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of world geography for years to come. Speed started his working life on a lower
rung of the social ladder than did Samuel Purchas: he was a Cheshire tailor, the
son of a Cheshire tailor. Speed broke from his fate by moving to London in his
late twenties and plying his trade there. He also indulged in what fellow members
of the tailors' guild referred to as a 'very rare and ingenious capacitie in drawing
and setting forthe mappes'. His first published map, of Canaan in Biblical times,
a considerable production printed on four large sheets, caught the attention of the
poetandparliamentarianFulkeGreville.GrevillebecameSpeed'spatron,findinga
sinecure for him in the customs service - conferred on him by Elizabeth I - so that
he could put tailoring aside and pursue a full-time career as a cartographer and an-
tiquarian. Speed later thanked Greville in print for 'setting this hand free from the
daily imployment of a manuall trade, and giving it full liberty thus to express the
inclination of my mind'. Just as importantly, his patron sponsored him for mem-
bership in the Society of Antiquaries. This organisation, founded by the Westmin-
sterschoolmasterWilliamCamdenandthevirtuososcholarRobertCottonin1586,
was the centre of cutting-edge scholarship in the 1590s, when Speed joined. Both
Camden and Cotton would take personal interest in Speed's work, Cotton in par-
ticular by giving him free access to his extraordinary manuscript library, which he
would also open to Selden a decade later.
Thusitwasthatthesonofatailorwasdrawnintotheranksofthegreatscholars
and poets of the age. With their encouragement he took on ever grander projects.
His first major commission was to produce the maps for the King James Bible,
which was issued in 1611. The next year he published Theatre of the Empire of
Great Britaine , Britain's first truly national atlas. * Sixteen years later he brought
out his Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World , the grandest atlas Britain
had ever seen.
Thatthesonofatailor -likethesonofaclothmerchant (Purchas)orthesonof
a fiddler (Selden) - could make this social leap was a conspicuous aspect of what
madetheElizabethanandStuartageunlikeanyotherinEnglishhistory-andglar-
ingly unlike its contemporary, Ming China. Luo Hongxian, the author of the ori-
ginal from which the map Purchas printed was derived, was about as far from tail-
oring as anyone could be. He started out in life with all the advantages of someone
whose family was prepared to propel him upthe ladder ofgovernment service. His
father had passed the highest civil service examination, winning the title of jinshi
(Presented Scholar) in 1499,and had gone onto enjoy a satisfactory if unspectacu-
lar career. Luo passed the jinshi exam himself in 1529 at the young age of twenty-
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