The following is taken from the articles from Chubb and Austin.
From A Descriptive Catalogue of the Printed Maps of Gloucestershire 1577-1911 by Thomas Chubb.
Published by the Bristol & Gloucestershire Archaeological Society 1912.
Reviewing the history of English cartography, one is. bound to confess that it has not received the attention from bibliographers that it deserves. Richard Gough, in 1780, published his British Topography, or an Historical Account of what has been done for Illustrating the Topographical Antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland, London. In 1818 William Upcott issued A Bibliographical Account of the Principal Works relating to English Topography, in 3 vols. Both are valuable works in their way, but there were no bibliographies devoted purely to English cartography until Sir H. G. Fordham led the way with his valuable works: “Hertfordshire Maps,” published in the Transactions of the Hertfordshire Natural History Society and Field Club, 1901-7, and “Cambridgeshire Maps,” published in the Communications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society, 1908, both of which were re-issued as complete publications in 1908.
In the meantime, 1907, Mr William Harrison contributed to the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, vol 25, his useful “Early Maps of Lancashire and their Makers,” and, in 1911, the present writer placed before the public, through the medium of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, vol 37, ” A Descriptive Catalogue of the Printed Maps of Wiltshire.”
Gloucestershire having so far escaped attention, he has endeavoured to make good the deficiency as far as possible, and by the courtesy of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society has been able to place the result of his labour in this interesting field of research at the service of scholars and students.
Glancing backward, there is evidence that the art of cartography has been practised from a very early period in the world’s history, but how early it is impossible with any degree of certainty to say. A. E. Nordenskiöld, in his Facsimile Atlas, tells us “Herodotus begins the 49th chapter of his fifth book Terpsichore with the following words: ‘When Cleomenes was king in Sparta, Aristagoras, the ruler of Miletus, arrived there. And when the latter went to speak with Cleomenes, he brought with him-so the Lacedemonians say-a copper-plate, on which the circle of the whole earth was engraved, and the ocean and all the rivers.’ . . . This happened in about the year 500 B.C. We have no further information about this map, and the conjectures that it was constructed by Hecatæeus . . . and who, according to a quotation by Strabo (lib. I, cap. I) from Eratosthenes, made the first map of the world, are without any foundation. But it is in this passage of Herodotus that a map is mentioned in literature for the first time, and that not merely as a valuable curiosity, but as the means of explaining the relative position and extension of the dominions of the King of Persia.”
In the Babylonian Collection in the British Museum are to be found some maps and plans of the same period. These were drawn on clay, and afterwards baked. The original cuneiform inscriptions upon them relate that they depict the world as known to the Babylonians 500 B.C. A plan of the city of Tuba. A plan of the city of Babylon, showing the position of the temple of the God of Bêl, and on some fragments, portions of a plan of a large building, probably a royal palace in Babylon, with measurements of the buildings and open courts. These are reproduced in Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets, etc., in the British Museum, part xxii. London, 1906. Fol.
In the geography of Strabo (54 B.C.-A.D. 24) some, rules are given for the drawing of maps, and it is said that he possessed a map of the British Isles. At best it must have been of a very crude character, and could have borne little resemblance to maps of to-day.
Following closely upon Strabo came the famous geographer Claudius Ptolemaeus, of Alexandria, who lived in the first half of the second century of the Christian Era.
The map of the British Isles, printed in his Geography, dated 1463 (or rather 1472), is the earliest one known of Great Britain and Ireland. The ” Itinerary of Castorinus,” a MS. generally known as the ” Peutinger Table,” which was probably made in the twelfth century, includes a portion of the south-east coast of England. It was reproduced in Gough’s British Topography, 1780. The Gough Collection in the Bodleian Library contains a very fine map of Great Britain, made about 1300, drawn on two skins of vellum. A reduced facsimile of it, by Basire, is also given in Gough’s British Topography, and it was again reproduced in 1875 at the Ordnance Survey Office, Southampton. In the thirteenth century Richard of Cirencester made a map of Britain, and there is one of Great Britain and Ireland in the manuscript history of Matthew of Paris, written about the middle of the thirteenth century, entitled: “Britannia, nunc dicta Anglia, quæ complectitur Scociam, Galeweiam & Walliam.” This also was included by Gough in his British Topography.
Coming down to modern times, we find the earliest engraved map of the British Isles, with the exception of Ptolemy, is one by George Lilly, son of the grammarian, published in 1546 at Rome, where Lilly had lived some years with Cardinal Pole. The first engraved map of England and Wales is that of Humphrey Lloyd, published in Abraham Ortelius’ Additamentum Theatri Orbis Terrarum, 1573.
But no survey of the counties was produced until 1579, when Christopher Saxton, who had been granted special facilities by the Privy Council to enable him to carry on the work with as little delay as possible, published his atlas of the counties of England and Wales. From this work Peter Keer, or to be exact Pieter van den Keere, engraved a set of small maps of the counties, many of which bear the signature “Petrus Kaerius Cœlavit,” and a few the date “1599.”
John Norden, topographer, born in 1548, and died about 1625, was the first to project a complete series of county histories, but, unfortunately, he was never able to finish the work. A Privy Council Order, dated at Hampton Court, 27th January, 1593, addressed to Lieutenants and others of counties, gave Norden authority to : “Travil through England and Wales to make more perfect descriptions, charts, and maps,” and that year saw the production of his “Speculum Britanniæ. The first parte. Middlesex. J. Norden . . . descripsit, 1593.”
An expedition undertaken by Norden in 1595 resulted in “A Chorographicall Discription of the severall Shires and Islands of Middlesex, Surrey, Sussex, Hamshire [sic], Weighte, Garnsey, & Jarsey. Performed by the traveyle and view of John Norden, 1595.” This is now in the MS. department of the British Museum (Ad. 31853). He also surveyed Cornwall, Essex, Hertfordshire, Kent and Northamptonshire, the last county being finished in 1610. Norden, however, only published two descriptions: Middlesex, 1593, and Hertfordshire, 1598.
In passing, attention may be drawn to the very interesting and artistic maps of Robert Adams, engraved by Augustinus Ryther, showing the engagements of the English and Spanish fleets in the English Channel, and the course of the Armada around the British Isles. They were published under the title of ” Expeditionis Hispanorum in Angliam vera descriptio, Anno Do: MD.LXXXVIII.”
The seventh edition of Camden’s Britannia, issued in 1607, contains maps of the counties of England, copied and engraved by William Kip and William Hole, from Saxton’s and Norden’s maps. In like manner John Speed also used them for his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, the engraving being done by Jodocus Hondius. The first edition was published in 1611, and many editions, as well as various abridgements, were from time to time issued.
The middle of the seventeenth century saw the keen, and from the cartographer’s point of view very beneficial, rivalry between the establishments of Blaeu and Jansson at Amsterdam. Each worked might and main to produce a general atlas of the world, and in 1646 Jan Jansson issued the fourth volume of his atlas, consisting of maps of Great Britain and Ireland. But, alas! originality was not a strong point of the work, the maps of England being compiled from those of Saxton and Speed, and the text lifted bodily from Camden’s Britannia. Some two years later Jan Blaeu followed with the fourth volume of his atlas. But here again maps and text were derived from the same sources.
Contemporaneously with the development of cartography in England and the Netherlands, a school of geographers was growing up in France, of which Nicolas Sanson, of Abbeville (royal geographer from 1627 to the time of his death in 1667), and his sons Adrian, Nicolas and Guillaume Sanson, were the earlier and more important members. Other able workers followed, but, as far as is known, French cartographers produced no atlas of English county maps.
Towards the end of the seventeenth century, when the Dutch school of cartographers was fast dying out, English engravers and map-makers became more numerous, and their work more prolific.
In 1675 John Ogilby issued his Britannia, which, however, only consisted of long strips showing the roads, with notes and geographical features of the adjacent country. During the following century a number of collections of English county maps were issued by John Seller, Philip Lea, Robert Morden, Hermann Moll, Richard Blome, John Overton, Thomas Kitchin, Emanuel Bowen, Thomas Jefferys, John Ellis, Carington, John, and Thomas Bowles.
Down to 1777 cartographers based their maps of Gloucestershire on the surveys of Saxton, Norden and Speed, but in that year Isaac Taylor made a new survey of the county, and this in turn formed the basis of all new maps until the publication of the Ordnance Survey in 1828-31.
Of this period, the works produced by John Cary in the latter part of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries reached the highest standard of excellence yet attained. In 1787 he issued his first atlas of England, and two years later followed with a small road atlas of the English counties. In 1809 he published his New English Atlas in folio. His large map of England, on the scale of two miles to the inch, and which compares favourably with the Ordnance Survey on the same scale, was not published until 1832.
The surveying and triangulation of the Board of Ordnance was commenced in 1784, but no publication was issued until 1801, when they started with a map of Kent. The regular issue of the Ordnance Survey Maps practically put an end to all private enterprise in surveying. But there are two notable exceptions:- a magnificent series of county maps by J. and C. Greenwood, and another, though very incomplete, by A. Bryant. Both sets were produced in the second decade of the nineteenth century.
Having briefly reviewed the history of the birth and growth of cartography, we may be allowed to explain the plan of the present catalogue. The arrangement is, as far as possible, chronological, that is, according to the date on the map, or if the map is undated the date of the work from which it is taken. Reprints and new editions are given under the year in which they were issued, and take precedence of the new maps of that year.
Except where otherwise indicated, each map has been examined and systematically described; the title and the names of the author and engraver are given precisely as on the plate, together with the actual size of the map in inches. The full title of the work in which it appeared is also noted, except where a map has been separately published, thus incidentally furnishing a complete list of the atlases and books containing county maps of England and Wales. A detailed description of the map follows, giving all particulars appearing on the plate, and the text on the back. Biographical notes of the more distinguished cartographers have also been added.
The Tabular Index, in which the maps are arranged under the names of authors, engravers and publishers, shows at a glance the whole of the work for which each individual is responsible, and more especially the life of each particular map, its various editions, its different forms, and the works in which it has appeared.
In conclusion, the writer, who owes much to the facilities he enjoys by reason of his long connection with the Map Room of the British Museum, desires gratefully to acknowledge the very valuable assistance he has received from Mr. George Goode, of the Cambridge University Library, and from the before-mentioned works of Sir H. G. Fordham, and to explain that though he has used his best endeavours to make this Catalogue of Gloucestershire Maps absolutely complete, he fears, however, that he cannot claim for it this much-to-be-desired degree of perfection.
THOMAS CHUBB.
April, 1913.
From Additions To, And Notes On, The “Descriptive Catalogue Of Printed Maps Of Gloucestershire, 1577-1911, By T. Chubb. By Roland Austin. Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society Vol. 39, pp233-262 (1916)
The “Descriptive Catalogue of the Printed Maps of Gloucestershire, 1577-1911,” prepared with so much care by Mr. Thomas Chubb, of the Map Room, British Museum, is of the greatest value to those interested in the cartography of the county. In his preface Mr. Chubb mentions that the CATALOGUE may not be complete, and as a contribution towards a Supplementary List it is the purpose of these notes to give particulars of maps which were not included, and of a few published since 1911; to add information relating to some known to Mr. Chubb but not seen by him; and to make a few slight corrections. I had hoped that Mr. Chubb would have prepared the List himself, but the demands on his time have prevented this, though he has very kindly looked through it, and, more than that, has placed at my service particulars of over twenty additional maps which he has met with. I have retained the form which the List took before receiving these additions, and have placed an asterisk against the numbers of the maps, described by Mr. Chubb, so that I may give him full recognition for his substantial contribution.
In bibliography there is no finality; and as time goes on probably further additions may yet be met with. If so, their record in the Transactions will be of value.
For convenience of reference each map is numbered, and the numbers used in the index of names of authors.