This is the first edition of the ‘Book of the Names’ and was printed by ‘M.S.’ (Matthew Simmons) is most associated with printing John Milton’s works. In 1635 he published his one and only cartographic work ‘A Direction for the English Traviller’. Known famously as the thumb nail maps due to their size, the three editions of this work are all exceedingly scarce. The maps were engraved by Jacob van Langeren and incorporated into a plate containing a distance table for the county, an invention of John Norden’s in 1625. In 1643 Thomas Jenner published an improved edition with four extra folding plates, three of which were maps of England, Wales, and Yorkshire. For this edition the van Langeren maps were re-engraved slightly larger. In 1649 he added descriptive typographic text and published it as ‘A Booke of the Names of all the Hundreds, of which only one complete example is known’. This was followed in 1657 by the slightly renamed work offered here. Provenance: bookplate of Heber Mardon (1840-1925), founder along with his father of Marden, Son & Hall, printers of Bath; private collection of Dr. Douglas Bancroft. Bennett (1996) p. 8; Chubb (1927) 49; ESTC R38857; Skelton (1970) 62; Wing D1528.