . . . corporation of Kings Lynn in Norfolk, 1738.) One of the earliest larger-scale English maps drawn to a stated scale, and certainly the earliest measured map of the region: probably commissioned by the government to distinguish rights of summer grazing on the Smeeth for the seven townships formerly owned by the Bishops of Ely and now belonging to the Queen, and the Duke of Norfolk, and probably also intended for public display. Richard Cox, Bishop of Ely 1559-1580, had been an active reformer who had come into conflict with the Queen and also with Lord North and Sir Christopher Hatton. He resigned his see in February 1580 and died in July 1581. Elizabeth took over the revenue of the estates which were administered from Canterbury: a new Bishop of Ely was not appointed until 1600. The map almost certainly dates from the period shortly after Cox's death, and was intended to establish the grazing-rights and fees of the estates the Queen had just acquired. Prickmarks suggest that copies were made directly from it, or that it was copied from an earlier map which has not survived. It is closely related to, and may have been the source of, a map of the area dating from 1591, now lost, by William Hayward, Commissioner of Sewers. A comparison of the present manuscript with a transcription of the text from the 1591 map, copied out in the 1930s, shows that Hayward copied the text from it for his 1591 map. There are two later copies of Hayward's 1591 map, one a late 17th-cent. copy in Cambridge University Library (original possibly lost at the Fen Office in the Temple in 1666), and the other Cotton Augustus I.i.79, dated circa 1610: both are identical in detail to the present MS, except that they extend further south to include the parishes of Upwell and Outwell, where Hayward lived and which he surveyed in 1605. This survey is still in the Wisbech Museum, as is another map, found in a sack of legal documents presented in 1933, which is very similar to, and possibly a copy of, the present MS. A fourth map related to Hayward's lost map of 1591 is Cotton Augustus I.i.78, which bears the signature of Robert Cotton, who was a Commissioner of Sewers, and who lived at Conington on the edge of the fens. For further details of Hayward's maps and Fenland mapping in general, see P. Eden, 'Land surveyors in Norfolk, 1550-1580', Norfolk Archaeology 35 (1973), pp. 474-482; E. Lynam, 'Early maps of the Fen district', Geographical Journal 84 (1934), pp. 420-423, and 'Maps of the Fenland', VCH Huntingdonshire, 3, pp. 291-306; and Valentine Bolam and Jayne Thorpe, 'The Charles Lynn Marshland map', Old Fenland maps (exhibition catalogue), Friends of the Wisbech and Fenland Museum, 1993. Owned circa 1942-1992 by Charles Lynn of Wisbech. Purchased at Christie's, 25 Nov. 1992, lot 31, with the help of a grant from the National Art Collections Fund.

Ink, water-colours and gold (mostly worn away) on vellum. 690 x 830mm. Water-damaged, especially on the left-hand side.

Maps and Plans: Lynn, King's: Elizabeth I of England: Wisbech, Norfolk: Emneth, Norfolk: Walsoken, Norfolk: East Walton, Norfolk: Walpole St Andrew, Norfolk: Walpole St Peter, Norfolk: Terrington St Clement, Norfolk: Terrington St John, Norfolk: Clenchwarton, Norfolk: Bishops of Ely: Map of seven marshland townships (Emneth, Walsoken, Walton, Walpole, Clenchwarton, and Terrington St Clement and Terrington St John) , formerly belonging to the Bishops of Ely: aft. 1582.