Thomas Digges

In 1583, Lord Burghley appointed Digges, with John Chamber and Henry Savile, to sit on a commission to consider whether England should adopt the Gregorian calendar, as proposed by Dee.

[5] Digges served as a member of parliament for Wallingford and also had a military career as a Muster-Master General to the English forces from 1586 to 1594 during the war with the Spanish Netherlands.

The most important of these was A Perfit Description of the Caelestiall Orbes according to the most aunciente doctrine of the Pythagoreans, latelye revived by Copernicus and by Geometricall Demonstrations approved.

Contrary to the Ptolemaic cosmology of the original book by his father, the appendix featured a detailed discussion of the controversial and still poorly known Copernican heliocentric model of the Universe.

The outer inscription on the map reads (after spelling adjustments from Elizabethan to Modern English): This orb of stars fixed infinitely up extends itself in altitude spherically, and therefore immovable the palace of felicity garnished with perpetual shining glorious lights innumerable, far excelling our sun both in quantity and quality the very court of celestial angels, devoid of grief and replenished with perfect endless joy, the habitacle for the elect.In 1583, Lord Burghley appointed Digges, along with Henry Savile (Bible translator) and John Chamber, to sit on a commission to consider whether England should adopt the Gregorian calendar, as proposed by John Dee; in fact Britain did not adopt the calendar until 1752.