John Norden

John Norden (c. 1547 – 1625) was an English cartographer, chorographer and antiquary. He planned (but did not complete) a series of county maps and accompanying county histories of England, the Speculum Britanniae. He was also a prolific writer of devotional works.

Norden is known to have been born in Somerset, to a "genteel" family, but his family background is otherwise obscure. He entered Hart Hall, Oxford, in 1564; and graduated BA in 1568 and MA in 1573. He subsequently led a peripatetic existence, but for much of his life had his home in Middlesex on the outskirts of London: he was living in Walham Green, Middlesex, in 1592; by 1607 he was at Hendon, Middlesex, where he remained until 1619; and in the latter year he moved to the parish of St Giles in the Fields, where he eventually died in 1625. He was married and had at least two sons, John Norden junior, and Josias.

The first instalment of Norden's chorographical project was published in 1593 as the Speculum Britanniae: the First Parte: an Historicall, & Chorographicall Discription of Middlesex. The manuscript in the British Library (Harleian MS 570) has corrections in Lord Burleigh's handwriting.

In 1595 he wrote a manuscript "Chorographical Description" of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Wight, Guernsey and Jersey, dedicated, and perhaps presented, to Queen Elizabeth (now British Library Add. MS 21853). In 1596 he published his Preparative to the Speculum Britanniae, dedicated to Burleigh. In 1598 there appeared the only other part of the project to reach print in his lifetime, Speculi Britaniae Pars: the Description of Hartfordshire.

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