Career and Later Life
In 1747 Lieutenant-Colonel David Watson, Deputy Quartermaster-General, proposed the compilation of a map of the Scottish Highlands to facilitate the subjugation of the clans following the Jacobite rising of 1745. In response, King George II commissioned a military survey of the Highlands, and Watson was placed in charge under the command of the Duke of Cumberland. Among his assistants were William Roy, Paul Sandby, and John Manson. The labours of Watson and Roy, and of Roy in particular, resulted in The Duke of Cumberland's Map, now in the British Library. The map reflects Roy's lifelong interest in ancient Scottish history by showing the locations of ancient Roman remains, primarily military camps, wherever he encountered them.
Roy was first mentioned in connection with this effort in a 1749 letter, by which time he was Assistant to the Deputy Quartermaster-General, but without a military commission. He would continue to work on the survey until 1755, and was then given a military commission and the title of Practitioner-Engineer. He was promoted steadily, reflecting acknowledgement of his considerable technical talents.
Roy's technical abilities and willingness to innovate brought him to the favourable attention of Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick, the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied army at the Battle of Minden in 1759. Preparatory to the battle, the various military engineers made drawings of each step of the coming battle, with each step drawn on a different sheet of paper. The commander could then study the course of the battle before it occurred, going from one sheet to the next. Lieutenant Roy, however, made his drawings on a single sheet with coordinated and accurate overlays, so that the commander could more easily study the course of the battle by examining a single sheet of paper. The commander's comprehension was greatly facilitated, and Roy's methodology was soon adopted as an advancement in military science. Roy was promoted to captain in the Corps of Highlanders a scant three weeks after the battle.
The next year he became a Deputy Quartermaster-General and major of foot, and was promoted to lieutenant-colonel in 1762. In 1765 he appears as a Deputy Quartermaster-General, Surveyor-General of Coasts, and Engineer-Director of military surveys in Great Britain, and in that capacity he visited Ireland in 1766 and Gibraltar in 1768. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1767.
Roy was promoted to colonel in 1777, and to major-general in 1781. He was in charge of the departments of the Quartermaster-General and Chief Engineer in 1782, and in 1783 became the Director of Royal Engineers. In 1783-84 he conducted observations to determine the relative positions of the French and English royal observatories. In 1784 he measured a base-line for that purpose between Hampton and Heathrow (hamlet), the germ of all subsequent surveys of the United Kingdom, for which in 1785 the Royal Society awarded him the Copley medal. Roy's measurements (not fully utilised until 1787, when the Paris and Greenwich observatories were properly connected) form the basis of the topographical survey of Middlesex, Surrey, Kent and Sussex. These surveys were made for the most part using the new Ramsden theodolite which Roy had commissioned from Jesse Ramsden, and were the start of the Principal Triangulation of Great Britain.
He was finishing an account of this work for the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society when he died.
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