![]() Re-engravingBy Ashley Baynton-Williams |
The cost of producing a copperplate map, or even an atlas, represented
a considerable investment for any publisher (a later article will discuss
some of the evidence for the time and cost involved). In order to
maximise the potential income for their expenditure, individual publishers
- from leading names like Abraham Ortelius and Johannes Blaeu downwards
- did everything in their power to extend the printing life of a particular
plate, often long beyond the point where the geographical information contained
had been up-dated.
In order to illustrate some of the techniques involved, physical evidence from the maps themselves, and to give an insight into publishers' practices, the printing history of two rival maps, depicting the English county of Cornwall, serves as a useful case-in-point. |
The first was published by Christopher Saxton in 1579, as part of his untitled county atlas of England and Wales, the first printed county atlas of England and Wales. The plates for Saxton's atlas remained in circulation, and use, until about 1775, passing through the hands of a variety of publishers, before ending up in the possession of Cluer Dicey. A printing life of almost two hundred years represents remarkable - but not unparalleled - longevity. |
In a similar fashion, the owner of the Speed plates, now William Humble,
son of one of the original publishers, re-issued the Speed atlas, in 1646.
At other times, he issued bound collections of the maps, but without text.
The example illustrated, extracted with from one such collection, is accompanied
by a manuscript gazetteer, apparently laboriously copied from a printed
example.
Sales of both sets of maps seem not to have been very successful, judging by the very few sets to have survived. One important feature entirely lacking from both series, that could have made a important difference, was information on the contemporary road systems. By about 1665, and possibly only shortly before that year, the plates for Saxton's maps came into the hands of an anonymous publisher. Unfortunately, there is no evidence for whom this might have been, while there are equally few potential candidates among the mapsellers of the period. While there is an outside possibility that Peter Stent is a candidate, I personally favour the possibility that it was a bookseller who had come into possession of the plates, but this can be no more than utterly speculative. This publisher was prepared to undertake a new edition of the atlas, but felt that the plates, as acquired, required improvement and updating. So, and inevitably, the publisher looked to Speed's maps as a source and, insofar as possible, remodelled the Saxton plates in the image of the Speeds. For the map of Cornwall, obvious additions are the inset view of Launceston, the arms of previous Dukes of Cornwall, and the vignettes of the various antiquities and monuments. However, it seems clear that the plates were never completed, and no edition of the atlas in this form is known. However, there is enough evidence, described by Harold Whitaker (1), and then taken on by Skelton (2), to make virtually certain that the plates were revised at this date. One can reasonably assume that the project was curtailed either by the Black Death, which ravaged London in1665, or the Great Fire of London (or a combination of the two). By coincidence, the owners of the Speed plates, Roger Rea the Elder and Younger, were planning an edition of the Theatre at the same time. The partners, father and son, were content merely to insert their imprint on the plates. The printing was completed in 1665, but then the majority of the print run was destroyed in the Fire of London. At about the same time, one of the two partners also disappears, and these two events seem to have prevented any further editions. |
Saxton's plates were acquired by Philip Lea, circa 1685, or perhaps
later. Lea was newly established in business, so the acquisition
of the constituent plates for a county atlas must have been of great appeal.
Lea's first edition is believed to have been published in 1689.
His principal contribution to this edition was to complete the changes
begun by the anonymous editor, although not all the changes are found uniformly
across the set, further evidence of two publishers rather than one re-editing
the maps. Lea also inserted his name, crosses to denote market towns,
crowns to denote parliamentary boroughs and mires for bishoprics.
The extent to which the additional place names are the work of the anonymous
editor or Lea must remain uncertain, but the balance of probability is
that the majority of these changes date from 1665.
In this form, the individual maps, and the Cornwall is no exception, look crudely executed. Almost immediately Lea began to rework the plates, adding additional information, but a more important revision was to re-engrave many of the existing map-titles, not only to improve the appearance of individual maps, but also to achieve more uniformity within the series. At this juncture, between about 1689 and 1694, when the revised edition was completed, Lea also made a more important addition, inserting roads, copied from John Ogilby's Britannia, first published in 1675. Lea's maps were the first set of folio county maps to include this information (the first series to do so was a pack of miniature playing cards), and this represents an important improvement. At about the same time, Christopher Browne, the new owner of the Speed plates, seems to have planned to re-issue the plates. However, possibly in face of the success of Lea's second edition (which, with the exception of the original Saxton edition, is the most frequently encountered), Browne did little more than add his imprint to six of the plates, including the Cornwall, before abandoning the project. Two, or perhaps, three examples of Browne's "edition" only are known. Following Philip Lea's edition of circa 1694, no subsequent owner of the Saxton plates made any material attempt to revitalise the geography, merely contenting themselves with alterations to the imprint. The principal explanations are that the plates came into the hands of publishers content to leave the plates unchanged, and the lack of any new source which could be easily used for revisions. Another possibility is that Saxton's maps, with the roads, had re-captured the initiative from the Speed plates. In response, 1720, Henry Overton (I), while adding his imprint to the Speed plates, took the opportunity to insert roads, again copied from Ogilby, to bring the two sets back on par, and this was to prove the last important revision of Speed's plates. While the two series continued to be sold for the next forty or fifty years, the emergence of pocket-sized or quarto-atlases, from 1720 onwards, and then from 1749 onwards, sheets from The Large English Atlas represented new competition, more in tune with the needs of the time. Jefferys's catalogue of circa 1765 refers to 'Saxton's Counties, being the Oldest Maps of England extant, from which the Quarter-Master's Map was compiled by order of Oliver Crowell. price 1l. 1s. in boards' (quoted by Donald Holdson, p. 148).Then, completion of The Large English Atlas reduced the role of both sets to antiquarian curiosities only. |
Notes
(1) Harold Whitaker The Later Editions of Saxton's Maps, in Imago Mundi III (Reprint Edition: Amsterdam: Nico Israel, 1967), p.72-86, especially p.74-77). (2) R.A. Skelton County Atlases Of The British Isles 1579-1850 A Bibliography 1579-1703 (Reprint edition, London: Dawsons, 1978), no.80. |