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Radulph Agas

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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RADULPH, or Ralph (c. 1540-1621), English landsurveyor, was born at Stoke-by-Nayland, Suffolk, about 1540, and entered upon the practice of his profession in 1566. Letters which he wrote to Lord Burghley, describing the methods of surveying, are extant, and a kind of advertising prospectus of his abilities, in which he describes himself as clever at arithmetic and "skilled in writing smaule, after the skantelinge & proportion of copiynge the Oulde & New Testamentes seven tymes in one skinne of partchmente without anie woorde abreviate or contracted, which maie also serve for drawinge discriptions of contries into volumes portable in verie little cases." He is best known for his maps of Oxford (1578),(1578), Cambridge (1592) and London. Copies of the first two are preserved in the Bodleian Library. Of the map of London and Westminster, which was probably prepared about 1591, two copies have been preserved, one by the Corporation of London and the other in the Pepysian collection at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The map is over six feet long, printed from wooden blocks, and gives a valuable picture of the London of Elizabeth's time. Agas died on the 26th of November 1621.