John Adams (cartographer)

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John Adams (c.1643–1690) was an English cartographer and lawyer who created a landmark map of England and Wales and a huge index of places.

He was born in Shropshire and went to Shrewsbury School in 1653. He came from a large family; his brothers and sisters included William, who was trained at Gray’s Inn, and Robert, who became a rector. Adams married Jane Wrottesley around 1665, and they had children, including William, John, and Susanna.

Adams joined the Inner Temple in 1672 and was called to the bar in 1680. In 1677 he published a new, detailed map of England (six feet square), engraved by Gregory King and printed on twelve sheets. Two years later a smaller version was printed on two sheets and included rivers and an alphabetical table of cities and market towns with distances from London and their latitudes and longitudes.

To make his maps more complete, Adams started compiling a massive place-name list. He enlisted King to add names drawn from Hearth Tax records, creating the Index Villaris (1680), an alphabetical table of about 24,000 places in England and Wales that accompanied the map. The index included notes about towns, parishes, and private seats.

Adams aimed to measure England and Wales more accurately by triangulating coordinates. He drew on support from members of the Royal Society, including Christopher Wren and Isaac Newton, and began planning a full survey of the country. He set up a baseline between Dundon Beacon and Bridgwater, then worked from hilltops to determine angles to many landmarks. By 1681 he had mapped thousands of miles and hoped to complete entire counties, continuing work into the early 1680s with hopes of a complete national survey.

Ill health and other delays slowed the project. Adams died in Ireland in 1690 before finishing his survey. His papers likely influenced later mapmakers, and in 1695 Robert Morden published a complete set of English county maps that may have drawn on Adams’s work, with the Shropshire map being notably detailed.

Key works:
- Index Villaris, or, an Alphabetical Table of All the Cities, Market-Towns, Parishes, Villages, and Private Seats in England and Wales (1680)
- A New Large Map of England full six foot square (1677), with a reduced two-sheet edition (1680) including rivers and an index of towns with distances and coordinates.