1595 Mercator Map of Southeast England, including London (First Edition)

An old color, first edition 1595 Gerard Mercator map of southeastern England, including London. It highlights the tricky waters of the English Channel, which had so recently rescued England from the 1588 Spanish Armada.

A Closer Look

Coverage ranges from the East Midlands to the English Channel and the Isle of Wight, covering the southeastern portion of England. Cities and towns are labeled throughout, while shires or counties are named in large text, traced, and color-shaded for easy distinction. Rivers, mountains, and forests are also illustrated. London can be seen along the Thames River near the center, while other cities and towns such as Cambridge, Oxford, Portsmouth, and Northampton can be readily located. Known shoals in the English Channel are also indicated, such as the 'Goodwin sandes' northeast of Dover, surrounded by Mercator's distinctive engraving of the seas, which evoke the rough waters between England and France. A portion of France around Calais (Cales) and Dunkirk (Duynkercke) appears at the bottom-right.

Defeat of the Spanish Armada

The Spanish Armada of 1588 was a large naval fleet assembled by King Philip II of Spain (1527 - 1598) to invade England, overthrow Queen Elizabeth I, and reinstate a Catholic monarch. The campaign was also meant to weaken the Dutch Republic and eventually reestablish Spanish (Habsburg) control over it. The fleet represented one of the gravest threats to the Kingdom of England in its history, and its failure helped galvanize a sense of English national identity. The Spanish plan was for a large fleet of ships to leave Lisbon, sail through the English Channel, stop at Calais to meet the Prince of Parma with his imposing Army of Flanders and ferry the army across the English Channel. However, the turbulent weather and seas of the English Channel conspired against the Spanish, whose large transport ships made ready prey for smaller and more maneuverable English ships, which attacked the fleet off Plymouth, Portland, and the Isle of Wight. Although the Spanish lost one ship, most of the armada was intact and continued to Calais, where they discovered that the Army of Flanders was not yet prepared to cross the Channel. Now forced to wait, the Spanish admiral, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, formed a defensive crescent in expectation of an English attack. However, this line was broken, and the Spanish ships were scattered by a fleet of English fireships sent across the Straits of Dover. With his fleet in disarray, the Duke of Medina Sidonia reformed them as best he could, but the expected English attack sank five of his ships and seriously damaged many more at Gravelines (marked as Grevelinge, its Dutch name, here). Unfortunately for the remnants of the Spanish Armada, their troubles were far from over. Scattered in all directions, the ships tried by whatever means to straggle back to Iberia, now battling hunger, damage to their ships, and the turbulent weather and rocky coastlines of the British Isles. Twenty-eight ships sank off the west coast of Ireland due to storms. Meanwhile, the Army of Flanders, realizing their invasion of England would not take place, undertook a costly and ineffective campaign in the Netherlands. In total, the failed invasion was a disaster for Spain and a watershed moment in English history, helping to define the nation and serve as a rallying cry in later national crises, such as the 1940 Battle of Britain.

Publication History and Census

Mercator himself engraved this map for inclusion in his Atlas, although he would not live to see it published as this first edition appeared a year after his death. The plates were later purchased by Jodocus Hondius, who continued to use them as the basis for his own atlases, gradually adding additional plates. The map remained unchanged in the Hondius / Jansson atlases until 1636. (From 1628, Jansson also published a smaller format map of the same title and geographic scope but quite different in appearance for his Atlas Minor.) This present map is an example of the first state and conforms typographically with examples of the 1595 first Latin edition of Mercator's Atlas. In various editions, examples appear on the market from time to time, and the map is reasonably well represented in institutional collections.