These maps are taken from this pocket edition are now known as Miniature Speeds. Strap-work cartouche enclosing title, bottom left.
Pieter van den Keere was one of a number of refugees who fled from religious persecution in the Low Countries between the years 1570 and 1 590. He moved to London in 1584 with his sister who married Jodocus Hondius, also a refugee there, and through Hondius he undoubtedly learned his skills as an engraver and cartographer. In the course of a long working life he engraved a large number of individual maps for prominent cartographers of the day but he also produced an Atlas of the Netherlands (1617-22) and county maps of the British Isles which have become known as Miniature Speeds, a misnomer which calls for some explanation.
In about 1599 Van den Keere engraved plates for 44 maps of the English and Welsh counties, the regions of Scotland and the Irish provinces. The English maps were based on Saxton, the Scottish on Ortelius and the Irish on the famous map by Boazio. These maps were not published at once in book form but there is evidence which suggests a date of issue (in Amsterdam) between 1605 and 1610 although at least one authority believes they existed only in proof form until 1617 when Willem Blaeu issued them with a Latin edition of Camden’s Britannia. At this stage, two maps were added, one of the British Isles and the other of Yorkshire, the latter derived from Saxton. To confuse things further the title page of this edition is signed ‘Guilielmus noster Janssonius’, which is the Latinized form of Blaeu’s name commonly used up to 1619.
The Van den Keere plates, including his miniature plates, came into the possession of Speed’s publishers sometime after 1619 and George Humble, John Speed’s publisher, produced a major edition of Speed’s Atlas’ combining Speed’s The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, first published in 1611, with Speed’s Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World in 1627, with a second edition in 1631-1632. Humble also issued the Atlas as a pocket edition. For these he used the descriptive texts of the larger Speed maps and thereafter they were known as Miniature Speeds. In fact, of the 63 maps in the Atlas, 40 were from the original van den Keere plates, reworked, 16 were reduced from Speed and 7 were additional. The publication was very popular and there were further re-issues up to 1676. While The Theatre … started as a county atlas, the addition of the of the Prospect in 1627 produced the first World Atlas in English.
The plates for the Theatre..and the Prospect passed through many hands in the 17th century after George Humble’s publications of 1627 and 1631 and 1632. The latter atlas was then published by William Humble in 1646, 1650, and 1654. Roger Rea took over with editions in 1662 and 1665 and finally Bassett and Chiswell released an expanded edition in 1676. They added seven maps to the original 21, including this example. Bassett specialized in legal books, while Chiswell was the publisher of the Royal Society.
John Speed (1552-1629) was an English mapmaker and historian operating in London at the turn of the seventeenth century; he was the most famous Stuart cartographer. In 1611/1612, John Sudbury and George Humble published the first edition of his famous work, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britain, which covered the British Isles. In 1627, he released the second part of his atlas, A Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World.
The Theatre and Prospect are important milestones in the British history of cartography. The Theatre was the first time a large-scale atlas had been produced by an Englishman and the first English atlas of the British Isles. It also included one of the earliest attempts to survey Ireland and a detailed list of town plans. Many of these town plans are the first depictions of those settlements. The plates for the maps were engraved by Jodocus Hondius in his Amsterdam workshop.
The Prospect was meant to expand on the Theatre; whereas the Theatre showed the home islands, the Prospect featured maps of the larger world where Britain operated as an imperial power. It was the first world atlas prepared by an Englishman. The addition of the East Indies map showed the mounting importance of the region for European, and English commerce. When Speed died in 1629, he would have already witnessed the quick ascent of the East India Company, founded in 1600, and knew of the cargoes that enriched London and England’s other ports.
