Itineraries, Rhombs, and Latitude

Almanacs frequently included itineraries for travel by land in England. These may originally derive from the short list in John Stow’s Summarie of the English Chronicles (London, 1566), titled “Howe a man may journey from any notable towne in England, to the Citie of London” (A5r). An expanded set of itineraries—including more towns, as well as directions between provincial towns, and between regional towns and London— appears in Grafton’s Treatise (1573 C6r-D2v), and an almost identical version is printed in Holinshed’s Chronicle as part of William Harrison’s Description of England.⁴⁹ The origin of this material, and line of descent between the different versions, is difficult to determine. But almanac compilers were clearly adopting and adapting the itineraries, perhaps to appeal to consumers in specific regions. For example, the almanacs published for Cambridge in the late 1620s under the pseudonym Peregrine Rivers include detailed, Cambridge-centered “Description of the High-wayes in England and Wales” (1627, B4v). Pond, Robert Butler (1629 to 1632), and Thomas Bailes (1631) incorporated tables of directions similar if not identical to the lists in Grafton and Holinshed, “The Geographical! description of wayes from one notable Towne to another, over all England” (Perkins 1633, Clr). Other compilers who incorporated itineraries in their almanacs include Henry Alleyn, Edward Pond, N. Einer, and Joseph Chamberlaine.

Less frequently, compilers included information about the rhomb— compass direction—and distance to farther flung destinations, as well as those cities’ latitude and longitude. Starting in 1607, Thomas Bretnor’s almanacs sometimes include a “Table of the Rhombe and Distaunce, &c, of some of the most famous Cities of the World, from the Honorable Citie of London” (1610, B5r). That list, which does not include itineraries, is relatively rare. The cities in such lists varied, but they might include the major cities of Europe—Paris, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Geneva, Athens, Rome, etc.—as well as select destinations in Africa, Asia, and North and South America.

Catalogues of Shires and Choreographies

Some almanac compilers added additional geographical or choreographic information about England to their almanacs. John White’s almanacs of the late 1620s and early 1630s, for example, usually include a “Catalogue of al the Shires, Cities, Bishopricks, Market-Townes, Castles, Parishes, Rivers, Bridges, Chases, Forrests, and Parkes, contayned in every particular shire in the Kingdome of England” (1633, C2r). George Hawkins replicates a list from the “Description of England” in Holinshed, of “The names of the Counties, Cities, Boroughs and Ports, that sendeth Knights, Burgesses and Barons, to the house of Parliament in England” (1627, B4v-B5r). The trend toward stuffing almanacs with more and more choreographical information appears to have increased as the seventeenth century progressed.

Measurement

As we have seen, in the prognostication portions of these compilers’ almanacs, and especially in the letters to the readers, new astronomical and astrological theories were proposed and debated, with a clear preference for Tycho Brahe until several decades into the seventeenth century.⁵⁰ But in addition to that higher-level academic discourse, almanacs also provided more utilitarian guidance for the practical uses of mathematics, including not only the measurement of time and distance (discussed above) but also of goods and currency, and directions for bookkeeping. For example, the “Rules of Mensuration” in Arthur Hopton’s 1606 almanac indicates not only the circumference and diameter of the Earth and the speed and distance traveled by the Sun (“7,884,0000 Myles in a yeere”), but also more prosaic measurements: “Three Barly Cornes make an Inch, 12 Inches a Foote, 3 Foote a Yard, 5 Yardes and a halfe a Pearch, 40 Pearches a Furlong, 320 Pearches a Mile, 8 Furlong a Myle,” etc. (B4r-v). Hopton also refers readers who wish more of such useful information to “a Booke I intende to publish (God willing) shortly: entituled, The Flowers of the Mathematickes,” which is not extant (B5v). Almanacs routinely included conversion tables for these kinds of measurements, as in Thomas Turner’s almanac for 1633 (B8v) and Allestree’s almanacs beginning in 1617. Allestree’s 1639 almanac included the prototype for an instrument that could be used both to “get the houre of the day throughout the yeare forever” and to measure “all heights accessible standing straight up” (C7r-v). M. Adkin’s single almanac (for 1640) included not only the equivalences common in almanacs such as Hopton’s,

Prognostication 133 but useful tips for calculating square inches in board, glass, or timber, as well as tables and other guides for their correct measurement (C2r-C4r). Adkin, possibly a pseudonym for the Thomas Kidman who wrote almanacs for Saffron Walden, includes an unusual mathematical key: “How by these 2 numbers 338 and 371, being kept in memory, to find the weight of the penie white loaf according to the true assize by Troy weights” (Civ).

A final category of mensuration involved rules for calculating expenses, bookkeeping, and the value of coins. Sofford’s almanac for 1621, for example, includes “A necessarie Table for expences” that shows how to calculate expenses by the week, month or year; three pence a day, for example, would add up to twenty-one pennies a week, seven shillings a month, and four pound, eleven shillings, three pence for the year. Similar tables—for bookkeeping, calculating interest, and managing expenses—appear increasingly in almanacs, such as in those by Robert Butler in the early 1630s, and William Barham’s almanac of 1639.

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In his multi-year almanac for 1581, William Bourne included a list of “such bookes as have been written by the Authour...that are extant in Print,” including his A Regiment for the Sea, The Treasure for Traveilers, and The Art of Shooting in Great Ordenaunce (A6v). Though such self-advertisements were rare in Elizabethan almanacs, it was the shape of things to come. Starting in the seventeenth century, compilers and printers began to include advertisements for books, services, mathematical instruments, and medicine. In 1612, Edward Pond used a letter to the reader to pen an extensive advertisement for the instruction he provided in arithmetic, geometry, cosmography, astronomy, the “Art of Dyalling,” and navigation, as well as the “practice, making, and Demonstration” of mathematical instruments and clocks and watches, which he also sold “at my Shop at the Globe, a litle without Temple bar, betweene the Bull head, and the Mermaide Taverns” (A2r). Pond also put in a plug for “The Geodeticall Staffe, and Topographicall Glasse,” described in books by Arthur Hopton, and “solde by Mayster Waterson, at the Crowne in Paules Church-Yard” (A2r). In 1615, Thomas Bretnor similarly advertised the instruction he offered in languages, arithmetic, geometry, navigation, astronomy, and astrology, and notes the availability of “all Instruments fitting the Mathematickes,” made in either brass or wood from Bretnor’s “loving friend, Mr. Elias Allen,” and his “kind neighbor, Mai. John Thompson” (1615, A2r). Advertisements for books, services, and instruments become more frequent as the seventeenth century progressed; as Louise Curth’s quantitative analysis of extant almanacs has shown, by 1640-1644, approximately one in three almanacs included at least one advertisement, while by the end of the century, the average was eleven advertisements per almanac. That phenomenal rise reflected the later advertising of proprietary medicines in the last two decades of the seventeenth century.⁵¹