John Speed (1551 or 1552 – 28 July 1629) was an English cartographer, chronologer and historian of Cheshire origins. The son of a citizen and Merchant Taylor in London, 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. 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. 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.

Family and early life

According to his daughter Sarah Blackmore, John Speed was born in the Cheshire village of Farndon in c. 1551/52. Various families of Speed dwelt in that neighbourhood, but John's relation to them is not precisely established. His father John Speed gained the freedom of the Company of Merchant Taylors of London in April 1556, and is supposed to be the same John Speed who married Elizabeth Cheynye at Christchurch, Newgate Street in the City of London in January 1555/56. From this it is inferred that Speed's birth-mother died during his infancy.

thumb|right|200px|Sir Fulke Greville

By his own account, Speed followed in his father's mercantile business in London, He had married Susanna (born c. 1557/58), and began to raise a family. Most sources state that they had twelve sons and six daughters, of whom the most famous to reach maturity was John Speed, M.D., who studied at Merchant Taylors' School, London and St John's College, Oxford. It appears that the Speed family was fairly well-to-do.

Patronage

Speed came to the attention of learned individuals, among whom was Sir Fulke Greville: Greville, "perceiving how his wide soul was stuffed with too narrow an occupation" (as Thomas Fuller has it),

thumb|300px|[[John Speed map of Canaan|Four-page wall map of Canaan, 1595]]

Although the monument was damaged by enemy action in 1940–1941, an engraving of 1791 by John Thomas Smith shows how the panels carrying the inscriptions were originally disposed as if forming the opened hinged doors of a cabinet. The church's website notes that it was "one of the few memorials that survived the bombing" of this church during the London Blitz of 1940–1941: The expression "tomb brass" suggests that this figure may have belonged to a group set into the covering slab of a stone table tomb (as opposed to a floor matrix), an inference supported by the comparatively unworn condition of the engraving.

The latten is torn away at the toe, suggesting a forceful detachment, but the rivet-holes by which the brass was originally attached to its stone matrix are neatly preserved, suggesting careful removal. The position of the figure indicates that there was once a corresponding, facing plate representing a wife. The squared edge of the brass plate below the foot possibly rested against another brass plate bearing an inscription. The descriptions by Newcourt, Strype and Granger of Speed's monument agree with the text (including the words "On the other side of him" to introduce the inscription for Susanna) given in Anthony Munday's 1633 edition of Stow's Survey of London, and all clearly refer to the wall monument and inscriptions depicted by Smith and now remaining in restored form. If, however, the attribution of this brass to a tomb monument for John Speed is correct, it may enlarge the view of the original appearance of Speed's monument as it stood on the south side of the chancel of St Giles. The brass is on display in the Burrell Collection.

Interpretations

John Speed and William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare had near connections with St Giles, Cripplegate parish, of which John Speed was a parishioner. In his account of the reign of King Henry V, John Speed mentions that the character of Sir John Oldcastle, a Lollard martyr in Henry V's time, was falsely represented in the theatres as a stock buffoon and rogue. He wrote,

The author of The Three Conversions was the Jesuit Robert Persons, and the references to the Lollard martyr Oldcastle are in the third part of the work. Speed is saying that Persons the Catholic author had infamously falsified the historical character of Oldcastle the Lollard martyr by representing him as the cowardly rebel portrayed in the late Elizabethan stage plays. Thomas Fuller, in his Church-History of Britain (1655), evidently echoes Speed where he remarks:

While Shakespeare's character of Sir John Falstaff is evidently based on the stage-Oldcastle model, under a different name, the inference drawn by some editors (since Nicholas Rowe) that Speed was referring specifically to Shakespeare, or (if he was), that he intended to associate Shakespeare directly with Robert Persons and his Catholic sympathies, has long been debated. Possibly, Speed was referring to the author of a different play in which the Oldcastle figure appeared by name. A summary of the argument was presented by Edmond Malone's editors.

John Speed's maps and associated commentaries are sometimes employed for the interpretation of William Shakespeare's plays. Speed's historiography employs "theatrical metaphors" and makes use of medieval mythical content.

Appreciation

In later years, Robert Sheringham (who recited Speed's text to his map of the Isle of Wight) referred to him as "summus et eruditus Antiquarius" (a foremost and erudite antiquary), and he was called "our English Mercator"; "a person of extraordinary industry and attainments in the study of antiquities" (by William Nicolson); an "honest and impartial historian... who was furnished with the best materials from some of the most considerable persons in this kingdom" (by Stephen Hyde Cassan), a "faithful Chronologer" (in a text of 1656), and "our Cheshire historian...a scholar...a distinguished writer on history" (by Charles Hulbert). Richard Newcourt called him a "celebrated chronologer and historiographer"; James Granger observed, "his History of Great Britain was in its kind incomparably more complete than all the histories of his predecessors put together."

"And thus" (says Thomas Fuller), "we take our leaves of Father Speed, truly answering his name, in both the acceptions thereof, for celerity and success." represent the British Isles, the Chesapeake Bay region, and specifically Virginia and Maryland, the East Indies, the Russian Empire (then ruled by Peter the Great), Jamaica, and Barbados, and other locations. With these printings and many others, Speed's maps became the basis for world maps until at least the mid-eighteenth century: his British maps formed an important topographical resource long after their original publication.

  • Speed's descendants included Sir Keith Speed, MP (1934–2018).

References

  • Zoomable digital reproduction of a 1611/12 proof of Speed's atlas The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, held by Cambridge University Library.
  • John Speed Online maps from Occidental College, Los Angeles.
  • Information about John Speed and his maps from Antique Maps.
  • John Speed and John Ogilby, 15-16th century cartographers, a guide to Speed and John Ogilby, with a focus on their cartographic works available at Stanford University.