The names Bedef’ and Dunestap appear on a map of Great Britain drawn by Matthew Paris, a monk of St Albans, in about 1250 and a century later the ‘Gough’ map of England, Wales and Scotland (so called because it was owned by Richard Gough the eighteenth century antiquarian) shows roads and rivers as well as several towns in the county. These are both manuscript maps: the first printed map of the British Isles, that by George Lily published in Rome in 1546, shows BEDFORDIA the county name and Dustable. In 1564 the great Gerard Mercator published a large map of the British Isles on a scale of about 14 inches to a mile, based on manuscript maps sent to him by a ‘distinguished friend’ in England. This shows more topographical detail and place-names than Lily but does not include county boundaries. Mercator gave no name to his ‘friend’—one favoured candidate is Laurence Nowell, a distinguished antiquary and cartographer who drew a map of England, Wales and Ireland at the beginning of the 1560s. Another possible ‘friend’ who has recently been identified is John Rudd, a prebend of Durham Cathedral and keen cartographer. Rudd was given royal authority and a two-year ‘sabbatical’ to make surveys for a map of England in the early 1550s and again soon after 1560.

Christopher Saxton was apprenticed to John Rudd and may, in his later teens, have accompanied his master on his survey journeys in the early 1560s. He would also have had access to Rudd’s materials. This, as well as the assistance he was given by his patron Sir Thomas Seckford and by Lord Burghley, may explain how Saxton managed to complete a survey of the whole of England and Wales, arrange drawing and engraving of the plates and publish an atlas in a mere seven years, between 1572 and 1579. This, the first atlas of England and Wales, established the tradition of mapping the country by counties—convenient adminstrative units that inspired local loyalties—which lasted even into the twentieth century. The map in this atlas of Northamptonshire and four other counties (no 1 in the catalogue) is the first printed map to show Bedfordshire as a recognisably distinct unit.