1762 to be captain of the Magnanime with Commodore Lord Howe, and afterwards in the fleet under Sir Edward Hawke. After the war he commanded the Pearl on the Newfoundland station, and was specially employed in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in moderating the claims of the French. The Pearl was paid off in 1766. In 1770 he commanded the Phœnix during the Spanish armament, and in 1779 commissioned the Invincible, which during 1780 formed part of the Channel fleet. At the end of the year she went out with Sir Samuel Hood to the West Indies, where Saxton was obliged to leave her for some months owing to ill-health. He commanded her again in 1781, with Hood, on the coast of North America, and in the action off the Chesapeake on 5 Sept., where, however, Hood's division of the fleet was very slightly engaged. He was still with Hood at St. Kitt's in January and February 1782, and was then sent to Jamaica. He remained on the station till the peace, returning to England in the summer of 1783. In 1787 he was one of a commission to examine into the working of the impress system, and in 1789 was appointed commissioner of the navy at Portsmouth.
On 19 July 1794 he was created a baronet. He continued at Portsmouth till 1806, when he was retired on a pension of 750l., with a remainder of 300l. a year to his wife if she survived him. In March 1801 Nelson wrote of him as a rough sailor, an acquaintance of near thirty years, which would go back to the time when Nelson had just entered the service as a twelve-year-old midshipman of the Raisonnable and Saxton was captain of the Phœnix. He died in November 1808. He married, in July 1771, Mary, daughter of Jonathan Bush of Burcott in Oxfordshire, and had issue.
[Charnock's Biogr. Nav. vi. 461; Naval Chronicle, xx. 425, where there is a portrait after Northcote; Orders in Council (vol. lxvi. 21 July 1806) and other documents in the Public Record Office.]
SAXTON, CHRISTOPHER (fl. 1570–1596), topographical draughtsman, was born of an old Yorkshire family at Tinglow in Mosley Hundred, near Leeds. He was educated at Cambridge, but at what college is not known. It is uncertain when he came to London, but he was attached to the household of Thomas Seckford [q. v.], master of requests and of the court of wards. Saxton undertook, at Seckford's instigation and expense and with the authority of the queen, to survey and draw careful maps of every county in England and Wales. These maps were commenced about 1574 and completed in 1579, in which year they were published with a dedication to Queen Elizabeth. This was the first survey of the counties in England, and all subsequent maps of the period—e.g. those in Speed's ‘Chronicle’—were based upon them. Seckford obtained for Saxton from the privy council special facilities ‘to be assisted in all places where he shall come for the view of such places to describe certain counties in cartes, being thereunto appointed by her Majestie's bill under her signet.’ Travelling in Wales being a matter of difficulty, special injunctions were sent in 1576 to all justices of peace, mayors, and others in Wales ‘to see him conducted unto any towre, castle, highe place or hill, to view that countrey, and that he may be accompanied with ij or iij honest men, such as do best know the countrey, for the better accomplishment of that service; and that at his departure from any towne or place that he hath taken the view of, the said towne do set forth a horseman that can speke both Welshe and Englishe, to safe-conduct him to the next market-towne’ (see Acts of the Privy Council, 1575–7). The maps drawn by Saxton were engraved by Augustine Ryther [q. v.], Remigius Hogenberg [q. v.], Leonard Terwoort of Antwerp, Nicholas Reynold of London, Cornelius Hogius, and Francis Scatter. There is no evidence on the maps that Saxton engraved any of them himself, but, according to one account, he engraved those of the Welsh counties and Herefordshire with his own hand. Saxton obtained a license to sell these maps for a term of ten years. Complete copies of Saxton's maps are very scarce. Saxton also published a map of Yorkshire with views of York and Hull. He was alive as late as 1596, when he measured and described the town of Manchester (Dee, Diary, Camden Soc., pp. 55, 56). He stayed at Dee's house on this occasion. Saxton was married, and left sons who died without issue, and a daughter Grace, who married Thomas Nalson of Altofts, Yorkshire (Familiæ Minor. Gent., Harl. Soc., p. 822).
[Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis and Diary; Ames's Typogr. Antiquities; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting; Cooper's Athenæ Cantabr. i. 420, 568; manuscript notes in Daines Barrington's copy of the maps in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries.]
SAXULF or SEXUULFUS (d. 691?), Mercian bishop, is said by Bede to have been the builder and first abbot of the monastery of Medeshamstede (Peterborough) in the country of the Gyrvii (Historia Ecclesiastica, iv. c. 6). The Peterborough historians have further details about him of a more or
