John Speed

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John Speed bigraphy, stories - English historian

John Speed : biography

1542 – 28 July 1629

John Speed (1552 – 28 July 1629) was an English cartographer and historian. He is known as England’s most famous Stuart period mapmaker.

Life

Speed was born at Farndon, Cheshire, and went into his father’s tailoring business. While working in London, his knowledge of history led him into learned circles and he joined the Society of Antiquaries where his interests came to the attention of Sir Fulke Greville, who subsequently made him an allowance to enable him to devote his whole attention to research. As a reward for his earlier efforts, Queen Elizabeth granted Speed the use of a room in the Custom House.

He is buried with his wife in St Giles-without-Cripplegate church within the Barbican Estate in the City of London. A memorial to John Speed was also erected behind the altar of the church. According to the church’s website, "[His was] one of the few memorials [in the church] that survived the bombing" of London during The Blitz of 1940–1941 … The website also notes that "[t]he cast for the niche in which the bust is placed was provided by the Merchant Taylors’ Company, of which John Speed was a member."

Footnotes

Notes
References

Maps

File:3.1 Canaan 1595 Speed².JPG|4 Page wall map of Canaan, 1595 File:John Speed Wiltshire.jpg|Wilshire, 1610 with a townplan of Salisbury and a view of Stonehenge File:Speed Northampton.jpg|Northamptonshire, 1610 File:B 1626 New Goos Speed.jpg|A New Mape Of Ye XVII Provinces, 1626 (The Netherlands) File:John-Speed-The-Kingdome-of-China-1626-2544.jpg|The Kingdome of China, 1626 File:1646 New Speed Kaerius.jpg|A New And Accvrat Map Of The World, 1646 miniature edition

Family

Speed was a seventh generation ancestor of John Speed, a judge, of Farmington, now a suburb of Louisville, Kentucky; Joshua Fry Speed, his son, befriended Abraham Lincoln upon his arrival in Springfield, Illinois, who in turn appointed Joshua’s brother, James Speed, to the post of Attorney General of the United States.

Town inserts

File:Bedford – John Speed’s map (1611).jpg|Bedforde, 1611 File:Dublin in 1610 – reprint of 1896.jpg|Dublin, 1610; an 1896 reprint File:Old map of Monmouth, Wales.jpg|Monmouth, Wales, 1610 File:John Speed’s map of Oxford, 1605..jpg|Oxford, 1610 File:Map of Redding by John Speed, 1611.jpg|Reading, 1610

Works

It was with the encouragement of William Camden that Speed began his Historie of Great Britaine, which was published in 1611. Although he probably had access to historical sources that are now lost to us (he certainly used the work of Saxton and Norden), his work as a historian is considered mediocre and secondary in importance to his map-making, of which his most important contribution is probably his town plans, many of which provide the first visual record of the British towns they depict.

His atlas The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine was published in 1610/11, and contained the first set of individual county maps of England and Wales besides maps of Ireland [five in all] and a general map of Scotland. Most, but not all, of the county maps have town plans on them; those showing a Scale of Passes being the places he had mapped himself. In 1627, two years before his death, Speed published Prospect Of the Most Famous Parts of the World which was the first world atlas produced by an Englishman. There is a fascinating text describing the areas shown on the back of the maps in English, although a rare edition of 1616 of the British maps has a Latin text – this is believed to have been produced for the Continental market. Much of the engraving was done in Amsterdam at the workshop of Jodocus Hondius. His maps of English counties are often found framed in homes throughout the United Kingdom.

In 1611, he also published The genealogies recorded in the Sacred Scriptures according to euery family and tribe with the line of Our Sauior Jesus Christ obserued from Adam to the Blessed Virgin Mary, a biblical genealogy, reprinted several times during the 17th century.