Aggas, Ralph

, a surveyor and engraver in the sixteenth century, whose original plates are now extremely rare. He first drew a plan of London, which, though referred to the time of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. appears from several circumstances to have been made early in Elizabeth’s reign, about 1560, on wood. It was republished in 1618, with alterations, in six sheets, cut in wood, and re-engraved by Vertue in 1748. The plates were bought by the Society of Antiquaries, and published in 1776. His next performances were plans of Oxford and Cambridge, about 1578. The former is the oldest plan of the city of Oxford extant. It was engraved at the expence of the university in 1728, with ancient views, on the borders, of the colleges and schools as they originally stood. This plate was unfortunately destroyed at the fire which consumed so much literary property belonging to Mr. Nichols, in 1808. The only other plan of Aggas’s workmanship, now known, is one of Dumvich in SulVolk, dated March, 1589, on vellum, and not engraved. Ames attributes to him a work entitled “A Preparative to platting of Landes and Tenements for suweigh, &c.” 1596. He is supposed to have been related to Edward Aggas, the son of Robert Aggas, of Stoke-nayland in Suffolk, who was a bookseller of some note from 1576 to 1594; and from one or ether probably descended Robert Aggas, or Angus, a landscape painter and scene painter, whose best work extant is a landscape now in Painter-stainers hall. He died in London, 1679, aged about sixty. ²