John Norden (c.1547-1625) is noted as being the first person to undertake a complete series of county histories. Unfortunately, he suffered financial issues during his life which limited the reach of the project. This is largely due to “the Puritan tracts he wrote to raise money and his flattering dedication to Essex shortly before the uprising of 1599 set him so far out of political favour that he never received the patronage necessary to finance expensive surveys” (Globe). The first part published in 1593 covered Middlesex. Hertfordshire followed in 1598. No others were published during his lifetime, but he left a few further county histories in manuscript form. That of Cornwall was written in 1610 but was eventually published in 1728.

Bound at the end of the work is this table of distances derived from Norden’s own ‘England an Intended Guyde, for English Travailers’ published in 1625. An exceedingly rare work, it is the first use of the triangular distance table in Britain. ESTC T127847; Globe (1985) p. 98; ‘Imago Mundi’ no. 25 p. 100 Chronicle; Lowndes (1864) p. 1698; Quixley (1966) no. 25; Ravenhill (1972); Shirley (2004) T.Nord 1a & 1b; Upcott (1968) I p. 78; Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).