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MY HEAD IS A MAP
Essays & Memoirs in honour of R.V Tolley
Edited by Helen Wallis and Sarah Tyacke
Originally published by
Francis Edwards and Carta Press
London 1973
Republished with permission of the publisher Francis Edwards Antiquarian Bookseller,
Tony Campbell and Sarah Tyacke.
Special thanks to Tony Campbell whom initiated the republishing of this work and for proofreading
his article ‘The Drapers’ Company and its school of seventeenth century chart‐makers’, and to Dr
Stéphane Blond of the Université d’Evry‐Val d’Essonne for proof‐reading and editing the article
‘John Dee et sa place dans l’histoire de la cartographie’. Furthermore special thanks to Daria Lacy
who was so kind to convert this publication into an e‐Book.
Republished by : Kunstpedia.com
Corrections : Tony Campbell, Dr Stéphane Blond and Sourya Biswas
e‐Book design : Daria Lacy
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution‐No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England &
Wales License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by‐nd/2.0/uk/ or
send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
Republished with permission of the publisher Francis Edwards Antiquarian Bookseller, Tony
Campbell and Sarah Tyacke.
Special thanks to Tony Campbell whom initiated the republishing of this work and for proofreading
his article ‘The Drapers’ Company and its school of seventeenth century chart‐makers’.
Furthermore special thanks to Dr Stéphane Blond of the Université d’Evry‐Val d’Essonne for proof‐
reading and editing the article ‘John Dee et sa place dans l’histoire de la cartographie’.
Republished by : Kunstpedia.com, Haansberg 19, 4874NJ Etten‐Leur, The Netherlands
Corrections : Tony Campbell , Dr Stéphane Blond and Sourya Biswas
Table of Contents
Title Page
Frontispiece
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
Contributors
Preface
List of Publications by R.V. Tooley
PART ONE
Chapter 1 ‐ The Map Collections of the British Museum Library
Chapter 2 ‐ Engraved Title Plates for the Folio Atlases of John Seller
Chapter 3 ‐ Some Lesser Men
Chapter 4 ‐ Map‐Sellers and the London Map Trade C1 1650‐1710
Chapter 5 ‐ The Drapers’ Company and its School of Seventeenth Century Chart‐Makers
Chapter 6 ‐ John Dee Et Sa Place Dans L’Historie De La Cartographie
PART TWO
Chapter 7 ‐ Memoirs of a Map‐Collector
Chapter 8 ‐ An appreciation by Robert Stockwell
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Frontispiece : Ronald Vere Tooley
Plate 1 : A plan of the water system at Wormley in Hertfordshire c. 1200
from the Cartulary of Waltham Abbey. [BM Harleian MS 391.ff.5b.6].
Plate 2 : Plan of Great Yarmouth c. 1538 [MB Cotton MS Aug.I.i.74]
Plate 3 : Detail of Nova Scotia on the ‘red‐line map’, John Mitchell’s Map of
North America, c. 1775, annotated by Richard Oswald, 1782‐83.
[BM K.118.d.26. (K.Top. CXVIII.49b.)]
Plate 4 : The London View plate from John Seller’s A Description of the Sands
[etc.] upon the Coasts of England.
Plate 5 : The Columns and Globe plate from John Seller’s The English Pilot.
Plate 6 : Engraved title plate insets from John Seller’s Atlas Maritimus
Plate 7 : Engraved plate insets from John Seller’s The Coasting Pilot and Atlas
Terrestris.
Plate 8 : Engraved title insets fro John Seller’s The English Pilot.
Plate 9 : Title plates for John Thornton’s editions of Atlas Maritimus.
Plate 10 : Richard Blome’s trade card. [BM Sloane MS.4058.f.33].
Plate 11 : John Whitwood’s trade card [BM Bagfood Harleian 5947 Item 107].
Plate 12 : ‘A Propect of Westminster Hall’ c. 1690 [BM K.TopXXIV.24.b]
Plate 13 : Chart of the North Atlantic by Andrew Welch. 1674 [NMM.G.213:2/5]
Plate 14 : Chart of the coasts of North‐West India by Andrew Welch and William
Hack, 1677. [BM Add. MS 39178A]
Plate 15 : General map by William Hack from A Description of all Ports .... in the
South Sea of America 1698 [BM K.Mr VII 16 (7 Tab 122)]
CONTRIBUTORS
TONY CAMPBELL
Antiquarian map‐seller with Weinreb and Douwma Ltd. Served his apprenticeship with Mr Tooley at Francis
Edwards. He has contributed several numbers to the Map Collectors’ Series.
RICHARD A. GARDINER
Keeper of the Map Room, Royal Geographical Society, formerly of the Ordnance Survey.
ERAN LAOR
Born in Hungary, settled in Palestine in 1934. His collection of maps, views, atlases, and travel books
pertaining especially to the Middle East, constitutes one of the important private collections relating to this
region.
ANTOINE DE SMET
Head of the Map Department, Bibliotheque royale Albert Ier, Brussels.
SARAH TYACKE
Assistant Keeper in the Map Room of the British Library (formerly the Map Room, British Museum).
COOLIE VERNER
Professor of Adult Education in the University of British Columbia, he has written inter alia a number of
articles for the Map Collectors’ Series, and an introduction to the facsimile of John Seller’s English Pilot.
HELEN WALLIS
Superintendent of the Map Room, British Library (formerly the Map Room, British Museum).
PREFACE
This volume of essays celebrates Ronald Vere Tooley’s 75th birthday. With over fifty years in the London
antiquarian map‐trade behind him, Tooley has long been a familiar figure in the sale‐rooms and in the map
departments of the major libraries in London. He recalls his early days in the Map Room at the British
Museum where in the late 1920s and 1930s there were rarely more than two or three visitors at a time and
often he found himself the solitary reader. He saw the rapid increase in the Map Room’s use and public
services under the superintendence of Dr Edward Lynam (1931‐1950), which in turn laid the foundation for
its establishment under Dr R. A. Skelton (1950‐67) as a major centre of geographical and cartographical
research. He became equally well known in the House of the Royal Geographical Society, where Edward
Heawood, the pre‐eminent authority on early maps and the history of geographic discovery, was the
Librarian. Once a month, Tooley recalls, the Royal Geographical Society had a selection of atlases and maps
sent along to make their selection for purchase. Those were the days when a Lafreri atlas went for £40 and
a Speed atlas for £3.10 (today the figures would be many thousands), such was the lack of any general
interest in maps and their history. Few men were really knowledgeable on the subject and few books were
available to guide the would‐be collector. The study of carto‐bibliography was still in its infancy. It followed
that the keen collector with a sharp eye had unrivalled opportunities in the field.
Employed by Francis Edwards Ltd from 1919, Tooley established himself as one of the leading ‘map‐men’ in
London with a specialized knowledge which only the constant handling of maps could give. He helped to
stock some of the finest map‐collections, public and private, in the world. He tells how A. G. H. Macpherson
would rush into Francis Edwards on a Saturday morning, have all the maritime atlases set out for his
inspection, and make a selection. Macpherson’s collection was later purchased for the National Maritime
Museum by Sir James Caird Bart., whose generosity established the Museum’s collections as among the
finest in the world. Through Tooley’s long association with the Map Room of the British Museum he came
to know in his early days F. P. Sprent, Thomas Chubb, J. W. Skells, H. Beharrell and later on Dr Edward
Lynam, Dr R. A. Skelton and their colleagues and successors. His good offices secured for the Map Room
many important maps and atlases, the most notable in recent years being the purchase of four hitherto
unrecorded manuscript English county maps 1602‐3 prepared as fair drafts for the engraver. These
evidently belonged to the so‐called ‘anonymous series of 1602‐3’, of which the Royal Geographical Society
has the most complete set, and has published a facsimile edition edited by Heawood. This acquisition
enabled Skelton to identify the author of the anonymous series as William Smith (c 1550‐1618), herald and
topographer and friend of John Norden. Had this county series been completed and their publication as an
atlas secured, it might have forestalled John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611‐12).
Perhaps the news that Speed was working on the atlas from 1603 onwards persuaded William Smith to
abandon his project. Other librarians who have enjoyed the benefit of Tooley’s friendship and help, besides
Heawood, are G. R. Crone, Heawood’s successor at the Royal Geographical Society, and Brigadier R. A.
Gardiner, the present Keeper of the Map Room, Roger Fairclough of University Library, Cambridge, Miriam
Foncin and Monique de la Roncière in the Dèpartement des Cartes et Plans at the Bibliothèque Nationale,
Antoine de Smet at the Bibliothèque Royale, Brussels, G. A. Cox at the Nederlandsch Historisch Scheepvaart
Museum, Amsterdam, Bert van’t Hoff of the Rijksarchief, The Hague, Alexander Vietor of Yale University
Library, and Ben‐Eli of the Maritime Museum, Haifa.
Mr Tooley also helped to build up many private or specialized collections, including those of Dr F. C.
Wieder, John Bartholomew, Prince Yusuf Kamal (on Africa), Eran Laor (on Palestine), J. M. Wordie (on Polar
regions), A. Stylianou (on Cyprus), H Malinowski (on Poland), Dr Eric Gardiner (on John Speed’s atlases) and
Dr Sidney Newman (on road‐books).
Many of the collections were founded despite the dearth (up to the 1950s) of a standard literature to guide
collectors, librarians and dealers alike. Tooley counted among his friends many of those who helped to
make good this omission, Roberto Almagia, M. C. Andrews, E. G. Box, Sir George Fordham, A. L. Humphreys,
L. C. Karpinsky and Harold Whitaker. At the same time he contributed a number of standard works himself.
His book Maps and Map‐Makers (London, 1949) became an invaluable guide for the post‐war map
collector, and the more recent Landmarks of Cartography with Bricker and Crone (1968) is a fine general
introduction to the study of maps, with many illustrations and accompanying explanatory text. In 1963
Tooley founded the Map Collectors’ Series which now has reached no 94. Edited by Tooley it provides the
specialist and layman with an encyclopaedic range of articles on early maps. Works which first appeared in
the series before being published as separate volumes include the late R. A. Skelton’s County Atlases of the
British Isles, Pt I (1579‐1700); Donald Hodson’s Printed Maps of Hertfordshire 1785‐1900 and Tooley’s own
Collectors’ Guide to the Maps of the African continent and Southern Africa. Tooley himself has contributed
many other numbers, and the full list of his works is a testament to his industry and to his concern that the
knowledge and gleanings of half a century should be made available for general use.
What better commemoration of his 75th birthday, then, could have been chosen than this set of essays by
some of his many admirers, published and printed by his friends in Francis Edwards and the Carta Press.
The essays reflect the varied facets of Tooley’s career and interests. In the first essay I trace the history of
the map collections in the British Museum to illuminate the setting in which Tooley spent so many hours of
patient research. A representative of Tooley’s many friends amongst foreign map librarians, Antoine de
Smet, contributes an article on the mercurial and enigmatic Elizabethan John Dee (1527‐1608), discussing
in the light of modern research Dee’s contribution to geography and cartography in the period when
England was seeking the wealth of the Orient through the discovery of the Northern Passages to Asia.
Coolie Verner and Tony Campbell, both contributors to the Map Collectors’ Series, discuss two different
aspects of seventeenth century chart production. Coolie Verner treats of the variations of title‐plate used
by John Seller for his folio atlases, a study which highlights the map‐sellers’ common practice of using the
same engraved title‐plate for a variety of different works and editions. By examining the title‐plates Coolie
Verner has established a tentative sequence of publication for the atlases, which may eventually lead to a
complete bibliographical description of the first printed English maritime atlases. Tony Campbell discusses
the formation of a school of chartmakers who worked during the seventeenth century under the aegis of
the Drapers’ Company, producing charts distinguished by a very characteristic style. This school is unusual
in that all its members were in a master‐apprentice relationship within the Drapers’ Company from about
1590 until the second decade of the eighteenth century. Another essay on a seventeenth century theme is
that by Sarah Tyacke, which considers the organisation and business practices of the printed sheet map‐
trade in the second half of the century. She presents interesting evidence about the size and growth of the
trade, and the costs involved in publication.
Moving into a more modern period, R. A. Gardiner’s ‘some lesser men’ provides biographical vignettes of
some lesser known but important map‐makers and, as such, is a welcome addition to Tooley’s Dictionary of
Map‐Makers, while in the Personal Memoirs Eran Laor recalls some of his experiences in map‐collecting
after the Second World War, when Tooley gave him much good advice. Robert Stockwell, Tooley’s printer
and friend, completes the volume with an appreciation of the ‘map‐man’. In fifty‐three years of selling
antique maps Tooley must have seen most of the atlases ever printed. He will surely appreciate the
sentiments expressed by Politick in Henry Fielding’s Rape Upon Rape (1730) when he exclaims ‘Map me no
Maps, Sir, my Head is a Map, a Map of the whole world’; a description the contributors believe to be true of
Tooley himself, and therefore particularly appropriate as the title of this volume of essays and memoirs
written in his honour.
Finally, I wish to thank Sarah Tyacke, my co‐editor, for contributing many hours of work to preparing the
essays for the printer; and we both express our gratitude to all the authors who by their contributions have
thus paid tribute to an old friend and colleague.
HELEN WALLIS
Map Room, British Library
July 24th 1973
LIST OF PUBLICATIONS BY R. V. TOOLEY
Some English Books with coloured plates 1790‐1860: a bibliographical account
London: Ingpen & Grant, 1935.
‐ 2nd edition revised, London: Batsford, 1954.
‘Maps in Italian Atlases of the Sixteenth Century’. Imago Mundi, vol III, 1939, pp 12‐47.
Maps and Map‐Makers. London: Batsford, 1949.
‐ 2nd edition revised, 1952.
‐ 4th edition revised, 1970.
‘Map making in France from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth century’.
Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, vol XVIII, No 6, 1952, pp 473‐479.
Collectors’ Guide to Maps of the African Continent and Southern Africa
London: Carta Press, 1967.
(With C. Bricker and G. R. Crone) Landmarks of Map making. Amsterdam & Brussels: Elsevier, 1968.
Also published under the title A History of Cartography. London : Thames & Hudson, 1969.
The following contributions to the Map Collectors’ Series, published by the Map Collectors’ Circle, founded and edited
by R. V. Tooley, London, 1963 onwards.
AFRICA
‘Early maps and views of the Cape of Good Hope’ No 6, 1963.
‘Printed Maps of Africa. Part I, The Continent of Africa, 1500‐1600’ No 29,1966.
‘Printed Maps of Africa. Part II, Regional maps, 1500‐1600’ No 30, 1966.
‘Maps of Africa, a selection’. Parts I and II Nos 47 and 48, 1968.
‘Printed maps of Southern Africa and its parts. Catalogue of a collection’ No 61, 1970.
‘A sequence of maps of Africa’ No 82, 1972.
AMERICA
‘California as an island’ No 8, 1964.
‘North American city plans ‐ a selection’ No 20, 1965.
‘French mapping of the Americas, the De l’Isle succession’ No 33, 1966. (With R. A. Skelton) ‘The Marine survey of
James Cook in North America 1758‐1768’ No 37, 1967.
‘Printed maps of America’ Parts I‐III. Nos 68, 69, 8o, 1971‐73 (in progress). ‘A sequence of maps of America’ No 92,
1973.
AUSTRALASIA
‘Maps of Antarctica’ No 2, 1963.
‘The printed maps of Tasmania’ No 5, 1963.
‘One hundred foreign maps of Australia 1773‐1887’ No 12, 1964.
‘Early maps of Australia, the Dutch period’ No 23, 1965.
‘Printed maps of New South Wales’ No 44, 1967.
‘Printed maps of Australia’ Parts I‐VII. Nos 6o, 64, 66, 72, 79, 85, 93, 1970‐73.
EUROPE
‘Leo Belgicus : a list of variants’ No 7, 1964.
‘The maps of South‐West France’, No 26, 1966.
‘Scandinavian sea charts’ Parts I and II, Nos 70, 71, 1971.
WEST INDIES
‘Some early printed maps of Trinidad and Tobago’ No 10, 1964.
‘The printed maps of Antigua 1689‐1899’ No 55, 1969.
‘Printed maps of Dominica and Grenada’ No 62, 1970.
OTHERS
‘Dictionary of Map‐makers, engravers and printers’ Parts I‐VII, [A‐L] 1964‐73 (in progress).
‘Geographical oddities’ No 1, 1963.
HISTORICAL ESSAYS ON ENGLISH MAP‐MAKERS AND MAP COLLECTIONS
Plat 1 A plan of the water system at Wormley in Hertfordshire c. 1200 from the Cartulary of Waltham
Abbey. [BM Harleian MS 391.ff.5b.6].
Helen Wallis
THE MAP COLLECTIONS OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM LIBRARY
A PUBLIC LIBRARY is the safest port; and of all public libraries the British Museum is on the most liberal
plan, deficient only in the want of a sufficient fund to furnish itself with what it may not suit the wishes or
the finances of many good collectors to bestow on it’. 1
The antiquary Richard Gough (1735‐1809) wrote this testimonial to the British Museum in his well‐known
work British Topography, published in 1780. The book was a second much enlarged edition of his earlier
volume Anecdotes of British Topography, or an Historical Account of what has been done for illustrating the
topographical antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland, 1768. Gough’s aim was ‘to inform the curious what
lights have from time to time been thrown on the topographical antiquities of the three kingdoms, and to
rescue them and their authors from oblivion’.2 His British Topography constituted the first really
comprehensive survey of the geographical writings, maps and topographical views concerning the British
Isles. Deploring the lack of a list of all the manuscript materials ‘concealed (note the word) in our libraries
both public and private’, Gough wrote, ‘the catalogues of those already published, with all their defects,
have their use; and it is the duty of librarians to amend them.’3 He regretted that more had not been done
to preserve and record the treasures which had once existed; for ‘many capital collections of MSS. have
been dispersed irrevocably’, Hence his praise of the British Museum and his self‐appointed task to provide
a chronicle of British topography. He concluded the preface to his second edition, ‘These Anecdotes have
informed and amused the collector: if they only amuse the readers I shall not be absolutely condemned: if
they inform them, my passion for British antiquities becomes a zeal to serve the public.’
The British Museum had served the public for less than thirty years when Gough published his British
Topography in 1780. Already it was pre‐eminent in reputation as one of the great libraries of the world.
Founded in 1753, it comprised initially the three magnificent collections of Sloane, Cotton and the Harleys.
When Sir Hans Sloane, physician and antiquary, died in 1753, a codicil to his will desired that his fine
collections of manuscripts, books and specimens be offered to the Crown for the sum of £20,000. At this
time the Trustees of the Cotton Library were seeking a more secure home for their collections, which had
been damaged by fire in 1731. The Elizabethan antiquary, Sir Robert Cotton, who died in 1631, may be
regarded as one of the two ‘posthumous founders’ of the British Museum.4 Described as ‘a worthy repairer
of eating time’s ruines’, in pursuing ‘the discovery of British antiquity’ he had sought out and added to his
collection many books and manuscripts which the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII had
scattered throughout the land. He had secured some of the working papers of statesmen such as those of
William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth’s Treasurer, papers which to‐day would be deposited in the
Public Record Office, but which were then treated as private property. The Cotton collection was of major
archival interest, comparable in political and geographical interest to the Cecil papers at Hatfield House, the
home of the Cecils. Cotton himself regarded his library virtually as a public institution, and it became one in
a full sense when secured for the nation under Trustees by the Cotton Library Act of 1700. The third
collection was that put together by the first and second Earls of Oxford, Robert (1661‐1724) and Edward
Harley (1689‐1741), members of a family distinguished for its service in high offices of state. English history
was one of the main objects of the Harleys’ collecting policy. Their collections were offered to the nation by
the Countess of Oxford, only daughter of Edward Harley, for the sum of £10,000, to be kept as an addition
to the Cotton Library. Thus the British Museum was established, and a home for it was found through the
purchase of Montagu House in Great Russell Street, in the Parish of Saint George, Bloomsbury. In 1757 a
fourth collection was acquired, when King George II presented to the British Museum the library of the
Kings and Queens of England. This is now called the Old Royal Library, to distinguish it from the later
1
Gough, Richard British Topography London, 1780, vol I p xlvii.
2
Gough, Ibid, p xlvii.
3
Gough, Ibid, p xlvi.
4
Esdaile, Arundell The British Museum Library London, 1946, p 26.
acquisition of the library of King George III, the King’s Library.
The three foundation collections were rich in manuscript maps. These and the maps transferred with the
Old Royal Library reflect the rapid development of the geographical sciences in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, and they also contain some of the finest examples of mediaeval map‐making.
Gough had deplored the apparent neglect of geography in the Middle Ages. His preface opened with the
words ‘Among the infinite variety of writers which these kingdoms have produced in every period for so
many centuries, we might expect that some in the earlier should have turned their thoughts to a
geographical description of them. From the first establishment of monasteries there wanted not monks to
record the transactions of their own societies, and the kingdom in general . . . But logic and divinity being so
essential to their profession, we are not to wonder that men secluded from the world studied the arts of
life so little’.5 He continued: ‘It was not till the monks were turned adrift, and the invention of printing had
given circulation to every improvement the mind enlarged could make, that we began to be acquainted
with the face of our own country.’6 Turning from an account of geographical writing to maps, Gough
pointed out that ‘Mappa’ and ‘descriptio Angliae’ were convertible terms in the Middle Ages, meaning
either verbal accounts or geographical tables.7 Gough must be judged as too severe in his strictures against
the monks. The arts of life in the Middle Ages did not demand a literate artisan class. The mediaeval mind
was not geographically trained. Moreover, a high proportion of major works which do survive came from
the monasteries and are products of the monastic life. Matthew Paris (c 1200‐1259), a monk of St. Albans, a
chronicler, historian and artist, was probably the founder of the Mediaeval English School of map makers,
and produced the first scientific maps of Great Britain since the time of Ptolemy. The Cotton collection
includes four thirteenth century manuscripts of Matthew Paris containing maps of Great Britain, and
another manuscript with a map came in the Old Royal Library, all of which Gough described or illustrated.8
The next major advance in the mapping of the British Isles is represented by the Gough map, c 1360, named
after Gough, as its owner.9 This map would have become one of the Museum’s most treasured specimens
of mediaeval cartography had Gough fulfilled his original intention of leaving his own collections to the
Museum. The foundation collections, especially Cotton, were also rich in mediaeval world maps. The tenth
century world map Cotton MS Tiberius B.V. fol 59, sometimes called the ‘Anglo‐Saxon’ world map, is one of
the best known and was being reproduced in popular printed works in the early nineteenth century. A
facsimile was made in 1830 by Mr Walker, of the Admiralty and presented to the Bibliothèque du Roi in
Paris. The beautiful and now equally well‐known ‘Psalter Map’ of the world of the thirteenth century came
in later (Add MS 28681, fol 9). Itineraries for pilgrims to the Holy Land by Matthew Paris are preserved in
the Old Royal Library, and are also featured by the indefatigable Gough in his Topography.
Landscape drawing likewise was achieved by miniaturists working on book illustrations in monasteries, and
came to have an effect on later cartographic styles. The lively drawing of the English School can be traced
to the influence of the Utrecht Psalter, executed in the Abbey of Hautvilliers, near Rheims, about 850 A D.
By the beginning of the eleventh century, the Psalter was in Canterbury, where a copy (Harl MS 603) was
made in about 1,000 AD, the monochrome original being interpreted in coloured outlines and occasional
wash. Many of the vignettes depict landscape settings. The work had a great influence on Anglo‐Saxon
book illustration. A basic feature of the stylistic representation of the mediaeval landscape was the bird’s‐
eye view with a sharply rising ground. For the next zoo years landscape elements became more stylised,
but in the fourteenth century interest in a naturalistic landscape revived. Pol de Limbourg in the Très Riches
Heures of the Duc de Berri, originating from 1416, now at Chantilly, brought about the concept of a true
landscape background. Yet even in the great age of landscape miniatures of the fifteenth century,
topographical views were still uncommon. Among British Museum manuscripts of English origin of this
5
Gough, Ibid, p i.
6
Gough, Ibid, p
7
Gough, Ibid, p 59‐60.
8
Gough, Ibid, p 61‐6.
9
Gough, Ibid, p 76.
period there are only three in which recognisable depicted places appear. Of these three one of the most
well‐known is the view of the Tower and London Bridge in Royal MS 16 F ii from the poem of Charles Duke
of Orleans. It represents the Duke of Orleans in the Tower, 1418, with Tower Hill, the Pool, the arcaded
warehouses of Billingsgate and part of London Bridge in the background. 10
A third type of topographical depiction was the functional map made for a particular purpose. This too
originated in the monasteries. One of the earliest of such plans is that of the waterworks at Canterbury
Cathedral, 1165 A D. The earliest local mediaeval manuscript of this kind in the British Museum shows the
water system at Wormley in Hertfordshire, c. 1220, and belongs to the Cartulary of Waltham Abbey. This
illustrates an account of the conduit’s construction (Hari MS 391 ff5b, 6. See plate I).
The great advance in geography, cartography and topographical depiction in the late fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries arose, of course, not from setting the monks adrift, but from the other phenomenon to
which Gough referred, the invention of printing, or, to put it more generally, from the scientific renaissance
in its manifold aspects. Magnificent copies of Ptolemy’s Geographia were made as part of the revival of
geographical learning, of which the Harleian collection includes three fifteenth century Latin manuscripts.
More widespread in their influence, however, were the printed Ptolemys with their copper engraved or
wood‐cut maps published from 1477 onwards. The invention of the technique of engraving in copper and
wood now made possible the exactly repeatable pictorial statement, and paralleled the development of
printing from moveable type.11 At the same time, a logical grammar for the presentation of space
relationships in pictorial form was provided through the methods of perspective drawing set out by Leon
Battista Alberti in 1435. The new geometrical method for constructing perspective opened up the graphic
representation of the world of nature. Albrecht Dürer exploited these techniques and brought about a new
conception of naturalistic landscape drawing. These influences which came to England via the Low
Countries, inspired the development of a very effective type of bird’s‐eye view found in the remarkable
series of plans and views of fortifications made for King Henry VIII about 1538, and preserved in the Cotton
collection. A fine example is the plan of Great Yarmouth, Cotton Aug I i 74. The new geometrical techniques
applied to survey, and new instruments designed for surveying, likewise permitted a much more accurate
type of map‐making. A new profession of estate and military surveying came into being.
All these developments reflected and stimulated the European’s visual awareness and his growing interest
in the external world, now enlarging its bounds with the reports of oceanic discoveries. Revived Ptolemaic
cosmology gripped the popular imagination. In England Tudor pageants of state featured cosmological
devices, designed by the royal astronomer Nicholas Kratzer and arranged by the Master of the Revels, the
printer John Rastell.12 Although these have perished as ephemera of history, their documentation reveals
the extent of royal interest and patronage in matters of geography and astronomy. Holbein’s portrait ‘The
Ambassadors’ painted at the Court in 1533 survives to illustrate the liberal arts and mathematical sciences
of the day in a symbolical representation of Agrippa of Nettesheim’s treatise De incertitudine et vanitate
scientiarum (1530). The instruments depicted in this first state portrait of geographical significance are
identifiable as those belonging to Nicholas Kratzer, Henry’s astronomer, and appear in his own portrait by
Holbein, 1528.
10
Croft‐Murray, Edward & Hulton, Paul Catalogue of British Drawings (Text) London, 1960, pp xx‐xxiii.
11
Ivins,William M. Prints and visual communication London, 1953, p 23.
12
Anglo, Sydney. ‘The London pageants for the reception of Katherine of Aragon, 1501’. Journal for the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol XXVI
(1963) pp 53‐89. Spectacle, Pageantry and Early Tudor Policy Oxford, 1969, pp 217‐9.
Plat 2 Plan of Great Yarmouth c. 1538 [BM Cotton MS Aug. I.i.74]
Such was the background to the foundation of the royal library. Of the charts, maps and atlases presented
to King Henry VIII, one of the most celebrated was the manuscript ‘Boke of Idrography’ by Jean Rotz (Old
Royal MS 20 E IX). Rotz, a native of Dieppe (whose father was of Scottish extraction), transferred to English
service and became one of Henry’s hydrographers in 1542. Originally intended for King Francis I of France,
the book was dedicated instead to King Henry VIII, and is one of the finest marine atlases of its day. The
map of Canada shows the results of Cartier’s first voyage, 1532, and is presumably the earliest pictorial
representation of North American Indians and their wigwams. Like the other maps of the Dieppe school,
that of the East Indian area depicts the ‘proto‐continent’ of Australia, drawn as a great protruberance of
the southern continent, and apparently representing either Portuguese discovery of its coasts or reports
made to the Portuguese. Another work of the Dieppe school, the large world map of c 1544 (Add MS 5413)
belonged to Edward Harley, Earl of Oxford, was taken by one of his servants after his death, and later
purchased by Sir Joseph Banks and presented to the Museum in 1790. Yet another large chart of the same
school, signed by Pierre Desceliers, and dated 1550, was acquired in more recent years. (Add MS 24065).
Sebastian Cabot, who returned to English service from Spain in 1548 to become the leading authority on
the northern passages, also presented to the royal household maps made by himself, which were later
recorded as in the royal library.13 A later edition of his world map of 1544, ‘cut by Clement Adams’ in 1549,
hung in the Queen’s gallery in Whitehall in the 1560s, and together with Gemma Frisius’s globes, provided
evidence to support his claim to have discovered the north‐west passage during his early period in English
service, and encouraged Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Hakluyt and others in their project for its
exploitation. The record of the Cabots’ discoveries (father and son) thus became established facts which
later were to provide England with her title to Canada. Another historic map once in the royal library is the
chart of the Northern hemisphere drawn by Dr John Dee for Queen Elizabeth in 1580. This was acquired by
Sir Robert Cotton and came to the Museum in the Cotton manuscripts (Cotton Aug I i I).
Meanwhile, an English school of survey and map‐making was developing. William Cuningham, physician of
Norwich, claimed to be the first English cosmographer with his work The Cosmographical Glasse (1559), a
claim which Gough upheld, although Robert Recorde’s Castle of Knowledge (1556) may be said to have won
priority as a native geographical work. Cuningham explained how to make a map of England, and his map of
Norwich which was printed in the book is believed to be the first English engraved town plan. Whether it is
now predated by the copperplate map of London, c 1559, remains uncertain. The next landmark was the
publication of Christopher Saxton’s atlas of the Counties of England and Wales in 1579, the first national
atlas of any country. A Yorkshire surveyor, Saxton was commissioned and financed by Thomas Seckford, the
Queen’s Master of Requests. The atlas provided an essential reference work for statesmen in their public
business as well as furnishing the gentleman’s library. In an account of the duties of a Secretary of State,
1592, Robert Beale wrote: ‘A Secretarie must likewise have . . . a booke of the Mappes of England, with a
13
Skelton, R. A. ‘The Royal Map Collections of England’ Imago Mundi vol XIII (1956) p 181‐2.
particular note of the divisions of the shires into Hundreds, Lathes, Wappen‐taes, and what Nobleman,
Gentleman and others be residing in . . . them’. Lord Burghley, as Queen Elizabeth’s Treasurer, acquired
thirty‐five maps by Saxton, comprising early proofs pulled between 1574 and 1578. These he extensively
annotated. On the face of the maps he added and corrected place‐names, on the back he provided lists of
Justices, gentry and other details. In addition, eighteen manuscript maps were inserted, comprising
detailed surveys of areas of strategic and economic importance, such as Falmouth Haven. The ‘Burghley‐
Saxton’ atlas, as it is called, came to the Museum in the Old Royal Library (Royal MS 18 D III), although how
it reached the Royal Library is not known. Other manuscript maps, once in Lord Burghley’s possession and
bearing his annotations, were somehow acquired by Sir Robert Cotton and are now in the Cotton Collection
(Aug I i and I ii). Dr R. A. Skelton in his essay ‘The maps of a Tudor Statesman’, in A Description of Maps and
Architectural Drawings in the Collection made by William Cecil . . . now at Hatfield House (1971), has traced
how many of the maps once at Hatfield House found their way into the Cotton Collection, the Public Record
Office, the Dartmouth Collection and elsewhere.14 Burghley must have been one of the most
knowledgeable men in the land on matters of local and regional geography. It is therefore worth adding the
anecdote told by Edward Leigh of Magdalene Hall, Oxford:
‘If any came heretofore to the Lords of the Council for a License to travel; the old Lord Treasurer Burleigh,
would first examine him of England; if he found him ignorant, he would bid him stay at home, and know his
own Country first.’ 15
Sir Robert Cotton with his collector’s zeal and antiquarian pursuits was no less an authority. Many official
surveys commissioned by officers of state for purposes of national defence were acquired by him and
survive in the Cotton Collection, which (as Skelton points out) has an ‘archival’ character not generally true
of the maps which came to the Museum in the Old Royal Library.16 Among the exceptions which indicate
the one‐time importance of the royal collections, besides the Rotz atlas and the ‘Saxton‐Burghley’ atlas, are
the military plans collected by Henry Prince of Wales, the son of James I (Royal MS 20 E X ). The surveys of
royal estates by John Norden, ‘A description of the Honor of Windesor . . . 1607’, and the survey of the
Duchy of Cornwall once in the Royal Library have come to the Museum in the Harleian Manuscripts
(Harleian MS 3749 and Harleian MS 6252), while Norden’s survey of the lands of Prince Charles, 1617,
followed later to become Add MS 6027. The maps missing from the survey of Cornwall were removed from
the volume in the early eighteenth century and have been traced by Professor William Ravenhill to the Gale
Collection of Trinity College, Cambridge. 17 As Saxton’s successor in cartography, Norden had set out on the
ambitious task of undertaking what Gough described as ‘an absolute description of the whole and everie
part of this kingdom of Great‐Britain’. The Speculum Britanniae (1593) was designed as a series of 12°
volumes for the traveller’s pocket, but only Middlesex (1593) and Hertfordshire (1598) had been published
when Norden had to abandon the project for lack of official support, despite his desperate entreaties to
Robert Cecil and the Queen. Somewhat under a cloud for his political pamphlets, he had to await the
accession of King James I before he was in business once more, henceforward as surveyor of the royal
estates. Saxton’s atlas limited the need for Norden’s geographical descriptions and his small‐format county
maps. In 1611‐12 Saxton’s atlas itself was superseded by Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine,
which with its fine county maps and town plans drew extensively, with acknowledgement, on Norden’s
work. This held the field as the most popular atlas of the country up to the 1670s.
The decades of the 1630s and 1640s with their wars and internal strife were not propitious times for civilian
cartography. King Charles I’s great collections and patronage which were celebrated throughout Europe
14
Skeleton, R. A. and Summerson, John. A Description of Maps and Architectural Drawings in the Collection made by William Cecil . . . now at
Hatfield House Oxford, 1971, pp 5‐21.
15
Leigh, E. Three Diatribes London, 1671, p 6.
16
Skelton, R. A. Imago Mundi vol XIII (1956) p 182.
17
Ravenhill, W. L. D. ‘John Norden’s maps of Cornwall . . .’ Cartographic Journal vol 7 (1970) pp 89‐90. ‘The missing maps from John Norden’s
Survey of Cornwall’ in Gregory, K. J. and Ravenhill Exeter Essays in Geography in honour of Arthur Davies Exeter, 1971, pp 93‐104.
were concerned with works of art and not with maps and geography. The next period of activity both in
map‐making and in the augmentation of the royal collections ‐ sadly denuded and dispersed during the
Protectorate ‐ came with the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660. On 2 September 1680 John Evelyn
visited the King’s private library at Whitehall and found an ‘Aboundance of Mapps & Sea‐Chards:
Entertainments, & Pomps; buildings, & Pieces relating to the Navy’.18 On a much earlier visit, in November
1660, he had reported ‘a vast book of Mapps in a Volume of neere 4 yards large’.19 This was the world atlas
comprising the finest and largest Dutch printed maps of the day, presented to King Charles II by Johan
Klencke of Amsterdam in 1660 to celebrate the King’s accession and the restoration of the monarchy.20
Although the Klencke atlas came to the Museum in the King’s Library, many of the maps and charts in the
Old Royal Library in the 1670s and 1680s have disappeared or were destroyed. This loss is documented by a
list of the maps contained in the royal library as inherited by Charles II from his forebears, which survives
among various manuscript inventories of the Library’s holdings (Royal MS App 86 art 13). The list
enumerates twenty eight manuscript and forty printed maps, none of which can be found in the Old Royal
Library today. Some of the items were lost when the library was transferred to the Palace of Whitehall and
was then destroyed in the fires of 1691 and 1698. Among those items irreparably lost were Saxton’s map of
England and Wales 1583 ‘in Parchment’ and Sebastian Cabot’s maps. It would appear (as Skelton has
shown) 20 that at some time during the reign of Charles II or James II the map collection was moved into the
private library at Whitehall near the King’s writing cabinet. Some items then came into the hands of
ministers of state, notably Baron Dartmouth (1648‐91), Master General of the Ordnance, and can be traced
in modern sales of the Dartmouth Collection. Others remained in the private royal library after George II
presented to the British Museum his main book and manuscript collections, and later came to the Museum
in the King’s Topographical Collection in 1828. Examples of such maps are the Duke map of New York, MS,
1664 (K Top CXXI 35), a map of New Hampshire, MS, c 1680 (K Top CXX 27) and the large MS chart of
Narborough’s voyage through the Strait of Magellan, 1670 (K Top CXXIV 84). This explains why the Old
Royal Library which came to the Museum in 1757 was not rich in maps.
Although in the commercial field the authors and publishers of the great atlas projects ‐ The English Pilot of
John Seller, the English Atlas of John Ogilby, and the later similarly titled atlas series of Moses Pitt ‐ over‐
reached themselves, a host of prints of maps and charts became available to collectors like Pepys and
Bagford, and fine examples of the atlases came to the Museum in the King’s Topographical and Maritime
Collections. The impetus in cartographic activity at home and abroad gathered momentum in the
eighteenth century. By mid‐century commercial firms were vying with each other in undertaking county
surveys at a scale of 1‐inch to a mile, encouraged by the premiums offered by the Royal Society of Arts.
Gough notes and assesses the qualities of these surveys, praising in particular the ‘Great Survey’ of Sussex
then being undertaken by Yeakell and Gardner at a scale of 2 inches to a mile. The map was financed by the
Duke of Richmond for whom Yeakell and Gardner were professional surveyors. It was engraved in Paris in
1778, and the French Revolution prevented its completion, but a 1‐inch to a mile map of Sussex,
incorporating material from the Great Survey, was published by Gardner and Thomas Gream in 1795.
Meanwhile these two surveyors had entered the Ordnance Survey, which was founded in 1791 under the
Duke of Richmond as Master‐General of the Ordnance. The establishment of the Ordnance Survey also
owed much to the enterprise of General William Roy (1726‐90) who had begun the trigonometrical survey
of England. Roy was one of the young men employed on the survey of Scotland undertaken after the 1745
rebellion to assist in the pacification of the Highlands and the road‐building operations which this involved.
The resulting survey, at a scale of 1,000 yards to 1 inch, was described by Roy as ‘rather . . . a magnificent
military sketch, than a very accurate map of a country’.21 When Gough wrote (II 586), it was called the Duke
18
Beer, E. S. de The Diary ofJohn Evelyn Oxford, 1955, vol V p 215.
19
Beer, E. S. de Ibid, III p 26o.
20
Skelton, R. A. ‘The Royal Map Collections of England’ Imago Mundi vol XIII (1956), pp 181‐3.
21
Roy,W. ‘An account of the measurement of a base on Hounslow ‐ Heath.’ Philosophical Transactions LXXV (1785), p 387. See also Skelton, R. A.
The Military Survey of Scotland 1747‐1755. The Royal Scottish Geographical Society Special Publication No. I. Edinburgh, 1967.
of Cumberland’s map, and one set was in the Office of Ordnance whence it came to join other sets in the
collection of King George III, and thence to the British Museum. After the Treaty of Paris (1763) Roy had
proposed ‘a general survey of the whole island at the public cost’, but the war in America forestalled this
project. Roy’s opportunity came in 1783 when Cassini recommended that the relative positions of the
observatories of Greenwich and Paris be determined by triangulation across the Straits of Dover. Under the
auspices of the Royal Society, with financial support from George III and the loan of men and instruments
from the Board of Ordnance, Roy measured a baseline on Hounslow Heath in 1784 and observed the
triangles to Dover and the French coast in 1789. Roy himself died in 1790, one year before the
trigonometrical survey was set up by the Duke of Richmond in the Tower. The library of King George III (the
King’s Topographical Collection) includes a number of manuscript maps by Ordnance engineers which may
be regarded as fore‐runners of the Ordnance Survey proper. The Ordnance Surveyors’ Drawings, the
original manuscript drawings (c 1790‐I840) from which the first edition 1‐inch to a mile map was derived,
were presented to the Map Room by the Director General of the Ordnance Survey in 1955, with
subsequent additional transfers, and are in constant use in historical and geographical research. These
domestic achievements were paralleled by the great advances in military and civilian survey abroad. A host
of manuscript and printed maps were acquired for the royal library and were to come to the Museum in
the King’s Topographical and the Maritime Collections.
Plat 3 Detail of Nova Scotia on the ‘red‐line map’, John Mtichell’s Map of North America, c. 1775,
annotated by Richard Oswald, 1782‐83 [BM K.118.D.26 (k. Top. CXVIII. 49B.)]
The British Museum opened its Reading Room in 1759. It is interesting to note a reference to maps in the
Trustees’ Minutes of 10th February in that year: These requisitioned a ‘Special Table’ 6 by 8 ft., to be made
for large maps and surveys of the Sloane Library in the middle of the first state storey (the Reading Room
was then in the basement storey). On 23rd December 1763 a stove was to be put in the ‘Charts Room’.
Among the early visitors was Admiral Saunders, who between the fall of Quebec, 1759, and his
appointment as Commander‐in‐Chief in the Mediterranean, 1760, came to consult maps, plans and charts
of the British Isles, France, Holland and Belgium On 27th April 1764 Captain Palliser, Governor of
Newfoundland, Cook’s commanding officer and later friend and patron, was reported to be desirous to
inspect the sea charts in the Sloane collection. ‘special leave was given to see them, though the Museum
was not open’. The sea charts may well have included some of the manuscript atlases of William Hack, c
1680, of the so‐called ‘Thames School’. In 1766 the Museum’s maps and books were consulted in the
international dispute with Spain and France over the Falklands Islands. At the same time King George III was
building up his library, filling the bookshelves left empty by the gift of the Old Royal Library, and adding to
the nucleus of maps and atlases derived from the Old Royal Library. The collection was world‐wide in
compass, but especially rich in areas of British interest. It contains, therefore, perhaps the finest
geographical collection in the world for eighteenth‐century America. To state a truism, war proved a great
stimulus to surveying and cartography, and the collection thus contains many military maps and plans
relating to the Seven Years War and the American Revolutionary War. The Royal Military Academy at
Woolwich was the training ground for the military surveyors and topographical draughtsmen who worked
in North America. The drawing master at the school was Paul Sandby, Father of the English School of
Watercolour, who from 1742 was working with his elder brother Thomas in the map and survey office in
the Tower of London (and in this capacity had been one of the draughtsmen for Roy’s map of Scotland). In
1768 Sandby was appointed to Woolwich and therefore trained a series of topographical artists well‐known
in the North American theatre. The King’s Topographical Collection contains a wealth of plans and views,
printed and manuscript, many illustrating forts and scenes of battle, others the peaceful development of a
territory in the aftermath of war. Such are the birch bark map and drawings by Mrs Simcoe, wife of the
Governor‐General of Upper Canada (K Top CXIX 5). A document of major political importance is the Red‐
lined map’, an edition (1777) of John Mitchell’s map of North America first published in 1755, annotated
with the demarcation lines between French and British possessions by Richard Oswald, British
Commissioner at the Treaty of Paris, 1783, and presented to King
George III (K Top CXVIII 49 b). It has been described as the most important map in North American history.
For continental territories, especially those of Hanoverian connection, the holdings are of comparable
richness. The whole collection comprises some 50,000 maps and charts and was the finest geographical
collection of its day. In the event the special military and political interest of the collection nearly led to the
Museum losing it. The collection was to come to the Museum as part of the King’s Library in 1828. In June
1828 the Treasury approved ‘the immediate removal of the King’s Library to the British Museum,’ and in
August the library arrived. Then came the news that J. H. Glover, one of the Assistant Librarians of the Royal
Library, was authorized to retain ‘the whole of the Military Plans, the Charts, Topography and Geography,
the catalogue whereof are contained in Six Volumes folio, exclusive of the Military Plans’. The Trustees at
an emergency meeting learnt that Nicholas Carlisle, the King’s Under‐Librarian, had authorized Glover ‘to
deliver the Charts and the whole of the Geography and Topography to Capt Parry, whenever Capt Parry
should demand them’. The Trustees urgently required Robert Peel as Home Secretary to see that the charts
and the collections of geography and topography were transferred to the Museum. Peel was to point out to
the King that ‘the Trustees feel the great advantage of making the British Museum the general depository
of all these valuable Collections’. They would make them available to any Department of State which
wished to see them. It was finally agreed that ‘the Nautical Charts only shall be transmitted to the
Admiralty’, and that the other collections might come with the rest to the Museum, since it was found on
enquiry that there was ‘not room for their proper Custody in those offices to which the Topographical and
Geographical collections might have been most useful’. Any other interested department must be given the
‘utmost facility of access for the purpose of consulting them’.22 Thus the collections were saved for the
Museum. In 1844 the Lords Commissioners on the recommendation of Sir John Barrow and Captain
Beaufort offered to the Museum ‘the Old Maps, Charts and Books which formerly belonged to His Majesty
King George III . . . of which no use whatever was made’. The Museum’s officers reported that the material
received ‘fell short of what was shewn’ to them, and it was not until 1952 that some forty of the missing
items were identified in the Admiralty Library and transferred by the Lords of the Admiralty.23 Another
dispute, this time about the custody of certain military maps, arose in 1836 when J. Hignett wrote to the
Board of Ordnance on 28 October to report that he had seen Board of Ordnance maps in the British
Museum forming part of George III’s gift, which were perhaps of significance for defence and ought not to
be seen by the public. The Board of Ordnance wrote to William IV on 4 November pointing out that the
plans had been ‘inadvertently sent’ to the British Museum with the topographical collection. In fact, they
had only been sent to George III for his approval and he had not been meant to keep them, and their return
was requested. The Board of Ordnance sent Sir Frederick Smith and Samuel Howlett (Chief Draughtsman at
22
Miller, E. J. That Noble Cabinet. A History of the British Museum, 1974,129‐3 ‘Capt. Parry’ was Sir William Edward Parry, hydrographer at the
Admiralty, 1827‐9.
23
Skelton, R. A. ‘The Hydrographic Collections of the British Museum’. Journal of the Institute of Navigation vol IX (1956), 323‐34.
the Tower) to the Museum to inspect the plans. On 15th February 1837 a letter from the British Museum
refused the return of the plans, as they had been given to the nation with the full approval of Parliament,
and the dispute continued until 1838.24 A great disappointment which the Museum suffered was the loss of
Gough’s collection of British maps and antiquarian material. He had offered his whole collection in 1802,
but later changed his mind, leaving his collections to the Bodleian Library which thus became that ‘safest
port’ where the Gough map and its companion collections were to find their resting place. ‘He was
capricious and very often made short turns’, Sir Henry Ellis reported when closely examined on the matter
by the Parliament Select Committee of Enquiry which looked into the affairs of the Museum in 1835.
At the same time Antonio Panizzi, then Assistant in the Department of Printed Books, and later to be
acclaimed the greatest of nineteenth century Principal Librarians, was becoming concerned over the
financial neglect of the Department — the ‘want of a sufficient fund’, as Gough had called it. He asked in
1837 for £1,000 ‘to form a geographical collection which might be called complete’, and recommended the
employment of a special bookseller to assist in the purchasing of suitable maps. It is interesting to note that
in a memoir of 1848 Edme‐François Jomard was setting out the same arguments for ‘un dépôt générale de
geographie’ in the Bibliothèque du Roi (the Bibliothèque Nationale) and holding up the British Museum as a
model. Henceforward the Museum pursued an active policy of acquiring modern foreign maps, by
exchange or purchase. British works were acquired by copyright deposit, on the theory that the Museum
was inheritor of the Old Royal Library’s rights to receive English books from the Stationers’ Company. An
Act of 1814 extended the right, but the full application of the principle was not achieved until the Copyright
Act of 1911.
Major acquisitions of special collections were made from time to time. In 1861 the Museum purchased the
Beudeker Collection, comprising 24 volumes (out of a collection of 27) of maps and views of the
Netherlands, 1600‐1750. Christoffel Beudeker, a rich Amsterdam merchant who died in 1756, had
grangerized Blaeu’s town atlas of the Netherlands. In 1880 the Crace Collection of London Plans and Views
was acquired by purchase. These were collected by Frederick Crace, Commissioner for Sewers, and came to
the Museum from his son John Gregory, who had edited the catalogue.25 The maps and plans are kept in
the Map Room, the views in the Department of Prints and Drawings. The more recent acquisition of
Ordnance Survey original drawings, supplement the Map Room’s almost complete set of all editions of
Ordnance Survey printed maps and plans. Finally, the most valuable purchase of maps in the Museum’s
history was made in 1968 when the Trustees bought the sheet map collection of the Royal United Service
Institution. This comprised two important collections for North America and Great Britain, the map
collections of Lord Amherst, Commander‐in‐Chief in the Seven Years War, and of Sir Augustus Frazer, who
appears to have acquired and passed to the R.U.S.I. a major topographical archive preserved at Woolwich.
A third smaller collection, also relating to America and Great Britain, is that of Richard A. Davenport. The
other major collection is the ‘H.J.’ collection — presented to the R.U.S.I. by Sir Harry Jones —comprising
nearly 600 manuscript maps of continental theatres of war — many of them of Prussian origin, which
suggests that the collection may once have come from a Prussian archive.
The real beginning of the map collections as an administrative unit of the Museum dates from 1844, when
Richard Henry Major was placed in charge of them. With John Holmes he compiled the Catalogue of
Manuscript Maps, Charts, and Plans, and of the Topographical Drawings in the British Museum (3 vols),
1844‐61. (Volumes 1 and 2 were published in 1844, vol 3 in 1861, and all three were reprinted in 1962.)
Manuscript material in the King’s Topographical Collection is included in all three volumes, but that in the
King’s Maritime Collection only in volume 3. The printed maps were first catalogued by William Hughes
about 1843, and re‐catalogued under the direction of R. K. Douglas for the Catalogue of Printed Maps,
Plans and Charts in the British Museum, 2 vol (1885). The full catalogue of the printed map collections
24
P.R.O. W.O. 44/613 Engineers In‐letters. I am indebted to Yolande Jones for this reference.
25
A Catalogue of Maps, Plans, and Views ofLondon, Westminster and Southwark, Collected and arranged by Frederick Crace. Edited by his son John
Gregory Crace . . . London, 1878.
complete to 1964 was published in a photo‐lithographic edition in 1967, and accessions from 1965 to 1975
will be published as a ten‐year supplement. Accessions of manuscript maps are listed in the volumes of
Additional Manuscripts, but a full catalogue at present in card‐index is in preparation.
From 1867 until his retirement in 1880 Major was in charge of a separate Department of Maps and Charts,
which included both manuscript and printed material. From 1880 to 1892 Maps and Charts were
administered as a sub‐department of the Museum. In 1892 the manuscript maps (with the exception of
those in King George III’s Topographical and Maritime Collections) were transferred to the Department of
Manuscripts and the Map Room was established as a division of the Department of Printed Books. Lord
Curzon in 1914 urged that the printed and manuscript maps should be contained once more in a single
department, but this proposal was not accepted. The Map Room acquired its present quarters when the
King Edward VII building was completed in 1914. The next major change in its administrative structure
occurred as recently as July 1973 when the British Library was vested. The map collections, as part of the
Department of Printed Books and Department of Manuscripts, now come under the authority of the British
Library Board.
It is appropriate to end with a glance back to 1856, when J. G. Kohl commented in a lecture delivered to the
Smithsonian Institution: ‘It cannot be denied that there has from the beginning been something that was
called geography; but it has been a plant of very tardy growth . . . If geography itself was neglected until our
days, the history of geography must, of course, have been utterly unknown . . . If, as I have said, the history
of geography has been utterly neglected, then I must add, that that most essential part of it, the history of
geographical maps, has scarcely ever been thought of’. He went on to propose the creation of a
comprehensive collection of American maps. In describing examples of valuable collections in other
countries he made special mention of the ‘vast collection of old maps, for the greater part in manuscript . . .
lately . . . brought together by the efforts of different distinguished gentlemen... added as an essential
department to the British Museum’26
APPENDIX
Official catalogues available are as follows:
a. Catalogues of Maps, Prints, Drawings, etc. forming the Geographical and Topographical Collection
attached to the library of . . . King George the Third, 1829.
b. Catalogue of King George III’s Maritime Collection. About 1850. (MS and printed charts. Dictionary
arrangement. Reproduced by the ‘carbonic process,’ not published. Copies in Map Room, Reading
Room, and Department of Manuscripts).
c. Catalogue of the Manuscript Maps, Charts, and Plans, and of the Topographical Drawings in the
British Museum 3 vol London, 1844‐61. (Vol 1 and 2, 1844; vol 3, 1861. Reprinted 1962. Compiled
26
Kohl, J. G. ‘Substance of a lecture delivered at the Smithsonian Institution on a collection of the charts and maps of America.’ Annual Report of
the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution . . . for the year 1856 (1857), pp 94,96.
by John Holmes and R. H. Major. Classified arrangement. Each volume includes material in the
collections to the date of its publication. Manuscript material in the King’s Topographical Collection
is included in all 3 volumes, but that in the King’s Maritime Collection only in vol 3. Accessions of
maps in the Department of Manuscripts after 1861 are entered in the periodically printed
Catalogues of Additions to the Manuscripts.)
d. The British Museum Catalogue of Printed Maps, Charts and Plans. Photolithographic edition up to
the end of 1964 London, 1967.
Some unofficial catalogues of maps in the museum:
[Crace Collection] A catalogue of Maps, Plans and Views of London, Westminster and Southwark. Collected
and arranged by Frederick Crace. Edited by his son John Gregory Crace . . . London, 1878.
(Classified in the order of the collection, the catalogue was published two years before the Crace
Collection was acquired by the British Museum.)
[American maps], Catalogue of American Maps in the Library of the British Museum. By Henry Stevens
London, 1859.
[Cuban maps] Cartografia Cubana del British Museum. Por Domingo Figarola‐Caneda. 2 edicion. Habana,
1910.
(German maps) Alte Karten von Mitteleuropa in der Sammlung des Britischen Museums in London. Von
Helmut Jager. Berichte zur Deutschen Landeskunde 19 Bd. 2 Hft. 1957 pp 246‐66.
‐ Karten uber Mainfranken im Britischen Museum. Von Helmut Jager. Die Mainlande. Geschichte and
Gegenwart 7 Jhrg. nr. 14. 1956 pp 53‐91.