Richard Norwood
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Richard Norwood (1590? – 1675) was an English mathematician, diver, and surveyor, connected with Isaac Newton. He has also been called "Bermuda’s outstanding genius of the seventeenth century".[1] He was the son of a "gentleman farmer", and attended Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire but had to leave before his fourteenth birthday.
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[edit] Early life
Richard’s intellect and love of learning might have been inherited from his grandfather, Roger Norwood, who was a fellow of Merton College Oxford in 1548. In 1554 Roger became usher to the headmaster of Berkhamsted School in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. This was the school Richard, himself, would attend years later. While at Berkhamsted Roger married Elizabeth Monox, daughter of Richard Monox, a London salt trader, and his wife Sicely. The wedding took place in the parish church in Berkhamsted, St. Peter’s, 15 July 1554. Their first two sons were born there, the second child only surviving a few months. Roger moved his family in 1561 to Astwood, an estate he inherited from his father, located in Buckinghamshire a few miles from Bedford.
Edward, Richard’s father, is believed to have been born soon after the move to Astwood. Upon the death of his wife, Roger married Dorothy Whethide and had several more children. Roger died in 1593.
Edward, although born a gentleman, apparently lived in genteel poverty most of his adult life. The family moved about a great deal, sometimes as a result of financial problems. Probably any property of fortune belonging to Roger had gone to Edward’s older brother, John.
Richard was the second child and only son of the four children of Edward and his wife, Sybil Mathew of Towcester. Soon after their marriage they moved to Stevenage, Hertfordshire, where Richard was born in October 1590.
Richard’s first schooling began at the age of 5 or 6 when he joined his older sister, Elizabeth, in a “dames” school near Cannix kept by a Mrs. Langton and her daughter. There he was instilled with a deep religious interest that stayed with him all of his life. After two or three years at that school, he was taught by several schoolmasters who made no impression on him at all and he lost interest during those years. He became discouraged and felt he had gained almost nothing due to poor teaching and the fact that he had a speech impediment that seemed to hamper his progress. The speech impediment remained with him all his life but it was a slight one and he overcame the psychological effects.
Edward Norwood decided to move his family from Stevenage to Berkhamsted. He was having financial problems with his farm and decided to be where Richard could attend Berkhamsted School. Richard looked back upon this move in later years as pretty much an act of God for which he was eternally thankful. He was about ten when he entered that school. As might be expected, Richard took to it like a duck to water and became one of the best students there in Latin and Greek, earning the commendation of his master, Thomas Hunt. Unfortunately, before Richard turned 14, his father came upon hard times and moved the family to Shuthanger near Towcester and thence to Stony Stratford. He could no longer pay for Richard’s education. Hunt decided to keep Richard there an extra month while he tried to secure a patron who would support Richard’s further education. The patron, however, chose another boy. That boy was a good friend of Richard’s, named Adolphus Speed, whose father John Speed many years later, included Norwood’s map of Bermuda in one of his books on world geography.
The day that Richard left Berkhamsted School was one of the unhappiest of his life. This ended his formal education which, of course, was still quite a good one for his day, but a boy of Richard’s potential should have been able to go on to the university. Richard’s learning didn’t stop there. He spent the next ten years getting practical experience, but also learning some of the subjects he would have had at the university as is evidenced by the wide range of subjects of which he had knowledge. Had Richard entered the university, it is probable that Bermuda would never have had the benefit of his contributions to its early development.
At 15 Richard was apprenticed to a London fishmonger. The man was stern and Richard disliked the work, but became intrigued with what the seafaring friends of the fishmonger told him about maritime affairs, navigation and foreign lands. Before Richard was 17, the fishmonger’s family came down with the plague and Richard was stricken also. As soon as he recovered, he found a chance to get an apprenticeship with a sea captain sailing back and forth between London and Newcastle. He had taken along a math textbook of his father’s and was so intrigued with it that he completed all the work in three weeks.
After an injury, he tried to leave the service of his master and was thrown into jail. Another skipper needed his services and bailed him out.
Most of the next year was spent traveling by land and sea to the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. He even reached the point where he was penniless and in poor health. He was befriended and helped by some Roman Catholic priests and thought seriously of conversion to the Roman Church. Upon his return to England a Church of England clergyman helped him to return to Protestantism and he remained a staunch church member.
In August 1610 he sailed several times to the eastern Mediterranean and during these voyages he was able to borrow books on mathematics and gave up his shore leave in order to study. As a result, he mastered algebra, geometry, and trigonometry with help from no-one!
He next joined an expedition as master-mate, as well as tutor in navigation. The ship was scheduled to go to Persia via the Cape of Good Hope. Another ship that was part of the expedition joined them at Lymington. Something happened there that provided Richard the opportunity to show what a good diver he was, leading to a later appointment by the Virginia Company for similar work in Bermuda.
One of the guns being loaded on this other ship slipped and fell deep into the water and was covered with silt, making it almost invisible. Richard volunteered to retrieve it and devised a diving bell out of a hogshead. He was lowered down, found the gun, and had it hauled to the surface.
The expedition, which had hoped to establish direct trade with Persia, was canceled when one of the principal shareholders died. He was Prince Henry, son of King James I, dying 6 November 1612.
Richard spent the year before his arrival in the Somers Islands in a partnership with a well-known London math teacher, John Goodwin. The partnership lasted four or five months until Goodwin married. It had been a happy relationship for Richard. He and Goodwin remained lifelong friends. Richard continued teaching alone for another tree or four months.
It wasn’t long after that that Norwood got his offer from the Virginia Company to become their Bermuda pearl diver. He was to have in payment a share of any pearls found.
The summer before Richard arrived on the islands the Virginia Company sold full title to the islands to a groups of investors who became known as the “Adventurers”. They were anxious to have a precise survey made so that the land could be equally divided among shareholders. They hired a man named Bartlett to do the job. He was there about the time Richard arrived, but had one disagreement after another with Governor Moore and before he had done any of the work, he went back to England and never returned.
This was a lucky break for Richard. Since his pearl-diving job was now non-existent, he was delighted when the governor appointed him to do the survey.
Norwood began by making a survey of the coastline. Then in May 1616, Governor Daniel Tucker replaced Governor Moore. The new governor assigned him the task of dividing the land into eight “tribes”, later known as parishes, and each named for one of the wealthy adventurers. Each tribe was then to be further subdivided into fifty 25 acre plots. St. George’s and St. David’s islands and a small eastern portion would remain unallocated “general” land.
He and his assistant, Charles Caldicott, accomplished the work with amazing accuracy and skill despite the crudeness of their instruments.
The map Norwood devised has remained in use through the centuries with only minor corrections. It still serves as a basis for land tenure in Bermuda today. It was published in London in 1622, five years after Norwood’s return to England. His work in 1614-17 was only the beginning, however, of his influence on Bermuda history. He returned to Bermuda in 1637 or 38. ((That part of his life will be discussed in the next installment.))
[edit] 1613- ?? Bermuda
Norwood came to Bermuda in 1613 at the age of twenty-three because of the prospect for pearl-diving. (He had invented and used a diving bell.)
Just before Christmas in 1613, Norwood arrived on the Somers Islands in Bermuda. His advice had been very helpful to the captain when the ship they were on went aground on one of the outer reefs. Richard had arrived only a year and a half behind the first boatload of settlers which included Bermuda’s first governor, Richard Moore. Norwood had been sent to the islands as a “technical specialist”, meaning that he had been hired as a pearl diver in search of what proved to be Bermuda’s non-existent pearls. When that job fizzled out, it was sheer chance that launched him on a career that would give him a very special place in Bermuda’s history as its first map maker and surveyor. He was a man of exceptional ability in those occupations, as well as in the many other pursuits in which he engaged during his long lifetime.
Norwood had already distinguished himself as a mariner, navigator, and diver and would later prove his genius as a mathematician, textbook writer, schoolmaster and historian, as well as surveyor and map-maker. He had many other interests, too, such as nature and religion and in 1638 wrote a journal of his early life. Its detail and clarity have proved invaluable for historians. The original document, passed down through generations of his descendants, is now in the Bermuda Archives. In 1945 the Bermuda Historical Monument Trust had the journal published.
The pearl-diving eventually came to nothing, and he then commenced a survey of the coastline for Governor Moore and Governor Daniel Tucker.
The ancient record says: ‘’The first tribe to bee Eastward was then called Bedford Tribe, now Hamiltons [i.e. Hamilton Tribe or Parish, not the City of Hamilton]; the second, Smith’s Tribe; the third, Cavendish, now Devonshire; the fourth, Pembrooks; the fifth, Pagets; the sixth, Mansils, now Warwicks; the seventh, Southampton; the eighth, Sandys.’ The persons whose names have been perpetuated were: James Hamilton, second Marquis of Hamilton; Sir Tomas Smith or Smythe; William Cavendish, first Earl of Devonshire; William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke; William Paget, fourth Lord Paget; Robert Rich, second Earl of Warwick; Henry Wriothesley (pronounced ‘Rocksley’) third Earl of Southampton; and lastly (the farthest west) – Sir Edwin Sandys.’’
Norwood had the help of Charles Caldicott. There were some 120 islands to be surveyed, all densely covered with cedar forests and without roads. The final survey, begun in the summer of 1616, was completed by May 1617. The resulting map, published in London in 1622, five years after Norwood’s return to England, was engraved by several cartographers (including John Speed in 1631, Abraham Goos 1626 and Hondius). It still serves as the basis of all land tenure to the present day.
Before Richard Norwood sailed for England with all the data for his map in May 1617, he was involved in what became known as the scandal of the overplus. The fact was, Governor Tucker was due three shares from the Company; if the survey had continued straight ahead from east to west inevitably the expected overplus, the Governor’s perquisite, would fall at the extreme west end. But at a middle stage of the work, the Governor suddenly ordered Norwood to begin working from Sandys eastward, the reason given being that the rats had not yet attacked that part which therefore could easily be laid out. Norwood complied. The overplus which he had correctly anticipated, now fell in a specially luscious vale between Southampton and Sandys which Tucker immediately claimed as his bonus. Feelings ran high and when, undeterred, the Governor proceeded to build himself a fine house on this 200 acres the Rev Lewis Hughes denounced him bitterly as building a ‘flauntinge’ cedar mansion for himself while leaving ‘Gods house...but a thacht hovell.’ Even the Somers Island Company in London seemed likely to deprive the retiring Governor of the overplus and the house built at their expense. But in his last term of office he managed to send a huge consignment of tobacco from Bermuda, and appeared himself in London to state his own case. The result was that he retained the by then famous house (on the property later designated The Grove) and a little less than half the overplus property – a large and beautiful slice of land.
Norwood was innocent of any complicity in the overplus plot, if plot there had been. He remained away from Bermuda for twenty years during which time he wrote several learned books on trigonometry, on navigation, on fortifications – books which went through many editions and continued being published for over half a century.
[edit] 1633-1635: London to York, and the size of the earth
Willebrord Snelli had substituted a chain of triangles for actual linear measurement. He measured his base line on the frozen surface of the meadows near Leiden, and measured the angles of his triangles, which lay between Alkmaar and Bergen-op-Zoom, with a quadrant and semicircles. He took the precaution of comparing his standard with that of the French, so that his result was expressed in toises (the length of the toise is about 6.39 English ft.). The work was recomputed and reobserved by P. von Musschenbroek in 1729.
In 1637, Norwood published a determination of the figure of the earth in a volume entitled The Seaman's Practice, contayning a Fundamentall Probleme in Navigation experimentally verified, namely, touching the Compasse of the Earth and Sea and the quantity of a Degree in our English Measures. On 11 June 1633 he measured the sun's meridian altitude in London as 62 degress, and on 6 June 1635, his meridian altitude in York as 59 degrees. He measured the distance between these places partly with a chain and partly by pacing. By this means, through compensation of errors, he arrived at 367,176 ft. for the degree very fair result.
That no one had ever ascertained the exact length of a degree or of a nautical mile led him between 1633 and 1635 to measure the meridian altitude of the sun at the Tower of London and the centre of York, and the exact ground distance between his observation points. This was 150 years before the use of the theodolite.
In 1637 he returned to Bermuda as a schoolmaster, bringing his wife and four children. His first school was probably in Devonshire Tribe, but later he built his own school on his estate in Pembroke. This estate is still called Norwood – the house on it today was built about 1711 by the husband (Saltus) of Richard Norwood’s great granddaughter, but there are no remains of the school house.
(The last Saltus, named Samuel, left the property to his junior partner, Henry Darrell, and the remainder of his estate as a foundation for a school for white boys – Saltus Grammar School. At the entrance to Norwood, Henry Darrell erected the notice that so intrigues visitors to-day: "Where tramps must not, surely ladies and gentlemen will not, trespass.")
In 1622 [This date appears to be a misprint in the book and should be 1662], when Richard Norwood was over seventy, the Bermuda Council implored him to make a second survey of the islands. The book he made to accompany his new map was called the Domesday Book of Bermuda. The original manuscript map is in the Bermuda Archives. He received the magnificient pay of £50 for this survey and that not till 1668. At his death in 1675, in his eighty-fifth year, it was found he was still writing — now on music and art. Bermuda had been fortunate indeed to have this intellectual giant bestriding the seventeenth century, spending over forty years of his long life in these islands.
[edit] Norwood's publications
- 1637: A Sea-Man’s Practice publ. London and still available in print
[edit] References
"The Journal of Richard Norwood, Surveyor of Bermuda," is available from Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints. ISBN 978-0-8201-1209-1.
