A map of England, Wales, and Ireland illustrating the invasions and battles that had played out in these countries, up until the point of the map’s production, from the first atlas compiled and published by an Englishman, Speed’s ‘Prospect’. 

Deriving from an earlier map by Speed, ca. 1601, the map is peppered with vignettes that depict battles from Todcaster, to Blackheath, to Cardigan. Along the English Channel is illustrated the progress of the Spanish Armada, in 1588, from the inception of their ‘pretensed invasion’, to their defeat, driven up round Scotland, and ‘forced about the coasts of Ireland to their contrye’. In the bottom left-hand corner is an inset text that explains the sites in Ireland, numbered for ease of reference. 

Accompanying text in English, ‘A Briefe Description of the Civill Warres, and Battails fought in England, Wales, and Ireland’, is printed on the reverse.

John Speed (1552-1629) was the outstanding cartographer of his age. By trade a merchant tailor, but by proclivity a historian, it was the patronage of Sir Fulke Greville, poet and statesman, that allowed him to pursue this interest in earnest. His ‘Theatre of Great Britain’, first published in 1611 or 1612, was the first large-scale printed atlas of the British Isles. The ‘Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World’, from which the present work is drawn, appeared in 1627, bound with the ‘Theatre’, and is the first world atlas compiled by an Englishman to be published in England. Engraved in Amsterdam, many of the maps are anglicized versions of works by Dutch makers in distinctive carte-à-figure style, featuring borders with figures in local costume and city views.