Beautiful early map of Scotland based on Mercator's map of 1595, here reduced for the 1637 edition of Camden's "Britannia."
William Camden first published his venerable geo-historical compendium of Great Britain and Ireland, “Britannia” in 1586 and it proved extremely popular. By 1589, encouraged by the success of Christopher Saxton’s atlas, Camden began preparations to illustrate his work with a set of county maps. Despite this lengthy lead time, the first time the work contained a set of county maps was in the 1607 sixth edition of the work. The maps injected a new lease of life into the publication and it became such a library staple that further editions were issued into the early 19th century, albeit with different maps.
The Saxton Kip or Saxton Hole maps, as they are generally known, provide an almost unique opportunity for the collector to acquire either the first available or second available map of a particular English county. These maps were only present in the sixth, seventh and eighth edition of the Britannia published 1607, 1610 and 1637 before the maps were revised and updated by other cartographers. They were usually issued in black and white but on very rare occasions, bespoke colouring was added at the time of publishing.
Camden’s map is derived from Mercator’s map of 1595 which in turn was taken from an earlier wall map of Great Britain, again produced by Mercator. It remained the standard model of maps of Scotland for the first half of the 17th century, popularised by its inclusion within the re-issues of the Mercator atlas by Jodocus Hondius and his descendants as well a John Speed. Hole does add an extremely elaborate compass rose as well as a beautiful cartouche on the right of the map.
The example offered here is from the 1637 edition of the work and is distinguished by particularly fine original colouring from the same year. [SCOT1789]