fortunate survivors: maps and map fragments in the bagford ...1 fortunate survivors: maps and map...

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Fortunate Survivors: Maps and MapFragments in the Bagford CollectionTom Harper

Described quite correctly as ‘maps and fragments’,1 for the contents of a composite volumein the British Library known as Harl.5935 a more thorough evaluation is long overdue.These include printed maps from books dating from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries,as well as cuttings from maps, engravings of scientific instruments, and at least threeseparately issued maps which are not known to exist elsewhere. The volume into which theyhave been attached is one of 129 scrapbooks of prints put together by the antiquary and bookdealer John Bagford (1650-1716), an interesting character best known for accumulatingparts of books rather than whole ones. Bagford was especially interested in title-pages andprinting samples. These comprise the bulk of the collection, and it is upon them thatattention has previously been focused. In the first comprehensive catalogue of the collection,for example, maps may eventually be found amongst proposals, colophons and adverts in asection entitled ‘some items of interest other than title-pages’.2 Clearly, as only five volumesof the collection are known to contain more than one map, it is understandable why theyhave been overlooked.3

A description of the volume in the ‘Rough List of the Contents of the Bagford Collection’of 1902 gives special mention to Edward Wright’s 1599 two-sheet world map ‘ofextraordinary rarity’, a sentiment also expressed by William Younger Fletcher in hisbiography of Bagford that same year.4 Equally scarce but previously unmentioned materialincludes a fragment of a map of the Holy Land, a single sheet of Jacob van Deventer’s wallmap of Friesland and another from a version of Gaspar Vopel’s map of Europe, all from thesixteenth century, and these are placed amongst other maps which reflect in some wayBagford’s antiquarian interests. This is an intriguing but eccentric group of prints which hasbeen principally overlooked since its incorporation into the British Museum collection. Thepresent article will examine a number of them in detail, looking also at Bagford’s possiblemotives for acquiring them and why he might have thought them interesting. To begin with,it will be beneficial to chart the history of the Bagford collection from its acquisition byEdward Harley and accession to the British Museum to the present day.

Bagford’s profession and interests complemented each other.5 As a prominent Londonbook dealer active from around 1686, he helped to build some of the great collectionsincluding the libraries of Sir Hans Sloane and Edward Harley. Through this he becameacquainted with the major antiquarian figures of the time such as Harley’s librarian

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1 Melvin Wolf (ed.), Catalogue and Indexes to the Title-Pages of English Printed Books Preserved in the BritishLibrary’s Bagford Collection (London, 1974), p. 495.

2 Ibid.3 The five volumes containing more than one map are Harl.5935, 5956, 5957, 5972 and 5995.4 A.W. Pollard, ‘A Rough List of the Contents of the Bagford Collection’, Transactions of the Bibliographical

Society, vii (London, 1902-4), p. 28, reprinted in Wolf (ed.), Catalogues and Indexes, p. xxi, and WilliamYounger Fletcher, English Book Collectors (London, 1902), p. 136.

5 Milton McC. Gatch, ‘John Bagford, Bookseller and Antiquary’, British Library Journal, xii (1986), pp. 150-71, brings together Bagford’s various interests.

Fortunate Survivors: Maps and Map Fragments in the Bagford Collection

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Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726), Thomas Hearne (1678-1735), and Richard Waller (c. 1660-1715), with the latter of whom Bagford attempted to resurrect the Society of Antiquaries.6

Correspondence between Bagford and these figures reveals a man immersed in the historicalissues of the day, and this is emphasized further in the journals of Hearne and Wanley, andin Bagford’s own published and unpublished work.7

It was in pursuit of an ambitious but ultimately unrealized scheme to write a history ofprinting that the book dealer turned collector, amassing some 4,600 printing samples andgathering them in volumes for use as primary source material for his grand work. It is in thiscontext that the Bagford Collection should be understood, for in terms of its contents andpurpose it is a very different collection to those Bagford helped to build. Perceptions of it havealtered over time. Earlier biographers, for example, found it hard to reconcile Bagford’s love ofbooks with his seeming disregard for them in removing bits he found interesting,8 despite thefact that the practice, especially with regard to maps, has never really gone away. In fact, thecomposite nature of the collection, and Bagford’s scholarly motivations for compiling it, impliesa stronger affinity with leaf books and certain extra-illustrated volumes than the gatherings oftraditional bibliophiles.9 Bagford’s collection enables us not only to study prints which have notsurvived elsewhere, but to evaluate changing attitudes towards prints, books and collecting.

These changing attitudes are appreciable through an analysis of the history of thecollection after Bagford’s death in 1716. Most of the material was purchased by EdwardHarley,10 and it was as part of Harley’s collection of manuscripts that most of it reached theBritish Museum upon its foundation in 1753, to be housed in the Department ofManuscripts. There is, of course, a certain irony in a collection of specifically printedmaterial being stored in a place reserved for non-printed items, and it was only in 1890 thatthe printed material was moved to the Department of Printed Books as part of an exchangebetween the two departments.11 This delay has much to do with inertia and inflexibility onthe part of the British Museum, but it also suggests a particular impression of the BagfordCollection as somehow problematic, ill-suited or at worst irrelevant to the institution. It was,after all, made up largely of title-pages of books which the Museum either already owned orwould subsequently purchase. But it was not completely without interest, for in 1814 some1000 prints, and in 1900 a further 256 prints were transferred to a third party, theDepartment of Prints and Drawings.12

The folio volume bears testament to these episodes. It has been given the shelfmarkHarl.5935, indicating its former ownership by Harley. It contains 125 folios numbered inink, the watermarks of which suggest a date c. 1707,13 contemporary with Bagford and

6 Theodore Harmsen, Bagford, John (1650/51-1716) in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, 2004;online edition, 2008).

7 Correspondence is contained in Harl. MS. 4966. Harmsen, Oxford DNB; Gatch, pp. 165-8; Thomas Hearne,Remarks and Collections, ed. C. E. Doble, D. E. Rannie and H. E. Salter (Oxford, 1885-1921); C. E. Wright andRuth C. Wright (eds.) The Diary of Humfrey Wanley: 1715-1726 (London, 1966).

8 Thomas Frognall Dibdin, The Bibliomania; or, Book-Madness; Containing some Account of the History, Symptoms,and Cure of the Fatal Disease (London, 1809), pp. 12-14. Summaries of Bagford’s critics are provided in Gatch, p.150, and Arthur Freeman, ‘Everyman and Others, part 1: Some Fragments of Early English Printing, and theirPreservers’, The Library, 7th Series, ix (2008), p. 267.

9 Christopher de Hamel, ‘The Leaf Book’, in Christopher de Hamel and Joel Silver, Disbound and Dispersed: TheLeaf Book Considered (Chicago, 2005), pp. 6-23; Freeman, p. 284.

10 Part of the collection was also bought by Sir Hans Sloane. See Margaret Nickson, ‘Bagford and Sloane’, BritishLibrary Journal, ix (1983), p. 51, and C. E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani (London, 1972), p. 59.

11 36 of the 129 volumes are manuscript. The exchange is dealt with in Fontes Harleiani, Appendix II.12 Wolf (ed.), Catalogues and Indexes, p. ix; Antony Griffiths and Reginald Williams, The Department of Prints and

Drawings in the British Museum: User’s Guide (London, 1987), p. 80.13 Cf. E. Heawood, Monumenta Chartae Papyraceae Historiam Illustrantia: vol. i. Watermarks Mainly of the 17th and

18th Centuries (Hilversum, 1950), no. 3765 (pl. 506).


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consistent with the dates of the constituent maps and prints, the latest being 1704. A notedated 1814 written on a front endpaper and signed by Henry Ellis and William Alexander14

states that one print has been removed to ‘the portfolios of the Print Room’. This statementis confusing, since eighty-seven pages bear evidence of having had prints attached to them,some still retaining the glued corners of these absent works. Establishing any Museum staffinvolvement in these removals is complicated by the fact that a further fifteen pages haveprints stuck over the remnants of other prints, and we should acknowledge that Bagfordwould himself most probably have removed and attached prints from the volume. However,evidence for at least one undocumented alteration by the Museum concerns a print whichbears one of the earliest British Museum stamps on its verso.15 As the print is glued on allfour corners it could only have been stamped when it was not attached to the volume,indicating that it must have been attached, or else removed and reattached, after 1753.

We may be sure, at any rate, that the contents of the volume have not been drasticallyaltered since 1837, when it was certified to contain only one more than its current ninety-five items by Sir Frederic Madden. Madden became Keeper of the Department ofManuscripts in that same year, and one of his final tasks before his appointment would haveinvolved the numbering of each print and fragment and marking as blank the pagesdisplaying the remnants of removed prints.16 He certifies his work on folio 124v, dating it 1January 1837. Madden’s diary, however, makes no reference to his work, for it is a Sunday,and Madden is otherwise engaged.17 Other volumes in the collection have endured a similarexperience. Harl.5956, for example, has lost forty-eight prints to the Print Room accordingto Ellis and Alexander, and Madden numbered its contents in February 1837. But unlikeHarl.5935, the internal evidence of Harl.5956 validates Ellis and Alexander’s statement. It istherefore likely that the bulk of removals from Harl.5935 occurred, possibly in a piecemealway, between Ellis and Alexander’s transfers of 1814 and Madden’s checks of 1837.

The one discrepancy between Madden’s 1837 checking of the volume and its presentstate is the print missing from folio 3. This is discovered to be an example of the world mapfrom the 1482 edition of Ptolemy published in Ulm, which was amongst the later accessionof prints to the Department of Prints and Drawings in 1900. The print is distinguished fromothers remaining in the volume by its contemporary colour, yet in its rarity and execution itis by no means superior to its former associates.

Printed maps are of course still prints, and one would have assumed more correctlyhoused in the Department of Prints and Drawings than in the Department of Manuscripts.Furthermore, the Department of Prints and Drawings does hold a number of maps,18 andthe quality, rarity and value of certain maps remaining in Harl.5935 would not have beenlost on the Department’s staff.19 By leaving such cartographic treasures untouched, theDepartment of Prints and Drawings cannot be accused of having cherry-picked maps fromthe Bagford Collection. Instead, the impression is that the Department was simply notinterested in maps, regardless of their rarity and execution. If this is illustrative of particularattitudes to maps, it should be remembered that the cartographic material in theDepartment of Prints and Drawings is mainly in the form of topographical prints and

13 Henry Ellis (1777-1869) was Under Librarian of Manuscripts from 1812 to 1828. William Alexander (1767-1816)was then assistant librarian in charge of prints. Dates are taken from P. R. Harris, A History of the British MuseumLibrary: 1753-1974 (London, 1998) p. 64, p. 755.

15 The stamp is known to have been used between 1757 and 1809. See P. R. Harris, ‘Appendix I: Identification ofPrinted Books Acquired by the British Museum, 1753-1836’, in Giles Mandelbrote and Barry Taylor (eds.),Libraries Within the Library: The Origins of the British Library’s Printed Collections (London, 2009), p. 417 (no. 1c).

16 Nickson, p. 54, refers to Madden’s ‘valiant effort’ in sorting out other problems relating to Bagford volumes in theSloane Collection.

17 The Diary of Sir F. Madden, Oxford: Bodleian Library, Ms.Eng.Hist.C.151, p. 269. Copy at BL Facs X.1012/13.18 Griffiths and Williams, p. 133. 20 See n. 4 above.



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bird’s-eye views, and these are conspicuous by their absence in Harl.5935. Whether thesewere the types of prints removed from the Bagford volumes remains to be discovered in theregisters of the Print Room.

The maps surviving in the volume sit amongst diagrams, engravings of scientificinstruments, title-pages, a small number of proposals and pages relating to statistics and thepost office. The relationship between these prints is better appreciable when one considersthe links between maps and instruments in the wider arena of science and measurement.

Augustine Ryther, a fragment of whose print showing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in1588 is included in the volume, was an important early English maker of nauticalinstruments as well as an engraver of maps. Star charts such as John Blagrave’s of 1596 (fig.1) were produced to teach sailors the use of stars in navigation. Instruments and mapscontinued to complement each other throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,and the distinction between them was far less pronounced than it is today. Bagfordunderstood their relationship very well, and as if to illustrate his appreciation of this fact heattached to folio 41 two seated figures with measuring instruments cut from John Speed’satlas map of Herefordshire of 1676.

Many of the specimens in the volume may certainly be described as fragments; parts ofmaps which exhibit some geographical, decorative or scientific feature, or which show somerelevance to the history of printing. The title cartouches of two atlas maps from John Seller’s


Fig. 1. John Blagrave, Astrolabium Uranicum. Celestial chart published in Astrolabium UranicumGenerale… (London, 1596). Harl.5935.(14.)


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Atlas Maritimus of 1675 have been added to one page, whilst three small world maps havebeen cut out around the hemispheres, leading, in the case of the 1628 Vaughan map of theworld after Speed, to the loss of the decorative surround which would to many haveconstituted its main appeal (fig. 2). Elsewhere, two unidentified compass roses affixed to thesame page show great differences in engraving technique. The selection of these fragments


Fig. 2. Three double-hemisphere maps on folio 19: Globus Coelestis Coeli Enarrant Gloriam Deipublished by Johan Baptiste Vrients (Antwerp, 1601), Harl.5935.(27.) ; A New and Accurate Mappe ofthe World … by Robert Vaughan (London, 1628), Harl.5935.(28.); Orbis Terrarum Cognitus HodiernisEuropaeis by Edward Wells (Oxford, c.1688), Harl.5935.(29.).


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shows no real preference towards either decorative or geographical elements, and theimpression one receives of the compiler is of someone with an interest in juxtaposition,similarities and contrasts.

Just as Bagford took sections of individual maps which interested him, so he took wholemaps from books or atlases. These comprise the largest number in the volume, and theeconomical Bagford seems to have taken more than one map from a single book on a numberof occasions. Both the world and celestial maps by John Blagrave appeared in a treatiseexplaining the use of Blagrave’s new astrolabe, whilst Edward Wright’s two-sheet world mapof 1599 was included in Richard Hakluyt’s Voyages, together with a map of the Azores fromthe 1657 edition of Certaine Errors in Navigation, also by Wright. Two maps by HermannMoll of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were first published in Dampier’s Voyages andDescriptions in 1699, and two prints, including the woodcut world map, are from HartmannSchedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493. Other single maps have been selected from booksknown to have contained more than one map, including world maps by Johannes Honter andPeter Apian, but the overall contents of the volume indicate that Bagford selected more thanone map where he had more than one to choose from.

A number of maps are from atlases, including examples from three of the major Englishpublications of the seventeenth century: John Speed’s Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine(first published in 1612), Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot by Greenville Collins of 1693 andJohn Ogilby’s Britannia of 1675.20 Maps from significant European works also make anappearance, such as four by Sebastian Münster from the 1538 edition of Solinus’s Polyhistor.

Two maps by Abraham Ortelius are especially interesting since they are known to havebeen published separately before inclusion in his historical atlas the Parergon in 1624.21 Anytext that would have surrounded the atlas versions of the maps has in each case beentrimmed away, but the absence of any text on the verso, which would have been present inthose copies published in the Parergon, as well as the lack of any centrefold, indicates thatthese examples were indeed issued separately. Separately issued maps appear elsewhere inthe volume, including Carr’s 1668 map of the post roads of England, and a set of Venetiancelestial globe gores of around 1560 by Demongenet.

Three sheets of separate multi-sheet woodcut maps warrant more detailed attention,since they appear to be unique surviving portions of important maps produced in the Low Countries. The first fragment is part of a twelve-sheet map of the Holy Land byHerman van Borculo (d. 1578), produced in Utrecht in 1538 and apparently reissued in1553 (fig. 3).22 No complete copies of the map are known, though we have a good impressionof its structure from the map of 1590 by Christian van Adrichom which acknowledges vanBorculo’s map in its list of sources. We are now able to assess the likely appearance of theoriginal thanks to the identification not only of the present fragment, but also of a secondsheet of a separate part of it, recently offered for sale in the Netherlands.24

It will be beneficial to establish the location of the fragment within the much largerframework of the map. Its size is 280 x 195 mm. with the printed area beginningapproximately 5 mm. from the edge of the sheet on three sides, but with the right hand edge

20 Further examples from these atlases are contained in the following Bagford volumes: Harl.5956 for maps byOgilby, Harl.5995 for Speed.

21 Marcel P. R. Van den Broecke, Ortelius Atlas Maps: an Illustrated Guide (t’ goy Houten, 1996), pp. 236–7.22 I am most grateful to Professor Günter Schilder for informing me of the author of the fragment.23 Published in Theatrum Terrae Sanctae… (Cologne, 1590). See Eran Laor, Maps of the Holy Land:

Cartobibliography of Printed Maps, 1475-1900 (New York and Amsterdam, 1986), p. 1 (no. 7); Kenneth Nebenzahl,Maps of the Holy Land: Images of Terra Sancta through Two Millennia (New York, 1986), pp. 94-7 (no. 35).

24 Offered for sale by Leen Helmink in Amersfoort, Netherlands. Information supplied to me by Professor Schilder.




Fig. 3. Fragment of a twelve-sheet map of the Holy Land by Herman van Borculo, first published in Utrechtin 1538. Harl.5935.(46.).


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trimmed close with the loss of some print. This indicates that the fragment is one half of asheet, which is corroborated by the second surviving portion, a full sheet measuringapproximately twice the size. In accordance with the van Adrichom map it is oriented to theeast. It shows part of the southern area of the Holy Land known as the Desert of Pharan,with Mount Sinai partially visible to the extreme right, suggesting that it is part of one ofthe southern or right-hand sheets (had it been complete it is probable that a border wouldhave appeared parallel with its right edge). Assuming the 12 sheets to have been arranged asthree rows of four, the fragment corresponds to the left-hand portion of the sheet to thefurthest right in the middle row (fig. 4). The complete map would have measuredapproximately 840 x 1560 mm.

The recently uncovered second sheet, which constitutes the middle-left sheet on the bottomrow, shows an area of the Mediterranean coastline and a large Venetian ship at sea. Fromthese two portions of the original, and the evidence of van Adrichom’s copy, we can imaginethe complete map to have been a spectacular panoramic view of the Holy Land stretchingfrom Damascus in the north to Alexandria in the south. The most prominent features of thefragment are large illustrations of episodes from Genesis, the Exodus and the Nativity,accompanied by their appropriate passages from scripture, with further descriptive text inDutch. Both Old and New Testament events such as the Death of Abel, the Visitation ofAbraham, Moses Striking Water from the Rock and the Flight into Egypt appear as ifoccurring simultaneously in their correct locations, inviting cross-referencing with furtherepisodes featured elsewhere on the map. It made perfect sense to portray these episodes inclose proximity to one another, for even though they were spread chronologically across theentire time-span of the Bible, they were meant to be understood as a series of interlinkednarratives, with New Testament events fulfilling the prophecies of the Old.

Although it is common to find this narrative aspect in most Holy Land mapping traditionswhich co-existed throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, comparison of the fragmentwith other maps of the Holy Land reveals it to be quite unlike its contemporaries.25 The

25 A recently identified woodcut map of 1530 by Christoph Zell, showing the events leading up to the siege of Vienna, has a similar narrative function with oversized figures. See Peter H. Meurer and Günter Schilder, ‘DieWandkarte des Türkenzuges 1529 von Johann Haselberg und Christoph Zell’, Cartographica Helvetica, xxxix(2009), pp. 27-42.


Fig. 4. Diagram showing the probable arrangement of sheets ofHerman van Borculo’s twelve-sheet woodblock map of the HolyLand, with a) representing the position of the British Library’shalf-sheet, Harl.5935.(46.), and b) the position of the secondsurviving sheet.


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orientation and dramatic perspectives employed in wall maps by Lucas Cranach the Elder(1515),26 Gerard Mercator (1537)27 and Wolfgang Wissenberg (1538)28 had the effect ofshrinking any figurative elements within the landscape and subordinating them to the terrain.In van Borculo’s map fragments the opposite is true. Figures are shown as equal in size tomountains and towns, and where topographical features do occur they either form part of thenarrative, or act as settings for the events to unfold.

Nor is the prominence and scale of illustration to be found in printed Holy Land maps ofthe preceding century, although other similarities between these and van Borculo’s map areapparent. The earliest, published by Lucas Brandis in 1475,29 and the expansive panorama ofthe Holy Land by Bernhard von Breydenbach of 1486,30 share with van Borculo the sameorientation and extension further south than many later maps. An examination of the fragmentwith the corresponding portion of von Breydenbach’s map reveals a strong resemblance, theonly major difference being that the fragment illustrates scenes which are described by vonBreydenbach in text form. One feature, a curved double-line placed to the left of Mount Sinai,signifies perhaps the geographical division of Africa and Asia. This feature occurs in text formon the von Breydenbach map, whilst the black silhouetted creatures which are placed within thedouble-line bear stylistic similarities to figures present in the Brandis woodcut. Moresignificantly, these earlier maps were both drawn from pilgrims’ eyewitness accounts of theHoly Land. Von Breydenbach visited the Holy Land with the Utrecht artist Erhard Reuwichin 1483-4, the map published by Brandis was based on the pilgrimage account by Burchard ofMount Sion of 1270, and Van Borculo himself is rumoured to have visited the Holy land on apilgrimage during his formative years.31

Whether van Borculo visited the Holy land, or whether he simply produced a pictorialversion of von Breydenbach’s map, his map would have gained authority from itsincorporation of first-hand sources. But it is important to stress that it was not only theaccurate positioning of places and topographical features that would have recommended itto the prospective purchaser, but the correct placing of religious events within thislandscape. These were the aspects most important for enabling the viewer to contemplatesuch narratives as the Journey of the Israelites or the Passion of Christ, engaging with themin such a way as to embark upon a virtual tour of the Holy Land, a mental pilgrimage fromthe comfort of his or her own home. Examining the map in this way constituted a form ofprayer. Thus the map became far more than a true representation of the Holy land to theviewer: it became the Holy Land itself.

The concept of mental pilgrimage, and the creation of devices such as maps to enhancethe imaginary experience, has medieval precedents.32 In particular, mental pilgrimage waspractised by the late medieval religious movement known as the Modern Devotion, whichplaced great emphasis upon complex, meditative methods of prayer. Its lingering presencein Utrecht during the lifetime of Herman van Borculo suggests that he may have been aware

26 Laor, pp. 28-9 (no. 226).. 27 Nebenzahl, pp. 72-3 (no. 24).28 Nebenzahl, pp. 74-5 (no. 25).29 Published in Rudimentum Novitorum sive Chronicarum Historiarum Epitome (Lübeck, 1475). See Tony Campbell,

The Earliest Printed Maps 1472-1500 (London, 1987), p. 146; Laor, p. 17 (no. 128); Nebenzahl, pp. 60-2 (no. 20).30 Published in Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam (Mainz, 1486). Campbell, pp. 93-5; Laor, p. 17 (no. 129); Nebenzahl,

p. 63-4 (no. 21). 31 Louis van Empelen, ‘Kunst en Kaart: De Civitas Hierusalem 1538 van Herman van Borculo’, Caert-Thresoor,

xxv:3 (2006), p. 73; R. Rubin, ‘The Map of Jerusalem (1538) by Harmannus Borculus and its Copies: A CartoGenealogical Study’ Cartographic Journal, xxviii (1990), p. 31 and n. 5.

32 Daniel K. Connolly, The Maps of Matthew Paris: Medieval Journeys through Space, Time and Liturgy (Woodbridge,2009), p. 28.



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of their ideas, and of the value of mental pilgrimage, for he is known to have communicatedwith the Humanists Cornelius Valerius and Lambertus Hortensius,33 both of whom hadtaught at the Modern Devotionalist Latin school of St Jerome in Utrecht.34 Van Borculoclearly intended his map to be used in such a way, for an inscription appears on the secondsurviving portion of the map recommending it as a convenient alternative to a Holy Landjourney. However, whilst it is difficult to argue with the mapmaker over this point, the extentto which the map constituted the means for a mental pilgrimage of the arduous, complicatedModern Devotional variety is unclear. Pilgrimages were accepted by the Catholic Church asa means of obtaining clemency for sins, and were meant, in theory at least, to be preciselythe punishing experiences that van Borculo’s map claims to avoid.

As a devotional aid van Borculo’s map would have fulfilled a similar function to panelpaintings produced for homes or private chapels in Northern Europe, particularly the LowCountries, during the fifteenth century. Further parallels may be drawn between theirnarrative and compositional qualities. A common storytelling device of these paintingsinvolved the complementing of a central foreground scene with a number of relatedbackground episodes, which together enabled the history of a religious figure to be told infull. In much Early Netherlandish art these figures do not conform to a modern idea of scale,often being drawn in accordance with the medieval hierarchy of scale in which a figure’s sizeis dictated by its importance. These figures were placed within elevated, tilted landscapeswhich permitted the viewer maximum visibility of the unfolding events. This theatricalarrangement of figures within a specially constructed setting may be likened to theappearance and structure of pictorial maps.

Although it is less densely packed with interwoven narratives, the panoramic landscapepainting by the Bruges master Hans Memling (1433-1494), the Scenes from the Life of Christand the Virgin of 1480,35 bears striking similarities with the surviving portions of vanBorculo’s map, and the possible appearance of the whole. Here too, numerous groups offigures are placed in an elevated landscape, the cartographic properties of which may belikened with the bird’s-eye view format of fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century maps. Heretoo, the figures are necessarily large in order to be legible, and to reflect their relativeimportance. And here too, meditation upon the Passion, and the ability to embark upon aform of mental pilgrimage through viewing it, were strongly emphasized.36

Mention has previously been made of the influence of art upon van Borculo’scartographic output. His only other surviving map, a woodcut of Jerusalem of 1538, hasbeen identified as containing features of the Utrecht artist Jan van Scorel’s (1495-1562) 1527painting of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem.37 No such conclusive match has been found for hisHoly Land map, though it is possible that another painting by van Scorel, many of whichwere destroyed during the Reformation, may have comprised the prototype. Firmerevidence for the influence of van Scorel on the Holy Land map concerns the style of thefigures in the fragment, which exhibit a balance and proportion more in keeping with Italianart than with the often stiff, awkward poses of Early Netherlandish paintings of the previouscentury. Van Scorel was one of a number of Northern European artists who had visited Italy,and whose subsequent work integrated Classical notions of form with a Northern realism

33 Van Empelen, p. 78.34 R. R. Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden, 1968), pp. 571-2.35 In Munich, Alte Pinakothek. For an image see Craig Harbison, Jan van Eyck: The Play of Realism (London, 1991),

p. 187 (ill. 129).36 Harbison, p. 187; Vida J. Hull, ‘Spiritual Pilgrimage in the Paintings of Hans Memling’, in Sarah Blick and Rita

Tekippe (eds.), Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles (Leiden,2005), vol. i, pp. 29-50.

37 One example in Centraal Museum, Utrecht. See Van Empelen, p. 78.



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through observation. Such knowledge is perceptible, in passing, in the figures contained inthe fragment.

Yet despite the stylistic similarities with van Scorel’s work, and van Borculo’s relianceupon him for his map of Jerusalem, it would be dangerous to place too much emphasis uponhis singular influence. Van Scorel was certainly not averse to appropriating motifs fromworks he had seen in Italy for his own purposes, and one might justifiably search beyond hispaintings for an ultimate source of imagery. Moreover, scenes such as the Flight into Egyptand the Spies of Moses Returning with Grapes were highly generic, with long histories inpictorial form, and it is very probable that contemporary and earlier illustrations had somebearing upon their appearance in the map. These might have included illustrations in Bibles,or woodcut illustrations produced in block-books. Block-books were short devotional tractsfrom the second half of the fifteenth century, a number of which are known to have beenproduced in Utrecht.38 Amongst those involved in their production, though not in Utrecht,were members of the Brethren of the Common Life, devotees of the Modern Devotion.39

The fact that these woodcut illustrations were influenced by Early Netherlandish painting,40

the same influences which coloured van Scorel’s early years, serves to emphasize the sharedheritage of religious imagery in Northern Europe.

Just as to isolate a single source for any one motif ignores the wider history of devotionalimages in printed, painted and written form, to view maps in isolation from other imagerymisunderstands the circumstances in which they would have been made and used. VanBorculo’s map made use of a number of sources, from pilgrimage accounts, Biblical textsand commentaries, to illustrations and existing maps. The integration of all these within ageographical framework made the Holy Land map a highly effective hybrid object, craftedspecifically for use as a devotional aid. Placed upon a wall, varnished, and exposed to light,soot and moisture, copies of it would gradually have deteriorated and eventually been lost.The possibility that further fragments in composite volumes may eventually resurface offershope for a better appreciation of its enigmatic appearance.

A further fragment in Bagford’s volume, pasted to folio 7 (no. 11), is part of a betterdocumented map. It is the top left sheet of Jacob van Deventer’s (c. 1500-1575) nine-sheetwoodcut map of Friesland, published by Bernard van den Putte (1528-1580) in Antwerp in1559 (fig. 5).41 The sheet measures 176 x 289 mm. and is trimmed close on all four sides. Thearms of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and those of Friesland are placed over the areaof the sea which is populated by two sailing vessels and four fishing boats. A tiny strip of landappears to the bottom right of the sheet. Attribution is confirmed by a comparison of thesheet with a 1941 facsimile of the only previously known example of the whole map,subsequently destroyed during the Second World War.42 Despite the heavy colouring of thelost Breslau copy and the resulting murkiness of the facsimile, one is able to make out anincidental feature common to both: the impression of a 20 x 23 mm. amendment to the topborder of the woodblock, 200 mm. from the left edge.

The Friesland map is one of five wall maps of provinces of the Netherlands producedbetween 1556 and 1560, copies of the maps by Jacob van Deventer of the 1530s and 1540s,none of which are extant today. The maps are significant since they constitute some of the

38 Arthur M. Hind, An Introduction to a History of Woodcut (New York, 1963), vol. ii, p. 559. 39 Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster Wilson, A Medieval Mirror: Speculum Humanae Salvationis 1324-1500

(Berkeley, 1985), p. 21. 40 Wilson and Lancaster, p. 19; Hind, vol. i, pp. 142-3.41 Described and illustrated in P. J. de Rijke, Frisia in Dominium: Kaarten van de provincie Friesland tot 1850,

gescheidenis en cartobibliografie (t’goy Houten, 2006), pp. 86-9. 42 B. van ’t Hoff, De Kaarten van de Nederlandsche Provincien in de Zestiende Eeuw door Jacob van Deventer

(’s Gravenhage, 1941).




Fig.5. Top-left sheet of a nine-sheet woodcut map of Friesland by Jacob van Deventer. Published by Bernardvan den Putte (Antwerp, 1559). Harl.5935.(11.).


13

earliest large scale regional maps to have been produced in Northern Europe for an officialpurpose, putting into practice the methods of triangulation developed in Louvain by vanDeventer, Gemma Frisius and others.43 Van Deventer was geographer to Charles V, whoclearly appreciated the administrative value of maps of the Northern Provinces, and vanDeventer’s maps with their later copies would have fulfilled a governmental function whichis relatable to the maps of English and Welsh counties produced by Christopher Saxtonsome decades later.44 The arms of Charles V, the main feature of the sheet, would thereforehave been significant to the map even though he had died in 1558, one year before thepublication of this second state.

The following map in the volume shares a number of similarities with the Friesland sheet,not least through the inclusion of the arms – and a seated portrait – of Charles V, but also inits authorship by the same Antwerp woodcutter, printer and publisher Bernard van denPutte.45 The map is one of the bottom sheets of a twelve-sheet woodcut map of Europeentitled Europae Primae et Potentissimae Tertiae Terrae Partis Recens Descriptio (fig. 6),measuring 930 x 1340 mm. and first published in Antwerp in 1562.46 The sheet measures327 x 426 mm. and has been trimmed close on all four sides, but with minimal loss of print.It shows a section of the ornamental border, part of North Africa, and a highly populatedMediterranean Sea with Sardinia, Sicily and the extreme south of the Italian mainland. Asmall panel of text below Charles records his victory at Tunis, with the date of 1535.

The imprint of the map, which reads: ANTVERPIA, Impressum per Ioannem BaptistamVrient, Anno Domini 1584, indicates that this is the earliest known cartographic involvementof the Antwerp engraver, printer and publisher Johannes Baptiste Vrients (1552-1612).Vrients was a major map publisher during one of the most active periods of map productionin the Low Countries, and it is not surprising to find his name associated with still earliermaps, particularly maps by van den Putte, since he is thought to have served hisapprenticeship under him from 1567.47 Vrients’s hitherto earliest surviving work is aseparately issued broadsheet map of 1585 showing the Siege of Antwerp which occurredthat same year.48 He had enrolled in the Guild of St Luke as an engraver in 1575, and ismentioned along with the publishers Gerard de Jode (1509-1591) and Filips Galle (1537-1612) in a notorial deed of 1589 which gives his age as 37.49 Vrients would thus have been32 years old when he published the Europe map, and it will be useful to recount its fullhistory in order to understand the circumstances surrounding this unrecorded edition of it.

43 Günter Schilder, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandica [henceforth MCN], vol. i (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1987),p. 84.

44 Peter Barber, ‘Mapmaking in England, ca. 1470-1650’, in David Woodward (ed.), The History of Cartography, vol. iii: Cartography in the European Renaissance, pt ii (Chicago and London, 2007), p. 1629.

45 For van den Putte see C. Depauw, ‘Enkele Gegevens Betreffende Bernaert vande Putte Figuersnyder’, in GerardMercator en de Geografie in de Zuidelijke Nederlanden (Antwerp, 1994), pp. 65-76.

46 For images of the whole map see H. A. M. van der Heijden, De Oudste Gedrukkte Kaarten van Europa (Alphen aanden Rijn, 1992), pp. 58-61; Günter Schilder, MCN, vol. viii (Alphen aan den Rijn, 2007), p. 220.

47 Anne Rouzet, Dictionnaire des imprimeurs, libraires et éditeurs des XVe et XVIe siècles dans les limites géographiques dela Belgique actuelle (Nieuwkoop, 1975), p. 180; Depauw, p. 71.

48 Schilder, MCN, vol. ii, p. 123.49 L. de Burbure, Uittreksels uit de Archieven de Stad Antwerpen IV, 1589, fol.19. Schilder mis- transcribes the notarial

deed as being from 1559. Schilder, MCN, vol. ii, p. 123.




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15

The map is in fact a copy by van den Putte of an earlier woodcut map by Gaspar Vopel(1511-1561) which was first printed in Cologne in 1555.50 No examples of this printing havesurvived, though the original woodblocks were re-used in 1597 by Willhelm Lutzenkirchen.51

Van den Putte both cut and published his copy of it in Antwerp in 1566, and published it againin 1572.52 In fact, van den Putte’s work was only occasionally original; as well as the Europe maphe copied Vopel’s maps of the world (1566) and Germany (1570), and produced woodcuteditions of Gerard Mercator’s maps of Europe (1570), the world (c. 1574)53 and the British Isles(1579).54

All of these maps appear in the archives of the Officina Plantiniana, the major printingcompany established in Antwerp by Christoffel Plantijn (1514 -1589) in 1551, and a majorhub for the trade in maps and atlases, if not the production of them.55 The archives providea unique record of which maps were bought and sold on the market, and the frequency withwhich maps appear gives some indication of which enjoyed the highest demand. Van denPutte’s map of Europe appears regularly in the archives, but it is not to be confused with theearlier map by Vopel which also appears in the archives during 1561. Van den Putte’s map ismostly described as ‘Europa Bernard’, and it appears intermittently throughout the late1560s and early 1570s. In 1572 reference is given to ‘1 Europa Bernard’,56 presumably thesecond edition published that year. From this point the map appears more infrequently, andthe last recorded transaction with van den Putte is in 1579, a year before his death in 1580.57

Although not proven until now, Vrients’s acquisition of the woodblocks of van den Putte’smaps has long been thought likely.58 However, we may initially question Vrients’s motivationsfor acquiring the blocks for the Europe map, because even before the second edition waspublished in 1572 its popularity had been waning. The fifteen-sheet copperplate wall mapof Europe by Mercator of 1554 and 1572 was superior in terms of scientific accuracy, sizeand style.59 In the Plantijn archives it is referred to as ‘Europa Mercatoris’.60 Plantijn in factobtained special patents for the Mercator map in 1569, and again in 1572,61 and it is againstthis level of competition that the decline in demand for the Europe map can be understood.

50 Gaspar Vopel and the map of Europe are discussed in Robert J. Karrow Jnr, Mapmakers of the Sixteenth Centuryand their Maps: Bio-bibliographies of the Cartographers of Abraham Ortelius, 1570 (Chicago, 1993), pp. 558-67. Seealso Schilder, MCN, vol. viii, pp. 217-20.

51 The only complete example is in the Newberry Library, Chicago.52 One incomplete example of the 1566 edition exists in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. For an image of the

same sheet as that under discussion see Schilder, MCN, vol. viii, p. 219. The only example of the 1572 edition isin Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek.

53 Van der Heijden, pp. 53-7. A single sheet of this map is contained in a similar volume to Harl.5935 in the RoyalGeographical Society, London. See Edward Heawood, ‘An Interesting Collection of Maps’, Geographical Journal,lxiv (1924), p. 59.

54 Cornelis Koeman, Günter Schilder, Marco van Egmond and Peter van der Krogt, ‘Commercial Cartography andMap Production in the Low Countries, 1500-ca. 1672’ in David Woodward (ed.), The History of Cartography, vol.iii: Cartography in the European Renaissance, pt ii (Chicago and London, 2007), Appendix 44.3 (p. 1377).

55 Koeman, Schilder, van Egmond and van der Krogt, p. 1300.56 I have not studied the original accounts in the Plantijn-Moretus Museum. My information is taken from Jan

Denucé, Oud-Nederlandsche Kaartmakers in Betrekking met Plantijn (Antwerp and ’s Gravenhage, 1912), vol i, p. 86; Plant. Arch, XVI, f. 177.

57 Denucé, vol. i, p. 86; Plant. Arch. LVII (Journal 1579) f. 126v. 58 Depauw, p. 75; Rouzet, p. 241.59 Van der Heijden, pp. 53-7; Schilder, MCN, vol. viii, pp. 222-3.60 Denucé, vol i, p. 85; Plant. Arch. XVI, f. 43.61 Günter Schilder, MCN, vol. ii (Alphen aan den Rijn, 1990), p. 116; Schilder, MCN, vol. viii, p. 220.



16

Denucé, making use of the Plantijn archives, observes that in 1583 the map was sold byPlantijn for 12 stuivers, compared with 4 guilders in previous years.62 This observationindicates that the Europe map was no longer an especially popular map on the market by1583, and though the blocks would not have been expensive for Vrients to purchase, thefinancial gain from them would have been similarly low. Vrients’s acquiring of the blocks wastherefore a gamble, but one with minimal risk attached. In this early action one may glimpsethe opportunism which would later enable him to achieve a monopoly over atlas productionin the Low Countries up to his death in 1612.

Some uncertainty surrounds the date at which Vrients purchased the blocks of the Europemap, for if he had acquired them in 158163 it is unclear why he should have waited until 1584to publish the map with his own imprint. The map is attributed to van den Putte as late as 1583in the Plantijn archives, indicating perhaps that Vrients had at that time still not acquired theblocks. Of course, copies of the 1572 edition could still have been in circulation, and Vrientsmay therefore have had no cause to re-publish the map until 1584. The inventory of van denPutte’s estate in November 1580 notes Vrients as owing money for a number of maps,64 and ifhe already possessed copies of the Europe map it would presumably have made sense to sellthem before producing a further edition from the blocks. One may also view the publishingdate of 1584 as reflecting Vrients’s particular style of business. One of the major decisions ofhis career was, having bought the rights to two of the major atlases of the later sixteenthcentury in 1600 – de Jode’s Speculum Orbis Terrarum and Abraham Ortelius’s Theatrum OrbisTerrarum – to restrict publication of the former to increase sales of the latter.65 It may be nocoincidence that in the year Vrients published the map of Europe with his imprint, de Jode hadalso brought out his own wall map of Europe,66 and it is tempting to see a competitive aspectto Vrients’s publishing activities, even in this earliest case.

It is unclear exactly why John Bagford might have collected these three map fragmentsother than because they were available to him, or indeed whether they would have been theonly sheets of these maps available. The uniqueness of the sheets today, and the historicallypoor survival rate of wall maps generally, would suggest that the maps, and even individualsheets of them, were rare in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. We shouldalways bear in mind that what has survived is itself only a fragment of the entire range ofcartographic production. It is entirely possible that Bagford would have appreciated theirrarity. He was, after all, an expert in the history of printing, and this is clear from thefrequency with which his advice is sought in Thomas Hearne’s diaries. His special interestin the rarity of maps moreover, particularly maps of the Holy Land, is evidenced byHearne’s copying out of the title of Bernhard von Breydenbach’s map of the Holy Land forhis attention,67 as well as mention of the map from Lucas Brandis’s Rudimentum Novitorumof 1475, which ‘deserves to be particularly considered by Mr Bagford’.68


62 There were twenty stuivers to one guilder. Denucé, vol i, p. 78.; Plant.Arch., LXI (Journal 1583), f. 62. I wish tothank Jacob Harskamp for his help in translating into English the relevant passages.

63 Rouzet, p. 241.64 Depauw, p. 74.65 Joint publication rights were secured with Plantijn in 1601, incidentally the first mention of Vrients in the archives

of the Officina Plantiniana. 66 One example in Berlin, Staatsbibliothek. For images see van der Heijden, pp.107-8; Schilder, MCN, vol. viii, p.

224. See also Koeman, Schilder, van Egmond and van der Krogt, p. 1300-2 and Appendix 44.2 (p. 1377).67 Hearne, Remarks and Collections, vol. v, p. 304.68 Hearne, Remarks and Collections, vol. ii, p. 363.


17

It is equally difficult to speculate how much Bagford knew about the mapmakers when heacquired the maps. It seems unlikely that Vrients’s imprint would have been his sole reasonfor acquiring the Europe sheet, though his surviving notes do show a preoccupation with thenames of printers and publishers. In a number of instances he has compiled an alphabeticallist of authors, printers and publishers amongst which a number of map publishers can beidentified,69 but neither van Borculo’s, van den Putte’s or Vrients’s names are amongst them,nor do they appear elsewhere in Bagford’s writing. Although all three maps feature in thePlantijn archives, Bagford’s mention of Plantijn concerns his role within the context ofprinting history rather than as a distributor. One other map published by Vrients is includedin Harl.5935, a small celestial map from the 1601 edition of Epitome Theatri Orteliani, andBagford must have been aware of Vrients through the sheer quantity of cartographic materialhe published. Vrients’s work would have been available to Bagford in London, and duringhis journeys to Leiden, Haarlem and Amsterdam in search for material for his customersand his ‘history’. His friend and fellow book dealer John Bullord was based in Leiden andwould have been on the lookout for material of interest to his associate. Bagford is recordedas having purchased maps by Hondius in Leiden in 1707,70 for example, and it is possiblethat during similar research trips Bagford would have become aware of Vrients, and acquiredthe present example of his imprint.

In light of Bagford’s selection of similar elements of maps for inclusion in Harl.5935, perhapsthe common feature of the arms of Charles V was the main reason for his collecting of the Europeand Friesland sheets. A simple approach to the contents of Harl.5935 may therefore be the bestmethod of understanding its selection, its arrangement, and the mind of its compiler. Thoughhe was interested in them, Bagford was not attempting to provide a history of printed maps, andthis is clear from the absence of certain cartographic material which would have been seen asimportant in the late seventeenth century. There are, for example, no maps by Gerard Mercatoror Jodocus Hondius, none by Christopher Saxton or the derivative county maps first publishedin Camden’s Britannia in 1607, or even the maps by Robert Morden from the same publicationof 1695. The removal of the Ptolemaic world map in 1900 explains the absence of maps fromPtolemy’s Geographia, which were published in multiple editions including one during Bagford’sown lifetime.71 Bagford’s choice of maps appears to have been based, quite simply, on whichinterested him for their imprints or subjects, the fact that he had not seen them before, or someother reason which remains unclear.

More obvious reasons can be found for Bagford’s inclusion of other prints in Harl.5935.Richard Waller’s Tabula Colorum Physiologica of 1686, one of the earliest colour charts, wouldhave been acquired via Bagford’s acquaintance with Waller through the Society of Antiquaries,whilst his links with Thomas Rawlinson (1681-1725) are a likely cause for the incorporation ofCarr’s 1668 map of the Post Roads of England, of which a number of examples exist in theRawlinson collection in the Bodleian Library.72 The inclusion of a number of maps of ancientand scriptural geography relates directly to Bagford’s interests: the historical maps by AbrahamOrtelius already mentioned, two woodcut maps from a German Bible (one showing the Gardenof Eden), and three historical maps produced in Oxford by Edward Wells, all reflect Bagford’spreoccupation with the antique.

The prints in Harl.5935 do not relate to each other in a way that suggests a coherent collectingstrategy, but the volume’s eclectic nature may be better described as a piecemeal and opportunistgathering of printing samples than the product of indiscriminate collecting. For Bagford clearlyknew a great deal about printing and about maps, and even his own admission that ‘when I firstcollected these sortes of fragments at first I was not sensiable of ye use of them’73 would not have


69 Harl. MS. 5982, ff. 2-8v.70 Hearne, Recollections and Collections, vol. ii, p. 59.71 There were re-issues of Mercator’s 1578 edition of Ptolemy in 1695, 1698 and 1704.72 Material relating to Bagford may also be found in the Rawlinson Collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 73 Sloane 1435, ff. 3v-4, transcribed in Nickson, p. 53.


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meant that his antiquarian and book dealing expertise abandoned him when he acquired them.The frequency of rare and in some cases unique maps in Harl.5935 would appear to confirm thatBagford had a special eye for cartographic material of a scarce or significant nature, whilst thelack of cohesion in the volume, if not attributable to its handling after Bagford’s death, speaks ofa man with more of an appreciation than an agenda.

Appendix: Collation of Harl.5935

Below are listed the contents of Harl.5935. Numbers in parenthesis are those given byMadden in 1837, and of these only no. 3 is not present. Madden’s numbers are used toidentify the prints in British Library catalogues and for referencing them elsewhere. Forexample, John Blagrave’s Astrolabium Uranicum, occurring at f. 10v and numbered byMadden as no. 14, should be referred to as Harl.5935.(14.).

Harl.5935, Folio, bound in half calf, with a spine title in three compartments reading:

COLLECT. CONCERN THE HIST. OF PRINT. E COLL. BAGFORD / MUS BRIT.BIBL. HARL. / 5935 PLUT. L.F.

Stamp on rear endpaper: Re-backed 1933.

Pages showing the remnants of removed prints are: ff. 6v, 8v, 9, 9v, 11v, 15v, 17, 20, 20v, 21v,23v, 24, 24v, 26v, 28v, 29v, 30v–34, 35, 36–39, *39, 42, 48v, 49v, 50, 50v, 52, 53v, 54v, 55, 56,56v, 57, 57v, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63–67, 68, 69, 71v, 75, 77, 78, 78v, 79, 99, 100, 100v, 101v,102v–104, 105v, 106, 109v, 110, 111, 111v, 113v, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 120v.

f. 2 (1)[Fragment of a view of an unidentified town] from Liber Chronicarum …, published byAnton Koberger, Nuremberg, 1493.

f. 2v (2)[Colour chart] Tabula Colorum Physiologica tam Mixtorum quam Simplicium … by RichardWaller F.R.S., London, 1686.

f.3 (3)[Print removed in 1900]. Identified as Ptolemaic world map by Johannes from Armsheim.Published in Cosmographia by Lienhart Holle, Ulm, 1482. British Museum, Departmentof Prints and Drawings, 1900.1019,20 (Shirley no. 10).

f.4 (4)[Woodcut map of the world] from Liber Chronicarum …, published by Anton Koberger,Nuremberg, 1493 (Shirley no. 19).

f.4v (5)[World map] Universalis Cosmographia by Johannes Honter. Published in RudimentaCosmographica…, Zurich, 1546 (Shirley no. 86).

f.5 (6)[World map] by Peter Apian, 2nd state. Published in Cosmographia …, Antwerp, 1553(Shirley no. 96).

f.5v (7)[Title-page] C. Julii Polyhistor… Published by M. Isingrin and H. Petri, Basle, 1538.



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(8)[Map of Italy by Sebastian Münster] Published in C. Julii Polyhistor… by M. Isingrin andH. Petri, Basle, 1538.

f. 6 (9)[Map of Greece by Sebastian Münster] Published in C. Julii Polyhistor… by M. Isingrinand H. Petri, Basle, 1538.

f. 7 (10)[Map of Asia by Sebastian Münster] Published in C. Julii Polyhistor… by M. Isingrin andH. Petri, Basle, 1538.

f. 7v (11)[Top left sheet of a nine-sheet woodcut map of Friesland] by Jacob van Deventer. Publishedby Bernard van den Putte, Antwerp, 1559.

f. 8 (12) [Europae Primae et Potissimae Tertiae Partis Recens Descriptio] 1 Sheet of a twelve-sheet mapof Europe by Bernard den Putte. Published by Johannes Baptiste Vrients, Antwerp, 1584.

f. 10 (13)[Cosmological diagram on the Ptolemaic system] Totius Corporeae Machinae Ex 12 Coelis …,London [?], c. 1620.

f. 10v (14)[Celestial chart] Astrolabium Uranicum by John Blagrave. Published in AstrolabiumUranicum Generale…, London, 1596 (Warner, pp. 32-3).

f. 11 (15)[World map] Nova Orbis Terrarum Descriptio… by John Blagrave. Published in AstrolabiumUranicum Generale …, London, 1596 (Shirley no. 191).

f. 12 (16)[A Description of all the Postroads in England] by R. Carr. C. Landts exc. London, 1668. Map only (Shirley British Isles ii, no. 2, Carr 1 p. 40).

f. 12v (17)A View of the General & Coasting Trade Winds in the Great South Ocean, H. Moll fecit. FromVoyages and Descriptions … by William Dampier. Published by James Knapton, London,1699.

f. 13 (18)A View of the General & Coasting Trade Winds in the Atlantick & Indian Oceans. By HermanMoll. From Voyages and Descriptions … by William Dampier. Published by James Knapton,London, 1699.

f. 14 (19)[Map of historical geography] Tabula Asiae Minoris Thraciae, Ins. Siciliae … by EdwardWells. Oxford, c. 1700.

f. 14v (20)[Woodcut map of the Mediterranean Sea] Hydrographia Maris Mediterranei: Pertinens adPaginam 1412 sub signo. From a Latin Bible, published in Herborn, c. 1615.



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f. 15 (21)[2 maps of the Holy land on one woodblock] Ladtafel zu Neuen Testam: Gehorig. From a Latin Bible, published in Herborn, c. 1615.

f. 16 (22)Woodcut map of Jerusalem with woodcut key surround. From a Latin Bible, published in Herborn, c. 1615.

f. 17v (23)Woodcut fragment of a cosmological diagram, 16th century.

(24)Woodcut fragment showing an armillary sphere, 16th century.(These prints constitute two copies of the same folio, displayed as verso and recto)

f. 18 (25)[Double hemisphere map with Garden of Eden] Planisphaerium Geographicum ExhibensSitum Europae, Africae & Asiae. Pertinens ad pag. 1412. From a Latin Bible, published inHerborn, c. 1615.

f. 18v (26)Canaan by John Speed. Published in The Holy Bible by Bonham Norton and John Bill,London, 1619 (Laor no. 738).

f. 19 (27)[Double hemisphere celestial chart] Globus Coelestis Coeli Enarrant Gloriam Dei. Publishedin Epitome Theatri Orteliani, Johan Baptiste Vrients, Antwerp 1601 (Warner, p. 277. Anearlier version of Globus Coelestis … by J. Hondius, 1616).

(28)[A New and Accurate Mappe of the World, Drawne according to the Best and Latest Discoveriesthat have been Made] by Robert Vaughan. Hemispheres only, published in The WorldEncompassed by Sir Francis Drake, London, 1628 (Shirley no. 326).

(29)Orbis Terrarum Cognitus Hodiernis Europaeis by Edward Wells. From Dionysii Geographia …by Edward Wells. Oxford, c. 1688 (Shirley no. 541).

f. 19v (30)[A set of twelve celestial globe gores] by F. Demongenet. Printed in Venice, c. 1560(An early, possibly proof state. Not in Warner).

f. 20 (31)[Hemispheres from an unidentified world map], Amsterdam [?], c. 1690. (Similar to world map by Jacques Peeters, cf. Shirley no. 554).

Between ff. 20v-21 (32)Lumen Historiarum per Occidentem ex Conatibus Fran. Heraei Antuerpia by A. Ortelius.Antwerp, c. 1620 (Van den Broecke no. 185. Issued separately).

f. 22 (33)A New Cart of France Drawn by ye French King’s Order According to the Observations of theAcademy Royall engraved by J. Sturt. Published in Hydrographia Gallia, by R. Morden,London, 1695.



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f. 22v (34)[Title cartouche only] Novissima et Accuratissima Insula Jamaicae by John Seller. Publishedin Atlas Maritimus or The Sea-Atlas … by John Darby, London, 1675.

(35)[Title cartouche only] A Map of the Regions & Countreys under and a bout the North Pole by John Seller. Published in Atlas Maritimus or The Sea-Atlas … by John Darby, London,1675.

Between ff. 22v-23 (36)[Western hemisphere of a two-sheet map of the world] by Edward Wright, from The SecondVolume of the Principal Navigations, Trafiques and Discoveries of the English Nation by RichardHakluyt. London, 1599 (Shirley no. 221).

f. 25 (37)[Eastern hemisphere of a two-sheet map of the world] by Edward Wright, from The SecondVolume of the Principal Navigations, Trafiques and Discoveries of the English Nation by RichardHakluyt. London, 1599 (Shirley no. 221).

f. 25v (38)Unattributed copperplate map of the English Channel, printed in London, c. 1700.

f. 26 (39)A Particular Platt, for Sailing to the Isles of Azores by Edward Wright. Published in CertainErrors in Navigation by Joseph Moxon. London, 1657.

f. 27 (40)[Fragment of a map of the Thames Estuary with the coast of Suffolk and Norfolk] byCaptain Greenville Collins. Published in Great Britain’s Coasting Pilot, London, 1693.

f. 27v (41)[Map of China] Situs Provinciarum Imperii Sinici MDCLIV. Published in Bellum Tartaricum… Martin Martinius, by J. L Crook, London, 1654 (Reset type).

(42)[Title cutting] Sacred Geographie, or Scriptural Mapps by Joseph Moxon, London, 1671.

f. 28 (43)[Introduction and woodcut initial] To the Reader… London, c. 1700.

Between ff. 28v-29 (44)A New Map of the Sea Coast of England, Holland and France by John Taylor, London, 1688.

f. 30 (45)Lumen Historiarum per Orientem by A. Ortelius. Antwerp, c. 1620 (Van den Broecke no. 184.Issued separately).

f. 31 (46)[Palestinae Sive Sacrorum Bibliorum Chorographia] Fragment of a woodcut map of the HolyLand by Herman van Borculo, Utrecht, 1538.

f. 31v[Note by Madden: print moved to f. *39v]



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f. 39*v (47)[English Royal coat of arms, taken from plate no. 7 of Adams’s Triumph over the SpanishArmada maps engraved by Augustine Ryther, London, 1588]

f. 40v (48)Unidentified woodcut compass rose with English Royal coat of arms. English, c. 1580.

(49)Unidentified compass rose. English, c. 1600.

f. 41 (50)[Figure at a table with globe and dividers]From Herefordshire Described ... by John Speed. Published in The Theatre of the Empire ofGreat Britaine, Bassett and Chiswell, London 1676 (Skelton, no. 92).

(51)[Figure at a table with scale bar and dividers]From Herefordshire Described ... by John Speed. Published in The Theatre of the Empire ofGreat Britaine, Bassett and Chiswell, London 1676 (Skelton, no. 92).

(52)[Imprint] From Herefordshire Described ... by John Speed. Published in The Theatre of theEmpire of Great Britaine, Bassett and Chiswell, London 1676 (Skelton, no. 92).

(53)[Scale bar and imprint] From The Kingdome of England by John Speed. Published in TheTheatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, George Humble, 1627 (Skelton, no. 16).

(54)[Unidentified fragment of a print illustrating the magnetic north pole, c. 1630]

f. 41v (55)[Polar scene] Nova Sembla. Published in Auszug aus der Abrahami Ortely Theatro Orbis, byLevinus Hulsius and Jan van Keerbergen, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1604.

(56)[Nova Zembla] Published in Auszug aus der Abrahami Ortely Theatro Orbis, by LevinusHulsius and Jan van Keerbergen, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1604.(Koeman/van der Krogt, IIIb, map 1270.333. Atlas 333:41).

f. 42v (57)[Unattributed oval view of a yacht at sea] Een Speel-jacht t’geen Dickwils t’varen HeestVermeert wert dus al Varende Verteert, Dutch, c. 1700.

f. 43v (58)[Title-page] The Longitude not Found: or, an Answer to a Treatise, Written by Henry BondSenior. 2nd edition, printed for Robert Harford, London, 1680 (corrected in ink to 1678).

Between ff.43v-44 (59)An Ephemeris Shewing the Day of the Month and Day of the Week &c For Ever / TrueLongitude Presented to the English Mariner by Ryner Hyvee, engraved by J. Sturt. London,c. 1703.



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f. 44 (60)[Historical map] Imperium Cyri sive Tabula Accomodata ad Dilucidandum Xenophontis de Cyri… by Edward Wells, Oxford, c. 1700.

f. 44v (61)A lunar calendar by Henry Sutton. London, 1650 (date on engraving).

(62)Engraving of a geometric quadrant, unattributed. English, c. 1650

f. 45 (63)[Privilege] From Grammelogia, or the Mathematicall Ring by Richard Delamain. London,1631.

(64)Engraving of ‘The Navigators Hemisphere’, unattributed. English, c. 1630.

f. 45v (65)Engraving of a compendium or ‘The Traveylors Jewell’, unattributed. English, c. 1650.

(66)Diagrams of horizon rings, unattributed. English, c. 1650.

(67)Meridian diagrams, unattributed. English, c. 1650.

f. 46 (68)Engravings of the Pantometer, unattributed. English, c. 1650.

(69)Engraving of a compass or ‘The Compasse of Variation’, unattributed. English, c. 1650.

(70)Diagram pertaining to a traverse board, unattributed. English, c. 1650.

f. 46v (71)[Engravings of 2 quadrants] 1658, Henry Sutton Londini fecit. From The Sector on aQuadrant, or, A Treatise Containing the Description and Use of Three Several Quadrants.London, 1658.

f. 47 (72)Untitled numbered grid, 18th century.

f. 48 (73)[Advertisement] The Longitude Found by Aid of the Dipping Needle by Henry Bond. London,c. 1670.

f. 51v (74)[Unattributed fragment] A Catalogue of all the Shires, Cities, Bishoprickes, Market-Townes,Castles, Parishes… London, c. 1640.

(75)Fragment from a small book about commodities in England, unattributed. London, c. 1640.



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f. 52v (76)[Title-page] Index Villaris: or, an exact register… J. & S. Sprint, J. Nicholson, T. Newborough, London, 1700.

f. 53 (77)[Proposals for an unidentified two-volume atlas of the counties of England and Wales, c. 1690].

f. 55v (78)Advertisment to the Book-Binder, unattributed. English, c. 1700.

(79)[Introduction] A Note of such Arts and Mysteries as an English Gentleman, a Souldier and a Traveller is by Gods Assistance able to Perform … by John Bulmer, London, 1649.

Between ff. 57v-58 (80-81)Enquiries to be Propounded to the most Ingenious of each County in my Travels through Englandand Wales … by Robert Plot. Advertisement for The Natural History of Oxfordshire, 1st edition, 1677.

f. 59 (82-83)[Proposal] Mr Ogilby’s Design for Carrying on his Britannia by John Ogilby. London, c. 1673.

f. 67 (84)The Continuation of the Road from London to Barwick [pl. 6]. Published in Britanniaby John Ogilby, London, 1676.

f. 68v (85)[Fragment of text taken from A Description of all the Postroads in England by R. Carr. C.Landts exc. 1668]. See f. 12 (16).

(86)[Fragment of text taken from A Description of all the Postroads in England by R. Carr. C.Landts exc. 1668]. See f. 12 (16).

f. 69v (87)[Title-page] A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade vol. 2 num. 26. Friday,January 27 1692-3. John Houghton.

f. 70 (88)[Title-page] A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade vol. 2 numb. 41 Friday,May 12th 1693. John Houghton F.R.S.

f. 70v (89)[Title-page] A Collection for Improvement of Husbandry and Trade vol. 2 num. 28 Friday,February 10th 1692-3. John Houghton.

f. 71 (90)[Instructions for carrying out a parish survey, unattributed]

f. 72 (91)A Scheme of the Proportions the Several Counties in England paid to the Land Tax in 1693 andto the Subsidies in 1697 Compared with the Number of Members they Send to Parliamentcalculated by John Smart, London, 1697.



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f. 72v (92)[Explanation] An Account of the Acres & Houses, with the Proportional Tax, &c. of eachCounty in England and Wales…, by John Houghton F.R.S.

f. 73 (93)[A Table Showing the Acres & Houses, with the Proportional Tax, &c. of each County inEngland and Wales] London: printed for Randal Taylor, 1693.

f. 110v (94)An Advertisement from the General Penny Post Office. London, 1685.

ff. 111-112 (95)[Instructions for the Penny Post Office]

f. 124 (96)A Table of Silver Weight. 1696 by Thomas Oldfield. London, printed for Tim Godwin,Fleet Street.

Reference works cited in the collation:

Marcel P.R. Van den Broecke, Ortelius Atlas Maps: An Illustrated Guide (t’ goy Houten,1996).

Peter van der Krogt, Koeman’s Atlantes Neerlandici: a New Edition, vol. iiib (t’goy Houten,2003).

Eran Laor, Maps of the Holy Land: Cartobibliography of Printed Maps, 1475-1900 (New Yorkand Amsterdam, 1986).

Rodney W. Shirley, The Mapping of the World: Early Printed World Maps, 1472-1700(London, 1993).

Rodney W. Shirley, Printed Maps of the British Isles, 1650-1750 (London, 1988).

R. A. Skelton, County Atlases of the British Isles 1579-1703: A Bibliography 1579-1703(London, 1978).

Deborah J. Warner, The Sky Explored: Celestial Cartography 1500-1800 (New York andAmsterdam, 1979).


fortunate survivors: maps and map fragments in the bagford ...1 fortunate survivors: maps and map...

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