Roger Taverner (Abt.1507-1582) of

Upminster Upminster is a suburb of east London, England, in the London Borough of Havering, northeast of Charing Cross. Historically a rural village, it formed an ancient parish in the Chafford hundred of the county of Essex. The economic history of ...

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

was an English administrator and Member of Parliament for

Newport, Cornwall Newport () is a suburb of the town of Launceston in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. Originally a separate settlement, Newport is immediately north of the town from which it is separated by the River Kensey. Until the early nineteenth centu ...

Life

Taverner was the eldest of

Richard Taverner Richard Taverner (1505 – 14 July 1575) was an English author and religious reformer. He is best known for his Bible translation, commonly known as Taverner's Bible but originally titled The Most Sacred Bible. This holy scripture, contain ...

's younger brothers. He was a

surveyor Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, art, and science of determining the terrestrial two-dimensional or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. These points are usually on the ...

and writer, said by Anthony Wood in ''Athenae Oxonienses'' to have studied at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

but not graduated, though university records do not confirm this.He is included in Venn's ''Alumni Cantabrigienses''. Probably in the 1540s he became deputy to Sir Francis Jobson as surveyor for the

Court of Augmentations Thomas Cromwell established the Court of Augmentations, also called Augmentation Court or simply The Augmentation in 1536, during the reign of King Henry VIII of England. It operated alongside three lesser courts (those of General Surveyors (1540 ...

, and later he was employed (also as deputy surveyor) by the exchequer until 1573 (we have surviving various reports by him on crown woods, in British Library, Lansdowne MSS. 43, 56, 62). He was elected to Parliament in 1555 as a member for Newport-juxta-Launceston, Cornwall (possibly at Jobson's instigation). He was also a writer of tracts on economic issues, such as 'Remedies ... of derth of victualles' (Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 376 – dedicated to Queen Elizabeth), a similar work sent to her two years previously (mentioned in the previous work's dedication), and – unprinted, but more influential – his 'Arte of surveyinge' of 1565. With his wife—a member of the Hulcote family—he had three sons, one of whom, John, Wood reports became a surveyor.

References

Notes

English surveyors 1582 deaths Year of birth unknown English civil servants English MPs 1555 Members of the pre-1707 English Parliament for constituencies in Cornwall People from Upminster Year of birth uncertain {{1555-England-MP-stub