John Speed’s fine map of the county of Worcestershire from the first edition of his atlas, the ‘Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain’. The map is derived from that published by Christopher Saxton in 1577 and ‘Augmetr: and published by John Speede citize of London’ by the addition of boundaries. The source for much of this information was the Parliamentary Rolls’. Roads are not yet identified. A fine town plan of Worcester is provided as an inset. It is the first known plan of the town and believed to be the work of Speed himself. The draft manuscripts for many of these reside at Merton College, Oxford. The atlas provided the first comprehensive collection of English town plans, some the earliest of their kind. A battle scene below describes the Battle of Evesham of 1265 in which Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, was defeated and killed by the forces of Henry III. Five coats of arms of nobles in the county flank the left border.

John Speed (1552-1629) is the best known and, among collectors, the most popular British cartographer. He was, like his father, a tailor by trade with a passion for history. On joining the Society of Antiquaries, he took his first steps towards the compilation of the atlas that has placed him among the cartographic immortals. In 1611 he produced the ‘History of Great Britain’ and his atlas, the ‘Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain’, was published to accompany it. The ‘Theatre …’ was the first atlas of the British Isles ever produced, containing sixty-seven maps which, in addition to the counties of England and Wales, also included general maps of the Heptarchy (England in Anglo-Saxon times), Great Britain and Ireland, England, Wales, Scotland, and the Provinces of Ireland, together with maps of the Isles of Wight and Man and the Channel Islands. Preparation for the atlas took several years and the maps are all engraved by Jodocus Hondius in Amsterdam. Bendall, Sarah (2002) ‘Draft Town Maps for John Speed’s ‘Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine”, in Imago Mundi 54 pp. 30-45; Hind (1952-64) II pp. 67-95; Schilder MCN VII pp. 481-2; Schilder (2008) VIII pp. 165-70; Shirley (2004) T.SPE-1b; Skelton (1966); Skelton (1970) 7; Tooley (1977); Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).