This is a superb example of the first edition of the ‘Direction for the English Traviller’ published by Thomas Jenner. The plates began life under Mathew Simmons who 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 thumbnail maps due to their size the three editions of that 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 where the van Langeren maps were re-engraved slightly larger, each with a scale-bar and each this time with the place-names given in full. Jenner was a puritan and parliamentarian so this guide to the roads which was handy for the pocket would have been extensively used by the forces to make their way about the country during the English Civil War. The following year he would publish the ‘Quartermaster’s Map’ engraved for him by Wenceslaus Hollar. With a fascinating manuscript inscription on the first front blank leaf reading “If you add one mile to every third mile in this Computation you will be generally pretty near the true distance in Statue Miles as now measured”. Provenance: with gilt crest of E. Phelips on the upper board and his manuscript ownership mark inside front cover dated 1759; Lord Wardington; Sotheby’s 18 October 2005 lot 215. Bennett (1996) p. 8; Hodson (2000) pp. 368-89; Shirley (2004) T.Lang 1e; Skelton (1970) no. 25; Wing D1527.