John Speed was born in Farndon, Cheshire, the son of
a tailor, and continued in the trade until the age of 50.
He became a Freeman of the Merchant Taylors’
Company and lived in Moorfields, London, where he
and his wife raised 12 sons and 6 daughters. He was an
enthusiastic amateur historian and mapmaker and
found that he was able to leave tailoring and pursue
his real interests in earnest when, as a member of the
Society of Antiquaries, he gained the patronage of Sir
Fulke Greville (Lord Brooke) who, as adviser to the
Queen and with her help, secured him an office in the
Custom House and subsidised his map-making.
He started making County maps individually between
1596 and 1610. The maps were first sold as separate
sheets without text on their backs. However, in 1610
Speed published a volume entitled ’The History of
England’. To accompany this he also published a topographical section. This too was in a single volume
that was divided into 4 Books. This volume, the Atlas, was entitled ‘The Theatre of the Empire of Great
Britaine: Presenting An Exact Geography of the Kingdomes of England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Isles
adioyning: With the Shires,Hundreds, Cities and Shire-townes, within ye Kingdome of England, divided
and described By John Speed. Imprinted at London Anno Cum Privilegio 1611 and are to be sold by John
Sudbury & George Humble in Popes-head alley at ye signe of ye white horse.’
The Theatre’s Four Books were namely: England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland all of which contained
sixty-seven maps. They were engraved by Jodocus Hondius the Elder in Amsterdam and printed in
London by William Hall and John Beale.
Plagiarism among the map-making trade was commonplace and Speed was honest enough to admit that
he was no exception. Indeed he even stated ‘I put my sickle into other mens corne’. While he copied
much of his material from other cartographers, mainly Saxton and Norden, he did, in many cases,
acknowledge the fact on his maps. He pointedly used key words such as: ‘augmented’ and
‘performed’. However, amending the maps with up to date information, including parish hundreds and
the innovation of insetting County town plans and other important towns within the County maps was
entirely his work. He claimed to have surveyed the towns personally and used a scale of ’pases’ as
measurement. Eventually it was through such efforts that he was able to produce the earliest published
atlas of the British Isles.
Although some maps were plain backed the majority had text on the reverse. When there was text these
two pages in the Atlas were numbered. Rutland’s text was on pages fifty-nine and sixty. The first
page (reverse half of the map) described various aspects of each County, based on earlier researches of
Camden, while the other half produced a table. In the case of the Rutland map the table was entitled
‘An Alphabeticall Table of all the Townes, Rivers, and Places mentioned in Rutlandshire’.
Apart from one other map in
the Atlas, Rutland, because
of its small area, had the
largest scale namely 6 miles
to 5¼ inches. The County
town of Oakham is featured
along with, surprisingly,
Stamford its near neighbour
across the border in
Lincolnshire. The Rutland
map measures, across the
two pages, 21½ inches with a
top to bottom measurement
of 16½ inches. From the
edges of the printed borders
it measures just less than
20¼ inches and 15¼ inches
respectively.
Two years before Speed died
he published, in 1627, ‘A
Prospect of the Most Famous
Parts of the World’. This
along with the 1627 edition
of The Theatre became the
first World Atlas published by
an Englishman.
Langham Village History Group
As a general guide only, the County map editions, with and without text, along with their publishers are
shown in the box above.
