John Speed

John Speed
Memorial to John Speed, St Giles-without-Cripplegate
Born1551 or 1552
Farndon, Cheshire
Died1629 (aged 76–77)
Scientific career
FieldsCartography, history

John Speed (1551 or 1552 – 28 July 1629) was an English cartographer, chronologer and historian of Cheshire origins.[1] The son of a citizen and Merchant Taylor in London,[2] he rose from his family occupation to accept the task of drawing together and revising the histories, topographies and maps of the Kingdoms of Great Britain as an exposition of the union of their monarchies in the person of King James I and VI.[3] He accomplished this with remarkable success, with the support and assistance of the leading antiquarian scholars of his generation. He drew upon and improved the shire maps of Christopher Saxton, John Norden and others, being the first to incorporate the hundred-boundaries into them, and he was the surveyor and originator of many of the town or city plans inset within them.[4] His work helped to define early modern concepts of British national identity. His Biblical genealogies were also formally associated with the first edition of the King James Bible. He is among the most famous of English mapmakers.[5][6]

  1. ^ Bendall, Sarah (2008) [2004]. "Speed, John (1551/2–1629), historian and cartographer". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/26093. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.); superseding Pollard, Albert (1898). "Speed, John" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 53. pp. 318–320. .
  2. ^ "Life of John Speed", The Hibernian Magazine, Or, Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge, July 1782, p. 348 (Google).
  3. ^ Hewitt, Rachel (2010). Map of a Nation. London: Granta Publications. pp. xxvi. ISBN 978-1-84708-254-1.
  4. ^ A. Baynton-Williams, 'John Speed': Relocated since 17 Sept 2012 at Mapforum.com as "Biography: John Speed", Jan 2022 (www. mapforum.com).
  5. ^ John Speed, eds N. Nicolson and A. Hawkyard, The Counties of Britain: A Tudor Atlas, Thames & Hudson (1989) ISBN 0-500-25104-5: Pavilion Books (1992) ISBN 1-85145-131-5; (pbk, 1995) ISBN 1-85793-612-4.
  6. ^ A full coloured original set of Speed's British maps, with their descriptive texts in the Latin 1616 edition of the Theatre, can be viewed online at gallica (Bibliothèque Nationale Française).

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