Background
He was born, according to Fuller, at Farringdon, Cheshire. He was the son of a London tailor.
( Gorgeous reproductions of Tudor-era maps capture the wo...)
Gorgeous reproductions of Tudor-era maps capture the world of Great Britain during the era. This stunning volume reproduces the maps of John Speed’s 1611 collection The Theatre of Great Britaine in large, easy-to-read format for the first time. Compiled in 1596, these richly detailed maps show each county of Great Britain individually and as they existed at the time, complete with heraldic decoration, illustrations, and royal portraits. Bestselling author Nigel Nicholson provides the introduction, and each map features fascinating social and historical commentary by Alasdair Hawkyard.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1849943842/?tag=2022091-20
(Offers a brief profile of John Speed, a seventeenth centu...)
Offers a brief profile of John Speed, a seventeenth century cartographer, and provides his maps
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0500251045/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/184491660X/?tag=2022091-20
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1844914615/?tag=2022091-20
(This is a superb jigsaw puzzle featuring the county of Bu...)
This is a superb jigsaw puzzle featuring the county of Buckinghamshire in approximately 1610. The finished jigsaw measures 66 x 50cm, and comes with a Free color A4 guide print.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HYLZRPG/?tag=2022091-20
He was born, according to Fuller, at Farringdon, Cheshire. He was the son of a London tailor.
He followed his father's trade, being admitted member of the Merchant Taylors Company in 1580. He settled in Moorfields, where he built himself a house. He was enabled to give up his trade and to devote himself to antiquarian pursuits through the kindness of Sir Fulke Greville, whom Speed calls the "procurer of my present estate, " and through his patron's interest he also received a "waiter's room in the custom-house. " The results of the leisure thus secured to him appeared in 1611 in his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, a series of fifty-four maps of different parts of England, which had already appeared separately, and in which he was helped by Christopher Saxton, John Norden and William White. To each map descriptive matter was attached. In 1611 also he published his History of Great Britaine under the Conquests of the Romans. . . to. . . King James. Speed acknowledges his obligations to the chief antiquaries and historians of his day. Sir Robert Cotton lent him manuscripts and coins, and is said to have revised the proofs for him; in heraldry he acknowledges the help of William Smith (1550?- 1618); and he had valuable help from John Barkham ? (1572?- 1642) and Sir Henry Spelman. Speed brought some historical skill to bear on the arrangement of his work, and although he repeated many of the errors of older chroniclers he added valuable material for the history of his country. He died in London on the 28th of July 1629.
He is the best known English mapmaker of the Stuart period.
After his death, in 1673 and 1676, some of his other maps on the British isles, the Chesapeake Bay region, specifically of Virginia and Maryland, the East Indies, the Russian Empire then ruled by Peter the Great, Jamaica, and Barbados, among other locations. With these printings and others, Speed's maps became the basis for world maps until at least the mid-eighteenth century, with his maps reprinted many times, and serving as a major contribution to British topography for years to come.
(Offers a brief profile of John Speed, a seventeenth centu...)
(This is a superb jigsaw puzzle featuring the county of Bu...)
( Gorgeous reproductions of Tudor-era maps capture the wo...)
Quotations:
"It's one thing to be helpless as one tries to lace a corset or to mount an elephant, quite another to be helpless as a bandit pushes a black steel knife against the flesh of your throat while his brother comes to join him. "
"Jews ate the English nation to its bones. "
"In Islam, all living things have souls. We are made pure by the fire of the lord compassion. "
In 1575, Speed married a woman named Susanna Draper in London, later having children with her. These children definitely included a son named John Speed, later a "learned" man with a doctorate, and an unknown number of others, since chroniclers and historians cannot agree on how many children they raised. Regardless, there is no doubt that the Speed family was relatively well-off.
