Hiberniae

The first English map of Ireland engraved by William Hole for the 1637 edition of William 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.
The map of Ireland is on an East to West orientation with south pointing to the left and its geographical source is fundamentally Mercator, including following the same orientation. However, it shows several improvements, mainly taken from the posthumous editions of Ortelius atlas, issued by Johann Vrients from 1603 onwards. Vrients added a new map of Ireland drawn by Battista Boazio to the atlas, again on the same orientation and the Camden bears several similarities to this new addition.
The interior shows the counties, or shires, including the Kingdom of Desmond, near Cork. The original colour has added the delineation of the shires or historical Kingdoms of the county although Connaught seems to be the only of these to be named.

Aesthetically, the map is very striking, with several sea monsters present in the sea as well as a galleon. A large compass rose is engraved in the lower left corner and the cartouche, on the lower centre, shows the names by which classical writers knew Ireland.

This is the first English map of Ireland.

The example offered here is from the 1637 edition and is distinguished by the addition of beautiful original colour contemporaneous to time of publishing. [IRE2069]