John Norden

John Norden's map of London in 1593, engraved by Pieter van den Keere. There is only one bridge across the Thames, but parts of Southwark on the south bank of the river have been developed.

John Norden (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.

Life Norden was born in Somerset in 1548, the son of a yeoman, though little is known about his family background. He was educated at Hart Hall, Oxford.

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.

He always kept the two areas of his professional life quite separate, and when in the late 1590s a series of dedications in his devotional works to the Earl of Essex placed him in political difficulties with Sir Robert Cecil he attempted to deny authorship, claiming that the devotional books were the work of "another of my name ... Norden pretender". This denial has caused historians some difficulty, but Frank Kitchen has established beyond doubt that there was only one John Norden.