Before Empire: the English world picture in the sixteenth and early

seventeenth centuries 1

In the early modern period before we had an empire, or indeed set any score by having
one, the talk was of trade, of commerce, and of improved navigation. Few dreamt of
an overseas colonial empire, but rather of acquiring riches by trade or piracy. This
economic and, to some extent, scientific talk was not confined to government and city
men like today, but common parlance for dramatists and the like. Shakespeare, Ben
Johnson and other contemporaries wove tales of overseas travellers, of new-fangled
maps as well as of exotic riches in to their plays and stories. They caught the
imagination of their audiences who became accustomed to things navigational,
including charts, just as in the same way today we might refer to aspects of the
Internet.

As distinct from, but also complementary to, the literature of travel and exploration
exemplified in Richard Hakluyt’s Principal Navigations2 and Samuel Purchas’s
Pilgrimes3, what did the 'mathematical practitioners', in EGR Taylor’s phrase,4 think
they were doing in describing and charting the world or even waters closer to home?
Anthony Payne has reminded us that Hakluyt saw the need ‘to collect in orderly
fashion the maritime records of our own countrymen, now lying scattered and
neglected, and to bring them to the light of day in a worthy guise, to that end that
posterity may at last be inspired to seize the opportunity offered to them of playing a
worthy part.’5 While he assuredly did so for written records the same was not true of
graphical records. Many of the sketches, charts and views remain unpublished today
and some lost, known only by contemporary or later reference. What of those who
made them? What connections did they make with the coasts or littoral peoples they
sailed by or visited? How did they record graphically what they saw? Was there a
distinctive English view in either content or style of depiction in comparison with
their European contemporaries?

The context
My talk this afternoon concentrates on the contribution the drawing of charts and
other maritime depictions makes to our understanding of what English contemporaries

1
This lecture is a revised and extended version of an original slide presentation given
at the Folger Library, Washington USA in March 1998 and of the Helen Wallis
memorial lecture given at the British Cartographic Society conference University of
Glasgow 1999.
2
Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Navigation, voyages and discoveries of the English
Nation Cambridge:published for the Hakluyt Society,1965.
3
Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes. London, 1625.
4
E G R Taylor, The mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England.
Cambridge: CUP,1970.
5
Anthony Payne, ‘Strange remote and farre distant countreys’: the travel books of
Richard Hakluyt’ in Robin Myers and Michael Harris (ed) Journeys through the
market.Travel trade and the book trade. Folkestone: St Paul’s Bibliographies, 1999 p.
17.

1
thought was happening geographically and how they saw the world. I say English
because the notion of being 'British' as distinct from English, Scots, or Irish had yet to
emerge and the picture constructed was basically an English and specifically a
London6 one, which as we shall see, derived from the traditions of the Portuguese,
Spaniards and French as well as the contemporary work of the Dutch.
English chart-making began in the late-sixteenth century. What brought about this
comparatively late introduction of cartographic innovation in comparison with the
Portuguese, Spaniards and French and what was its relationship to the evident urge
to explore by sea beyond the confines of the Channel, and the fishing grounds in the
Atlantic?
By 1642 when James Howell wrote a popular travel guide, Instructions for Foreign
Travel 7, he could observe that, ‘amongst other people of the earth islanders seem to
stand most in need of Forraine Travell, for they being cut off as it were from the rest
of the citizens of the world, have not those obvious accesses, and contiguity of
situation and with other advantages of society.’ Howell continued that by the 1640s,
‘amongst the nations of the world the English are observed to have gained much and
improved themselves infinitely by voyaging both by land and sea and of those four
worthies who compassed the terrestrial globe I find the major part of them were
English.’ This was a slight exaggeration, as only two of the four, Francis Drake and
Thomas Cavendish, were English but the claim reveals the popular pride which had
emerged from the 1580s on Drake’s return home.
None of these popular sentiments would have been present in the mid-sixteenth
century. Nicholas Rodger has convincingly explained in his Safeguard of the Sea,8
that the period from 1509 onwards was a time of lost glories. It saw the final end of
the Wars of the Roses, the loss of France, particularly of Calais in 1558, and the
diminution of the English kingdom, which under Edward III and Henry V had taken
on France and won. Henry VIII tried to revive English continental fortunes and his
army under the Duke of Suffolk got to within 50 miles of Paris in October 1523.
This was the last campaign of the 100 Years War with France. For centuries the
English had defined themselves militarily, campaigning against the French. England
now faced an uncertain and vulnerable future on the margins of a Europe dominated
by the great powers of Spain, the Holy Roman Emperor and the French. Thus it was
perforce that the English had to consider the sea, not just coastal waters and the
fishing grounds of New Foundland, with which they were well acquainted, but the sea
as a means of foreign, military and commercial policy. This also meant they had to
make maps and charts of new seas and coasts.
The new chart makers
The explorer William Borough wrote a verse on his chart of the North East Atlantic,

6
D Armitage, ‘Making the Empire British’ Past and Present,155,May 1997,34-64;N
Canny (ed) The origins of the British Empire Oxford: OUP,1998 vol I.
7
James Howell, Instructions for forreine travel. (1642) Edward Arber(ed),
Westminster,1895,p.15.
8
N A M Rodger, The safeguard of the sea. A naval history of Britain. London:
HarperCollins ,1997 vol I 660-1649,ch 14.

2
drawn about 1580, explaining why he had decided to draw a chart showing his
geographical knowledge, specifically of the coasts he had passed.

'Sith Tullie sayth, that ech man ought, his travails to applie,
To other mennes commodities: his counsell follow I
For perfectlie in this my khart, the coastes where I have past
I have set forth: that others maye, thereby som knowledge taste
Great profite maye it bring to them, that by those coastes shal sayle
For it of Instruments is cheefe, that maye them most avayl
Which if it doo such favore fynde, as travayle hath deserved
It shall procure me to expresse, that which I have reservd. 9
[Fig 1 William Borough’s chart of the North East Atlantic. Fragment only. Trinity
College Dublin, MS 1209*]
[Fig 2 The binding made from Borough’s chart. The spine lettering reads: ‘Jo
Campanis Opere.E.8.2.’ The work was listed in a catalogue of books owned by
Archbishop Ussher and acquired by Trinity College, Dublin in 1661.]
William Borough (1537-98), the son of John a Borough (fl 1533-42), navigator to
Henry VIII 10 is perhaps the most well-known of the English sixteenth century chart-
makers and he produced several different types of charts and other types of maritime
drawing which survive today. They date from about 1568 to 1587. Earlier in his
career he had sailed with Richard Chancellor in search of the North East Passage in
1553, and later he and his elder brother Stephen went further towards the island of
Novaya Zemlya, even perhaps as far as the mouth of the river Ob, beyond Pechora
along the coast of northern Russia. William became chief pilot of the Muscovy
Company.
Apart from William Borough, who else was beginning to make charts? Chart making
at this period was not the trade it later became with the emergence of the ‘Drapers
School’ on the banks of the Thames from the 1610s onwards. There does not seem to
have been a sufficient number of trading and other voyages to sustain a profession
full-time. Those who made the charts were thus a mixed group of mariners and
pilots, like the Boroughs, pilots, engineers, and artists: the latter were employed to
make drawings on voyages of exploration, a practice which continued until the advent
of the camera. They also included mathematicians and like Edward Wright of
projection fame and in the case of Thomas Hood, a London physician as well as a
mathematician and instrument maker.
At this period the influence of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth’s

9
Fragment of a chart of the north east Atlantic c 1580 by William Borough later used
as a binding for ‘ Jo Campanis Opere’ owned by Archbishop Ussher and described in
his catalogue and acquired for Trinity College Dublin in 1661. See fig 2.
10
More work on John a Borough is being undertaken by Robert Baldwin (information
to the author,1999).

3
Treasurer in encouraging expeditions and in his grasp of cartographic concepts is
evident. His collection of maps, now at Hatfield House 11 and, more importantly in
this overseas context, his Ortelius Atlas at Burghley House, Stamford, Lincolnshire,
into which he inserted MS maps and charts by the geographer John Dee and by the
mariner Robert Norman reveal his deep interest. The charts and the annotations also
reveal a governmental concern to ensure the new knowledge of overseas was kept
centrally and confidential to Cecil and his circle of advisers. E G R Taylor records
that Borough, Dee and Cecil remained friendly and debated geographical matters until
about 1583 when Dee fell out with Borough over another friend, Michael Lok. The
elder Hakluyt was also a correspondent of Dee's and the younger Hakluyt also.
The beginnings of the London chart-making trade probably rest with the Borough
family and their connections with the seamen on the Thames, in particular Robert
Norman who also began to make charts in the 1580s. The elder Borough brother,
Stephen had visited the Spanish maritime headquarters, the Casa de Contracion in
Seville and presumably learnt his pilot and chart-making skills there. He tried to
introduce a similar system for the training of pilots in England but got nowhere.
Although we know Stephen made charts of the North East route in the 1550s and 60s,
none by him survive.
As William Borough’s verse implies, he was concerned to instruct contemporaries in
the use of charts and, if they were prepared to use the chart and presumably pay for it,
then he would produce some more. We know from other evidence12 that charts were
the personal property of the ship’s masters, pilots, and boatswains and that, when
Borough drew his chart in 1580, it was still the case that there were ‘ancient masters
of shippes [who] hath derided and mocked them that have occupied themselves in
their cardes and plattes.’13 Borough’s point was that mariners should draw from their
own experience, and as he later warned, it was inadvisable ‘to be tied to the Portugale
or Spanish marine plats which are made by the card makers of those countries, men
that are no travailers themselves but doe all things therein by information and upon
the credit of others.’14 The clearest reference to the presence of an English chart-
making activity, as distinct from individual charts being cited, is in the 1590s when
Thomas Hood, a Cambridge graduate and the first mathematical lecturer employed
from 1588 in the City under the patronage of Sir Thomas Smith and Lord Lumley, is
recorded as making mathematical instruments and selling them. In 1592 Hood
recorded that he had ‘to doe a long time with divers of your profession [ie seamen] for
the making of sea cardes.’15 There are four Hood charts extant and two astrological
charts for medical diagnosis. Hood’s talents as a chart and diagram drawer as well as
scribe are evident in both.

11
RA Skelton and J A Summerson, A description of maps and architectural drawings
in the collection made by William Cecil now at Hatfield House.London: The
Roxburghe Club,1971.
12
See for example Paul Hair and J D Alsop, English seamen and traders in Guinea
1553-1565.Lampeter,Dyfed,Wales:The Edward Mellon Press,1992 where personal
bequests of charts are recorded.
13
W Bourne, Regiment for the sea,1596.Sig Biii.
14
W Borough, A discourse of the variation of the compass, 1585. Sig A iij.
15
Thomas Hood, Regiment of the sea,1592. Sig Aiii

4
The absence of a home-grown chart-making profession in England until this period
may be attributed to the natural conservatism of the pilots in coastal waters who saw
no need of charts and, to the use on oceanic voyages to West Africa and elsewhere, of
Portuguese and Spanish charts which were evidently freely available. There was,
after all, no particular reason to make charts in England if others had already done so
for a particular area. Where there had been no charting or where charts were
unavailable or, as Borough thought, they were dangerously erroneous, then, the
English had to make their own. This they did, but rather slowly, in the last two or
three decades of the sixteenth century. With the increase in maritime trade in the
seventeenth century they eventually produced a chart-making school on the Thames to
rival the Dutch school of Edam and Enkhuizen in North Holland; this English school
known as the Draper’s Company of chart makers continued to the beginning of the
eighteenth century, side-by-side with the printed chart trade which was dominated by
the Dutch until the eighteenth century.

Chart survival
For the period 1550-70 only two English MS sketches remain although John Dee
mentioned others. These representations are by William Borough and relate to the
search for the North East Passage. The general view of the world the English had
was that portrayed by Abraham Ortelius in his atlas of 1570: Sir Francis Drake’s
circumnavigation of 1577-80 in map form did not get into print until 1583 and was
published at Antwerp, supposedly having been ‘veuee et corige par le dict siegneur
drach.’16 We know, however, that Queen Elizabeth received a manuscript map of
Drake’s voyage as did Edmund Grindal, Archbishop of Canterbury (1576 to 1583).
More interestingly Henry IV of France wrote to Walsingham on 12 March 1585
requesting a copy of the map and, apparently, an example ‘diapre et dore’ was sent to
Paris but is not now known to exist. 17
In the 1570s,18 however, six manuscript charts survive, reflecting exploration into the
Atlantic, continuing attempts to find a North East Passage round the northern coasts
of Asia, trading voyages into the Baltic and White Sea and concern with the hazards
of the South Western Approaches to the English Channel. For the 1580s, if the
survival rate has any significance, 28 charts survive. These reflect widening
geographical coverage, again more associated with exploration than with trade but, as
might be expected in this Armada decade, the war with Spain is heavily represented.
There are ten coastal sketches and charts, including those by the shipmaster James
Bere and of course William Borough. At this same period charts of the
Mediterranean were drawn in England and survive in Burghley’s collection, but they

16
‘ La Herdike [presumably a misspelling for ‘heroike’] Enterprise faict par le signeur
Draeck d’avoir ciquit toute la terre. Nicola van Sype f.’ [Antwerp?, c 1583.]
17
See H Wallis, S Tyacke et al, Sir Francis Drake. An exhibition to commemorate
Francis Drake’s voyage around the world 1577-1580. London, The British Library,
1977 p. 95.
18
The following paragraph is based on the author’s census of surviving charts and
other overseas maritime representations made by the English from 1550s to 1640 to
be published in David Woodward History of Cartography vol 3.

5
were drawn by the Irish-Italian brothers, Edmond and Hercules Doran. It seems the
earlier tradition for Italians, Portuguese and the French to be employed to make charts
for the King and his advisers continued. From this period also date the charts of the
American coast from Cape Florida to Chesapeake Bay drawn by the English artist
John White and the charts of the South Atlantic and the Pacific associated with
Francis Drake’s and Thomas Cavendish’s expeditions of 1586-88 and 1591-2
respectively. In the 1590s the number of charts surviving and the areas covered
remained similar, but with the additional coverage of the Caribbean and northern
South America, reflecting English privateering activities and exploration in these
regions. At the turn of the century the Indian Ocean and East Indies first appear.
The earliest known copy by the English of a Portuguese sea-atlas showing the route to
the East Indies was drawn by Martin Llewellyn, an Oxford graduate and later steward
of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London. The 1600s see the re-emergence of interest
in Arctic waters, this time the exploration of Spitsbergen (confusingly called
Greenland) and of Greenland itself, more usually spelt Groenland on maps. From
1611 to 1630 the number and coverage of surviving charts remains similar, the most
notable item being a medium-scale atlas ( 1:500,000 approx) of the East Indies by the
professional chart-maker, Gabriel Tatton, dated about 1619. The charts were drawn
from first-hand experience in the East Indies.
The trends therefore, as reflected by these surviving maritime representations relate to
the war-like and exploratory pre-occupations of the English especially in the 1580s
and 90s. This is hardly surprising. Few navigational charts or those relating to trade in
the Baltic or in the Mediterranean survive. Part of the reason must be the loss of
charts on board or, as they were the personal property of the sailors, they presumably
wore out and were thrown away or else passed on from seaman to seaman until they
were of no further use. Some as we have seen like the Borough chart fragment ended
up being sold for use as bindings.

The English view

Now we know what the coverage of English charts was, both by maps of the world
showing circumnavigations and those of particular parts of the world, what did the
English world look like? How did it differ from that of that of their continental
contemporaries, if at all, and at this period in the late sixteenth century with that of the
Flemish geographer Gerard Mercator?
Chronologically the first maps of the English perception of the world were those of
John Dee.19 His maps of the western and eastern hemispheres above the Equator
record the knowledge and the hopes from historical and other contemporary sources of
ways to the west and east to China as well as the knowledge of the North American
coasts. If we look at his map of the Eastern hemisphere the way to Cathay or China
was that of the North East Passage which was first described by R A Skelton in 1971
and subsequently lost to view until 1981.20

19
John Dee, maps of the western and eastern hemispheres of the world,1580 are at BL
Cott.Aug. I art.I and at Burghley House, Stamford, Lincolnshire.
20
This map at Burghley House Stamford is endorsed I think by William Cecil with the

6
[Fig 3 John Dee’s map of the way to China via the North East Passage 1580.
Endorsed in William Cecil’s hand: ‘The cart of ye passage to Cathaia by Mr Jho.
Dee.’ Burghley House, Stamford, Lincolnshire]
Here, after the voyages of his friends the Boroughs, the view of John Dee was a
markedly different one from that of Gerard Mercator. Dee evidently discussed this
divergence with William Cecil, as amongst the maps in Cecil's collection is a copy of
Mercator’s inset from his world map of 156921 which shows Mercator’s view of the
Arctic regions and in particular the latitude values of the most northerly point on the
Asian coast-Cape Tabin. The inset is annotated in manuscript not by Cecil but
probably by Dee, ‘Gerar Mercator’ and has some additional lines of longitude in
manuscript on it. Presumably the printed inset was acquired for the purpose, amongst
others, of compiling Dee’s own map and for a graphic comparison and discussion of
his views with Cecil and others. Dee was firmly convinced that the whole voyage
from Wardhouse on the northerly coast of Norway to the Tabin promontory, thought
to be the most northerly point of Asia and thus the greatest obstacle to finding the way
to China was 1800 English miles. Mercator's view as expressed in the inset of the
world map was that, although the Tabin promontory was in the same longitude as that
given by Dee it lay in 75 N and thus a narrower waterway separated it from the
supposed Arctic landmass. In contrast to this Dee wrote in his instructions to Pet and
Jackman, ‘allowing in a discovery voyage for one day with another but 50 English
miles, it is evident that from Wardhouse to Tabin, or come to the longitude of 142
degrees, as your chart sheweth, or two three, four or five degrees further Easterly (a
hint here of uncertainty), it is probable you shall finde the land on your right hand
runne much Southerly and Eastward’.
They agreed on the longitude of the Tabin Promontory but Mercator put it in latitude
75 degrees North and had a very small sea way between it and the supposed Arctic
landmass, while Dee argued for a more optimistic construction of the geography once
past the mouth of the river Ob, which at that time was known to the English and
Russian land explorers coming north from Moscow.
Dee's views were not mere hypothesis, however, and it was William Borough who
provided Anthony Jenkinson with his information about the coastline from
Wardhouse to the river Ob for his map of 1562, subsequently published by Abraham
Ortelius in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of 1570. Referring to the Jenkinson map he

words: ‘ The cart of ye passage to Cathaia by Mr Jho. Dee.’ The author was able to
examine the map at Burghley House on 8 May 1981 after the Ortelius atlas in which it
had been inserted had been re-discovered by the Marquess of Exeter’s secretary. R A
Skelton first described the map in Skelton and Summerson in A description of maps
… at Hatfield House (1971). He pointed out that the divergence of views of the
possibility of the way to China between Dee and Mercator could be demonstrated by a
comparison of the Dee map and that of the Arctic shown as an inset on Mercator’s
world map of 1569. Although E G R Taylor was unaware of the Dee map she had
already correctly noted the divergence of views between Mercator and Dee in her
prescient article in Imago Mundi XII,103-6.
21
The inset with the annotations described is at Hatfield House ( CPM I a) and a
photocopy is held in the Map Library at the British Library.

7
says that he, Borough had 'placed that border of the sea coast ' that is from Wardhouse
to the river Ob.22 Borough had already recorded graphically what he knew of the coast
round the river Ob in his own instructions to James Bassendine in 1568 for his
discovery of the Kara Sea.23 Here we see exactly what the Borough brothers knew of
the area around the Ob. The prominent Yamal peninsula is implied by his evident
awareness of the river 'Carra' and ' Narmze' flowing into a large bay to the west, and
the big mountain 'kame Bolshoy.'
[Fig 4 Sketch of the mouth of the river Ob, 1568. BL Lansdowne MS 10. f.133]
[Fig 5 A view of the ‘sandhills’ 115 ft high at the mouth of the Ob.]
Dee recorded that ' our countrymen ( under Mr Stephen a Borough being master) have
survey'd some part of the ocean thereabouts: as about the yles of Vaygatz: and more
over northerly and by most of yt, they have byn on shoare on the land of Nova Zemlya
which is well known to be a separate land from the Scythian or Mucovite shoares in
those quarters and so there is to be good navigation yf due season bee observed.'24This
was common knowledge locally and we may suppose that Borough's sketch of 1568
was derived from what he was told by a Russian fisherman called Loshak whom the
Burroughs met off Nova Zemlya in July 1556. The rivers and mountain Borough
records were named by Loshak who made ' certain demonstrations of the way to the
Ob' for Borough. The word 'sandhills' at the mouth of the Ob probably correctly
identifies prominent sand-dunes and bars along the estuary which were recorded again
by Anthony Marsh the Muscovy Company's factor in 1584.25
This mental map combined with local observations and knowledge of a sea route to
China as more easily negotiable along the northern coasts through a wider sea way
than that proposed by Mercator was accepted by the Muscovy company and,
presumably by Cecil, as being worth investigation. Nor was the knowledge confined
to just the company and court. A verse of 1602 ' Albion's England' refers to Borough
and to the English discovery of Russia!
'It is no common labour to the river Ob to sayle,
Howbeit Burrough did therein, not dangerles preuaile
He through the foresayd frozen seas in Lapland did arrive
and thence to expedite for Ob, his labours did revive.'
The Pet and Jackman expedition of 1580 set out to prove Dee’s hypothesis again, but
failed to get beyond the Ob again.

22
W Borough, Of the variation of the Compass. Sig Fiiiv.
23
BL Landsdowne MS 10.f 133 ( at bottom of page). Endorsed, ‘Advise of William
Borrowe for the discoverye of the sea and coasts beyond Pechora wheather the way be
open to catajia [ie China] or not.’
24
John Dee, ‘Famous and Rare Discoveries.’ MS BL Cott.MS Vitell
CVII.f.68v,70,71v.
25
T. Armstrong, ‘ In search of a sea route to Siberia,1553-1619.’ Arctic (1984) 37,4
429-440

8
Hypothetical and observational cartography
This exploratory process, however, by which a rather notional view of the world,
based on ancient authority mixed with rumour and local reports was overtaken by an
evolving cartographic image, as the region was discovered and recorded is common to
the history of European cartography, whether it relates to the sixteenth, seventeenth or
to the eighteenth century. For example Borough’s instructions to these Muscovy
company explorers are reminiscent of those given to James Cook two centuries later
by the Admiralty for the discovery of the Pacific. The same can be said of the
methodologies adopted for the discovery of the North West Passage both in the
sixteenth and later in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
It is equally characteristic of the exploratory and cartographic process, that
geographical knowledge is acquired and lost, and sometimes found again like the
Burghley-Dee map! The knowledge acquired by the English in the late sixteenth
century about the north Russian coastline had disappeared by the 1660s. By then the
Royal Society, on the basis of a Russian source of dubious provenance, assumed that
the island of Novaya Zemlya was attached to the Russian coast and the way through to
the river Ob was blocked by a gulf, ‘the Dulcis Sinus.' . The only way round the North
Asian coast was thought to lie north of Novaya Zemlya and expeditions round Novaya
Zemlya were attempted and failed.26
[ Fig 6 Joseph Moxon’s map of the northern hemisphere 1660. BL 792.d.8. The
‘Sinus Dulcis’ which now barred the way to the coast of Northern Russia
cartographically can be seen top centre immediately below ‘Nova Zembla.’]
Again to take different area of the world, the charts of the north channel of the river
Amazon drawn by the English in the 1610s were quite different in coverage and style
from the earlier and contemporary Portuguese ones of the Amazon.27 A synthesized
view of the Amazon composed of Anglo-Dutch and Portuguese content eventually
emerged in the work of Robert Dudley and in the Dutch printed atlases of the mid-
seventeenth century, in particular in the work of Vingboons. By this time the retreat
of the English to their Caribbean and North American colonies, leaving the
Portuguese and Dutch in South America meant the earlier discovery of the north
channel by the English had been forgotten or disregarded and the story became a
Dutch or Portuguese story. One of the cul-de sacs of history but no less interesting in
the light it sheds on the nature of exploratory and cartographic activity over time,
which to be sustained is dependent upon factors exterior to the process itself.
In some areas of the world, of course, the chart makers were able to make important
modifications and improvements, which were sustained as trade began or continued in
the areas concerned. This can be seen in the close cartographical relationship between
the Dutch and English charting of the East Indies where the Linschoten- Portuguese
view prevalent until about 1600 was gradually revised by the English and Dutch,
specifically by Hessel Gerrits the Hydrographer to the Dutch East India Company and
by the English chartmaker Gabriel Tatton who seems to have worked both in Holland

26
Joseph Moxon, ‘ Map of the Northern Hemisphere’ [1660] BL 792.d.8, opp.p.1.
27
See Sarah Tyacke, ‘English charting of the river Amazon c1595-c 1630.’ Imago
Mundi (1980) 32,73-89.

9
and in England and sailed with the English East India Company. In terms of
demonstrating the emerging world-view, the most relevant chart by Tatton is that of
the island of Celebes.28 Here the distinct octopus-like shape of its east coast caused
the Portuguese, English and Dutch navigators and chart makers great difficulty in
navigation. Drake ran aground there. Tatton produced a new view of Celebes in about
1619, similar to that which was to be incorporated into the official charts of the Dutch
East India Company drawn by Hessel Gerrits in 1621. This cartographic view of the
island was not accurate from a modern point of view, but understandable if one
considers how the ship must have travelled past the island. The general chart of the
whole island, which joined up the points of the peninsulas to make a solid, almost
rectangular shape had the advantage to the navigator who could thereby safely
circumnavigate the island, avoiding the dangerous inlets.
[Fig 7 Celebes in Gabriel Tatton’s atlas of sea charts c 1619 Hydographic Department,
Naval Library VA 32]
Here, therefore, the combination of Dutch and English experience changed a bit of the
world view quite clearly and was sustained and itself improved on subsequent charts.
The superior organisation of the Dutch East India Company and the printing capacity
of the Dutch, together with their defeat of the English in 1621 at Amboyna in the East
Indies meant that the new view for the mid seventeenth century and later was, and is
today, assumed to be Dutch.
Style
What can we say about the style of the charts? It is hardly possible to talk of an
English style strictly speaking until 1614, with the emergence of the Drapers
Company chartmakers on the Thames. From the 1580s to1610s there were a number
of people making charts whose styles are similar but it cannot be demonstrated that
they influenced each other. Whether any of them influenced the first of the 'Draper'
chartmaker’s style also remains unclear. The first Draper chartmaker was John
Daniel; his first signed chart dates from 1614 and is of the South Atlantic. After him
come the school which is defined as such by the master-apprenticeship relationship of
the chartmakers in the Draper's Company as described by the late Tom Smith and
Tony Campbell.29 Daniel’s master in the Draper’s Company was James Walsh, a
shipmaster who was also a compass maker at the Iron gate of the Tower of London.
He may have made charts too, as compass makers like Hood and indeed Daniel did,
but none are known. While the connection between Daniel and his fellow
contemporary chartmakers and earlier ones is likely and tempting to construct the
evidence remains circumstantial. Both Daniel and Tatton made charts for ships

28
Gabriel Tatton’s Atlas of the East Indies, c 1619 Hydrographic Department , Naval
Library VA 32.
29
See T Smith, ‘ Manuscript and printed sea charts in seventeenth century London:
the case of the Thames School’ in NJW Thrower, The compleat plattmaker. Essays on
chart, map and globe making in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Berkeley:
University of California,1978 and T Campbell, ‘The Drapers Company and its school
of seventeenth century chart makers.’ in H Wallis and S Tyacke (ed) My head is a
Map: a festschrift for RV Tooley. London: Francis Edwards and Carter Press,
1973,81-106

10
masters working for the East India company. Like their contemporaries they lived on
the Thames; Daniel at the Irongate in St Katherines near the Tower of London, Tatton
a mile down river at Ratcliff and both are known to have been to sea: their periods of
known chartmaking activity overlap. Daniel’s first surviving chart is of 1614 and
Tatton’s last of about 1619. If the evidence for a stylistic connection between Tatton
and Daniel is circumstantial, the connection between Tatton and the North Holland
School is clearer.

The Dutch Connection

There is a demonstrable connection between the work of Gabriel Tatton (d 1621) and
the North Holland School. Based on the towns of Edam and Enkhuizen a group of
chartmakers drew their charts in similar style. In all 29 examples of their work
survive dating from 1589-1622. The earliest member of the group seems to have
been Cornelis Doedtsz (fl1589-d1613), who drew, amongst others, charts of the
European coasts, the Indian Ocean the East Indies and the Atlantic Ocean. Working at
the same time were Jan Dircksz Rijckemans, Evert Gijsbertz, Lucas Jansz Waghenaer,
Joris Carolus, Augustijn Robaert and the brothers Harmen and Marten Jansz. It is
unfortunate that the apprenticeship records do not survive so, as with the early English
chartmakers pre-Daniel, the exact relationship cannot be known. However by
comparing the styles of particular decorative elements, such as compass roses, and
scale bars used it is possible to see the common use of some of the elements.

Of Tatton’s surviving work drawn between 1596 and 1621 three charts survive which
exhibit North Holland School characteristics. These are the charts of the
Mediterranean formerly thought to be of 1596, but now more likely to be c1600, of
the Pacific 1600 and of the Atlantic 1602. All his later work is far simpler and cannot
be attributed in particular to the North Holland School.
The Tatton chart of the Pacific 1600, although different in delineation from both
Doedstz’s and Gijsbertsz’s charts of the same area drawn in 1598 and 1599
respectively still exhibits close affinities in style. The most striking is the illustration
of an Amazon upon an Armadillo representing America. This device was commonly
used by Dutch engravers to illustrate both maps and journals which related to
America.32 Tatton’s figure was also present on the world maps of Harmen and
Marten Jansz’s MS charts of 1606 and of 1610. The original drawing for this
particular figure is to be found in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam: it was drawn by
De Vos in 1589 and is preparatory to the print, ‘America’ engraved by A Collaert.
[Fig 9 The Amazon on the chart of the Pacific 1600 by Gabriel Tatton, Florence
Biblioteca Nazionale Pf .33]
[Fig 10 Harmen and Marten Jansz’s maps of the world 1606 and 1610 National

32
See Gunter Schilder, Monumenta Cartographica Neerlandici , 1996 vol V chp II.I
‘Engraved allegorical representations of the four continents.’ The earliest printed
version seems to that in the bottom left hand corner of Plancius’s Orbis Terrarum
Typus as published in Linschoten’s Itinerario 1594.

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Maritime Museum]
[Fig 11 Drawing by De Vos for an engraving by A Collaert 1589. Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum Darmstadt,Inv.nr AE 441]

That Tatton was influenced by the North Holland School and, presumably, also by his
knowledge of Dutch drawing and practices is further clear from the signature on the
Pacific chart of 1600.
[Fig 8 Legend on Gabriel Tatton’s chart of Pacific Ocean 1600, Florence, Biblioteca
Nazionale Pf.33.This connection is corroborated by a written legend on a chart by
Gabriel Tatton which says in Dutch that he was an Englishman from London and he
made the chart.]
He writes in Dutch 'Bij mijn Gabriell Tatton van London Englishman'. He was, we
may assume, in Holland. The only clue to where Tatton was in Holland is provided
by the English engraver Benjamin Wright who engraved parts of Tatton’s MS maps of
the Pacific and of the Atlantic in Holland to make a map of America and one of the
Pacific which the publisher Cornelis Claesz issued in 1600. The engraved versions of
the maps are referred to in a list issued by Claesz in 1609. 33 Wright was in Holland
between 1599 and 1602. At that time he was also doing hack work for Bernard
Langenes’s Caert-Thresoor. Langenes was active between 1589 and 1605 and lived in
Middleburg. The engraved map of central America and California is described on it
as being edited by ‘M Tattonus’, the chart of the Pacific bears the legend ‘G Tattonus
Auct.’ The other Tatton charts which are stylistically like the North Holland School
were made by him in London. As we do not know when Tatton was born and his
first firmly dated chart is of the Pacific in the North Holland style, apparently made by
him in Holland in 1600, it seems likely he learnt or improved his skill as a chart-
maker in the Netherlands and brought back this skill and style to London. His last
chartmaking trip was to the East Indies on board the East India Company ship, The
Elizabeth. He died in Japan in 1621 when he fell overboard drunk!
Conclusion
Between 1580 and 1640 the English world view came into being for the first time
and over the period altered quite extensively; it did not alter merely according to what
was found but also according to shifting governmental and commercial interests,
including colonial ones towards the end of the period. The story however was not
just an English one but a composite, which altered as relative European power in
particular areas altered and was subject to whoever held control of the media, as we
would term it today: in the seventeenth century the Dutch printing houses were all
pervasive and, as we have seen, even in the manuscript chart field the Dutch influence
came to the fore in the seventeenth century after the earlier English innovative period.

33
Information from Gunter Schilder about the Const ende Caert-Register of Cornelis
Claesz printed in 1609 which describes the two engraved Tatton charts as ‘Mare del
Zur’ and ‘De Caert van Mexikco ende California’. Both were priced at ‘2 stuyvers, 8
penninghen.’ See also Philip Burden, The Mapping of North America ( London ,1996)
nos 135 and 136.

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For the English picture the Amazon (and Guiana) was found and lost, the North East
Passage failed to be found, but the coast of Northern Russia was discovered as far as
the mouth of the river Ob and then this knowledge disappeared from view again to be
replaced by an erroneous one. The East Indies changed shape. North America gained
more northerly coastlines east and west and Baffin and Hudson Bays were described;
the North West Passage remained elusive and the subject of conjecture again until the
mid-eighteenth century.
As is clear the relationship between discovery, drawing and notions of the world by
the English and their European contemporaries is not simply one of linear progress
but, as measured by today, a constant battle to make sense of the world’s coastlines,
which ebbed and flowed in intensity as interest, commercial, political, and colonial
put one or other area of the world under the chartmaker’s spotlight.
In European chart making terms the English (and the Dutch) were the late arrivals,
but nevertheless they charted the world’s coastlines and produced, as did Richard
Hakluyt in prose, a view of the world derived both from their own first-hand
experience and from compilations taken and improved upon from their European
contemporaries. The charts, which survive, show us the picture of the world the
English first constructed in the late 1570s and show how that view developed into the
mid-seventeenth century and beyond. Unlike the Dutch, it was a view which for the
most part remained in manuscript and had, as such, a far smaller currency outside
government, university, maritime and mathematical circles, than the printed atlases of
the Dutch and, of course, the published stories of Hakluyt and Purchas.

Sarah Tyacke, London

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