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John Speed (1551 or 1552 – 28 July 1629) was an English Cartography, chronologer and historian of Cheshire origins.; superseding . The son of a citizen and Merchant Taylor in London,"Life of John Speed", The Hibernian Magazine, Or, Compendium of Entertaining Knowledge, July 1782, p. 348 (Google). he rose from his family occupation to accept the task of drawing together and revising the histories, topographies and maps of the Kingdoms of Great Britain as an exposition of the union of their monarchies in the person of King James I and VI.
He accomplished this with remarkable success, with the support and assistance of the leading antiquarian scholars of his generation. He drew upon and improved the shire maps of Christopher Saxton, John Norden and others, being the first to incorporate the hundred-boundaries into them, and he was the surveyor and originator of many of the town or city plans inset within them.A. Baynton-Williams, 'John Speed': Relocated since 17 Sept 2012 at Mapforum.com as "Biography: John Speed", Jan 2022 (www. mapforum.com). His work helped to define early modern concepts of British national identity. His Biblical genealogies were also formally associated with the first edition of the King James Bible. He is among the most famous of English mapmakers.John Speed, eds N. Nicolson and A. Hawkyard, The Counties of Britain: A Tudor Atlas, Thames & Hudson (1989) : Pavilion Books (1992) ; (pbk, 1995) .A full coloured original set of Speed's British maps, with their descriptive texts in the Latin 1616 edition of the Theatre, can be viewed online at gallica (Bibliothèque Nationale Française).
By his own account, Speed followed in his father's mercantile business in London,"Life of John Speed", in W. West, The history, topography and directory of Warwickshire (R. Wrightson, Birmingham 1830), pp. 36–37 (Google). and in 1580 he obtained the freedom of the Merchant Taylors' Company by patrimony.'The loving brother of the Mystery, John Speed', in Clode, Early History of the Merchant Taylors, II, at pp. 332-35 (Internet Archive). He had married Susanna (born c. 1557/58), daughter of Thomas Draper of London, in 1571 or 1572,1572 in Greenfield's pedigree of Speed: variant sources give 1575. Susanna died in 1628 after 57 years of marriage to John, according to her M.I. and began to raise a family.A. Taylor, " A Theatre of Treasures", Cambridge University Library Special Collections, 11 October 2016. Most sources state that they had twelve sons and six daughters, of whom the most famous to reach maturity was John Speed, M.D., who studied at Merchant Taylors' School, London and St John's College, Oxford.B.W. Greenfield, 'Pedigree of Speed of Southampton', in J.J. Howard (ed.), Miscellanea Genealogica Et Heraldica Series 3, vol. 2.i, March 1896 (London: Mitchell and Hughes, 1898), pp. 18–25 (Internet Archive).E. Kell, 'On the Castle and Other Ancient Remains at Southampton', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, Ser.1, XXI (1865), pp. 285-93, at pp. 289–290, note 2 (Internet Archive).R. Gough, Anecdotes of British Topography: Or, an Historical Account of What Has Been Done For Illustrating The Topographical Antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland (London: W. Richardson and S. Clark, 1768, reprinted in 2014), pp. 184, 448 It appears that the Speed family was fairly well-to-do.Palmer, "The Town of Holt", pp. 421, 425, 429.
In around 1590 Speed was working with the Puritan scholar Hugh Broughton, and developing their work on the genealogies of Jesus Christ. By 1595 he published a map of biblical Canaan,J. Taylor, "John Speed's 'Canaan' and British Travel to Palestine", in D. G. Burke, J. F. Kutsko and P. H. Towner (eds), The King James Version at 400: Assessing Its Genius as Bible Translation and Its Literary Influence (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2013), pp. 103ff., at pp. vi, 102, 104–119, 121, 159, 182. and in 1598 he presented his maps to Queen Elizabeth. As a reward for these efforts, Elizabeth granted Speed the position of a Waiter (a customs officer):
He was by then a scholar with a highly developed pictorial faculty.W. Goffart, "The First Venture into 'Medieval Cartography" in J. A. Roberts, J. L. Nelson and M. Godden (eds) Alfred the Wise: Studies in Honour of Janet Bately on the Occasion of her Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Woodbridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 1997) pp. 57–58. In 1600 he presented three maps of his own making to the Merchant Taylors, who hung them in their Hall or Parlour and made provision for them to be protected by curtains. This gift was remembered in 1601 when Speed sought a lease from the company on a property in Fenchurch Street, a request which failed owing to a higher claim:
In 1598 he contributed a genealogical and heraldic frontispiece to Thomas Speght's edition of the Works of Geffrey Chaucer, reprinted 1602.T. Speght (ed.), The Workes of our Ancient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer, newly printed (Adam Islip for George Bishop, London 1598, 1602), frontis. (Internet Archive).
In May 1612 Prince Henry asked the Merchant Taylors for his lease on the Company's house in Fenchurch Street to be renewed for Sir Arthur Ingram, as reward for Ingram's good service as Master of the Customs House - which was granted, "to the prejudice" of their brother John Speed.C.M. Clode, The Early History of the Guild of Merchant Taylors of the Fraternity of St John the Baptist, London, 2 vols (Harrison and Sons, London 1888), I, p. 333 (Internet Archive). In the 1611 conclusion of his History Speed wrote of "my disease growne dangerous, and life held in suspence."Speed, History, 1st edition (1611) p. 897 His friend Alexander Gill contributed one of the commendatory verses of the work to Speed, "being very sicke", and wrote that his "...cruell symptomes, and these thirteene yeers assay / For thy deare country, doth thy health & strength decay."Speed, History, 1st edition (1611) Front matter. (This dates the commencement of the project to about 1598, as Degory Wheare thought.D. Wheare, The Method and Order of Reading both Civill and Ecclesiasticall Histories (M. Flesher for Charles Brome, London 1685), Part 1, Section XXXI, pp. 164-168; full text at Umich/eebo.) But it was as a very renowned person that in 1614 Speed negotiated for the Merchant Taylors the renewal of their lease of the gardens and "tayntor" grounds (racks for the drying of dyed clothsR. Leech, "Documentary evidence - Temple Fee and the Rack Closes", in K. Colls, 'The Avon Floodplain at Bristol: Excavations at Templar House, Temple Way, in Bristol 2004 and 2005', Transactions of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society CXXVIII (2010), pp. 73-120 (Society's pdf), at p. 106 p. 35.) in the prebendary lands at Moorfields which the Company held from the Chapter of St. Paul's.
In 1615 Speed requested of the Company the renewal and extension of the lease on a garden and tenement, granted by them in 1594 to George Sotherton, which Speed had since held and upon which he had built "a fayer house", but which he had afterwards surrendered to them with nine years of his tenure still outstanding. A new term of 31 years as from Christmas 1614 was approved. Speed then purchased an adjacent garden and plot of taynter to enlarge his own grounds, and in 1618 (after inspection by the Master and Wardens) obtained the Company's permission to annex it and to enclose it with a wall, together with another new lease. As the lease of the premises was later renewed to his heirs, it appears that this house and grounds remained John Speed's residence until his death.
During the same period Speed greatly enlarged his work on the sacred chronologies and genealogies, as A Clowde of Witnesses (1616, 2nd 1620): and after re-issue in various forms, his History and Theatre were newly presented as a Second, revised Edition, in 1623. In his last years, Speed was working on further revisions and adaptations of his atlas in other formats, and on the materials for his world atlas, which took shape as his Prospect of the Most Famous Parts of the World in 1627. He continued to maintain his annals, though by April 1626 he had become blindJ. Bruce (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, Charles I: 1625-1626 (Longman, Brown, Green, Longman, & Roberts, London 1858) p. 308, no. 72. and suffered from the stone.
In October 1610 Speed was granted a royal patent by King James to publish his genealogical work.M.A.E. Green (ed.), Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, James I: 1603-1610 (Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, London 1857), p. 639 (Google). In 1611, as The Genealogies recorded in the Sacred Scriptures according to euery family and tribe with the line of Our Sauior Jesus Christ obserued from Adam to the Blessed Virgin Mary, it was incorporated into the first edition of the King James Bible. For many years, this work (which had its own title-page) was bound into all copies of the Authorised Version, and it was reprinted for that purpose many times during the 17th century.See, e.g., a 1636 printing bound in with a 1637 Robert Barker bible in the British Library, digitized at Google. It contained some now-famous illustrations, including an image of Adam and Eve taking fruit from the forbidden tree in the Garden of Eden, and a tree of the nations of the world arising out of Noah's Ark. The royal patent enabled Speed to have the profit of it in reward for his various great labours. Speed is said to have admitted, for this reason, that "Mr Broughton was a means under God of great Blessings to him, and his Children, for worldly comforts": he also reputedly confessed to having burned a great quantity of Broughton's manuscripts.
This work was not merely an ornamental adjunct to the Bible, but had the serious intellectual purpose of expounding a resolution (or at least an explanation) of the differing descents of Jesus Christ from King David as they are recited in the Gospels of St Matthew and St Luke. His continuation and finishing of the Map of Canaan originated by a Puritan scholar, the Norwich minister and chronologer John More (who died in 1592), appeared with the date 1611 in the King James Version. But the version of this map which includes portraits of More and Speed was engraved after the Great Fire of London (1666), in which the original plates were destroyed (according to a text within the later map).
In 1616 Speed developed the genealogies into a longer work, A Cloud of Witnesses confirming the Humanity of Christ Ihesus, with lengthy textual explanations, in twelve chapters, for the descents shown in his diagrams or family trees. The first issue was printed by John Beale for Daniel Speed:J. Speed, A Clowd of Witnesses and They the Holy Genealogies of the Sacred Scriptures (By John Beale for Daniel Speed, in Pauls Church Yard at the sign of the Blazing Starre, 1616): page views at Google. (Daniel was presumably the stationer who had licence to marry Matilda Garrett in February 1617/18). Beale printed a second edition in 1620, with a dedication to George Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury 1611-1633,J. Speed, A Clowd of Witnesses and They the Holy Genealogies of the Sacred Scriptures. Confirming unto us the truth of the histories in Gods most holy word, and the humanitie of Christ Iesus. The second addition. (John Beale, London 1620): full text at Umich/eebo. and a third appeared in 1628 printed by Felix Kyngston for Edward Blackmore, Speed's son-in-law.(Worldcat). Speed's distinctive style of genealogical diagram, with the names contained in circular bubbles linked in chains, later appeared in the royal genealogies in the 1623 edition of the History.
The chronicler John Stow (died 1605, also a Merchant Taylor), Speed's elder contemporary, from 1562 sought to disentangle the confused order of the English Chronicles, finding much fault in "the ignorant handling of ancient affairs" by Richard Grafton: Stow's Summarie of Englyshe Chronicles (and its abridgement) of 1566/67, several times republished,e.g. J. Stow, A Summarie of the Chronicles of England. Diligently collected, abridged, and continued unto... 1598 (Richard Bradocke, London 1598). his Chronicles of England from Brute unto this present yeare of Christ, 1580,J. Stow, The Chronicles of England from Brute Unto this Present Yeare of Christ 1580 (R. Newberie and H. Bynneman, London 1580), full text at Umich/eebo. and his The Annales of England (1592, 1601, 1605),J. Stow, The Annales of England 2nd edition (Felix Kyngston for Ralphe Newbery, London 1601), page views at Internet Archive. which itself lists a very wide range of sources, were the immediate predecessors to Speed's History,D. R. Woolf, Reading History in Early Modern England (Cambridge University Press, 2000) pp. 39–42. from the historical aspect, as Camden's Britannia in the 1607 edition (with county maps) was his chorographical precedent. Stow announced a (much larger) forthcoming history of Britain, A Historie of this Iland, in 1592, but it never reached publication.C. L. Kingsford, English Historical Literature in the Fifteenth Century (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1913), p. 268 (Hathi Trust).G. J. R. Parry, 'John Stow's unpublished "Historie of this Iland": amity and enmity amongst sixteenth-century scholars', English Historical Review, CII (1987), pp. 633–47. Editions of Florence of Worcester,W. Howard of Naworth (ed.), Florentii Wigorniensis monachi Chronicon ex Chronicis ab initio mundi usque ad Ann. Dom. 1118 (Excudebat Thomas Dausonus pro Ricardo Watkins, London 1592) the Flores Historiarum,As "Matthaeus Westmonasteriensis" (Thomas Marsh, London 1573) (with Florentius Wigorniensis) (Typis Wechelianis apud Claudium Marnium et heredes Ioannis Aubrii, Frankfurt 1601). and of William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon and others in Sir Henry Savile's Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post BedamH. Savile, Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam (G. Bishop, R. Nuberie and R. Barker, London 1596). came into print in the same period. The standard available edition of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica (a primary text for the early medieval history of England) was in volume III of the Hervagius (Johannes Herwagen) 1563 Opera Bedae Venerabilis. Opera Bedae Venerabilis Presbyteri, Anglosaxonis: Viri in Diuinis atque Humanis Literis Exercitatissimi: omnia in octo tomos distincta (Basileae: Joannes Hervagius 1563), III, p. 1 ff.
Speed naturally drew extensively on the work of his predecessors, including Christopher Saxton and John Norden as cartographers, William Camden as chorographer ( Britannia 1586),W. Camden, Britannia, sive Florentissimorum Regnorum, Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae et Insularum adiacentium ex intima antiquitate Chorographica descriptio (Cum Privilegio: Ralph Newbery, London 1587). and upon Stow and other late chroniclers, in so vast an undertaking (for which Speed considered his own powers quite insufficient), while at the same time revising, improving, verifying and subjecting to scholarly scrutiny all that he could, and where possible obtaining new expert contributions. Some letters survive from Speed to Sir Robert Cotton, written in the years before publication, asking for assistance in gathering necessary materials.'XXXI: John Speed the Historian to Sir Robert Cotton' (etc.), in H. Ellis (ed.), Original Letters of Eminent Literary Men (Camden Society, London 1843), p. 104 and pp. 108–113. Speed acknowledged gratefully that Sir Robert's cabinets were unlocked and his library set open, to supply the "chiefest garnishments" of this work, such as antique altars and trophies, and ancient coins, seals and medals: that the books and collections of John Barkham were similarly brought to his assistance; and that William Smith, Rouge Dragon, had particularly helped in matters of heraldry.
From the first page of the Histories a fresh approach is afoot. Speed dispenses with the full list of pseudo-historic rulers stemming from Brutus the supposed founder of Britain, drawn from Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain and repeated by Stow,J. Stow, "The race of the Kings of Brytaine after the received opinion since Brute, &c", in The Annales of England (Felix Kyngston for Ralphe Newbery, London 1601), at pp. 11-21 (Internet Archive). and instead touches upon the Trojan theory in his discussion of the Name of Britain. Coming into the Saxon narrative, marginal references identify the sources of information from Gildas ( De Excidio Britanniae), Bede, Widukind of Corvey and many others, presenting an erudite voice and a discursive historical method, while preserving the structure and chronology relating to the seven kingdoms, and illustrating coins and other materials in true antiquarian fashion. James Spedding, noting the limitations in Speed's account of Henry VII, allowed that his Historie "was enriched with some valuable records and digested with a more discriminating judgement than had been brought to the task before."J. Spedding, 'Preface to the History of the Reign of Henry VII', in J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis and D.D. Heath (eds), The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, vol. 6: Literary and Professional Works, vol. 1, New Edition (Longmans & Co., London 1870), at p. 4 (Internet Archive).
The many coins, seals and other antiquities illustrated in Speed's text were cut by the Swiss wood-engraver Christoph Schweitzer. An important feature of the History is Speed's "Catalogue of the Religious Houses, Colledges, and Hospitals Sometimes in England and Wales", appended to the reign of Henry VIII,Speed, History of Great Britain (1611/1614), pp. 787-802 (Google); (1623), pp. 1059–1105 (Google). said to have been compiled by the elder William Burton."In Catalogo Monasteriorum (a Gulielmo Burton (ut accepi) collecto, et apud Spedum edito)...": H. Spelman, Concilia, Decreta, Leges, Constitutiones in Re Ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici, 3 vols (R. Badger, for Ph. Stepani and Ch. Meredith, London 1636), I, p. 215, Note (Google).W. Nicolson, "J. Speed", in The English Historical Library (Abell Swall and T. Child, London 1696), I, pp. 194-95 (Google).A. Kippis, 'John Speed', in Biographia Britannica, 6 vols (J. Walthoe, etc., London 1763 edition), vol. 6 pt 1, pp. 3773–775, at p. 3774, note E (Google). The list was published in Latin in 1622 as "Catalogus ex Anglico Ioannis Speed, Latinus", as appendix to Nicholas Harpsfield's Historia Anglicana Ecclesiastica."Catalogus Religiosarum Ædium ex Anglico Ioannis Speed, Latinus", in N. Harpsfield and E. Campion, ed. R. Gibbon, Historia Anglicana Ecclesiastica (Marcus Wyon, Douai 1622), pp. 741-79 (Google).
In the Introduction to his "well affected and favourable reader", Speed acknowledged that he had "copied, adapted and compiled the work of others" rather than making an entirely new survey. He took various existing maps as his models, crediting five to Christopher Saxton, five to John Horden, two to William Smith, one to Philip Symonson (Kent) and others to John Harrington (Rutland), William White, Thomas Durham, James Burrell, and Geradus Mercator. Much of the engraving was done in Amsterdam at the workshop of the Flemish engraver Jodocus Hondius, to whom Speed's project was recommended by Camden,"LXIII. G. Camdenus Jodoco Hondio", in T. Smith (ed.), V. Cl. Gulielmi Camdeni et Illustrium Virorum ad G. Camdenum Epistolae (Richard Chiswell, London 1691) pp. 87-88. and with whom Speed collaborated from 1606 until Hondius's sudden death in 1612. The maps were printed by William Hall and John Beale, and sold by John Sudbury and George Humble.Andrew, "Speed maps now in the Cambridge Digital Library" Cambridge University Library Special Collections, 23 March 2015.Gough, Anecdotes of British Topography p. 42.
Speed is admired also for his detailed plans of principal British towns, several of which are the earliest-known depictions of those places and provide valuable topographical insights.N. Nicolson, "Introduction", in John Speed, ed. Nicolson and Hawkyard, Britain's Tudor Maps: County by County (London: British Library, reprint, 2016, originally published in 1988) pp. 7–15. Most, but not all, of the county maps have town plans inset; those showing a Scale of Passes (i.e., Paces, reckoned at five feet imperial) were surveyed by Speed himself. On the back of the maps a text in English appears, describing the areas shown: a rare 1616 edition of the British maps has the text in Latin, in a translation by Philemon Holland, thought to have been produced for the Continental market. Theatrum Imperii Magnæ Britanniæ: exactam regnorum Angliæ Scotiæ Hiberniæ et insularum adiacentium geographiam ob oculos ponens: una cum comitatibus, centurijs, urbibus et primarijs comitatum oppidis intra regnum Angliæ, divisis et descriptis. Opus, nuper quidem à Iohanne Spédo cive Londinensi Anglicè conscriptum: nunc verò, à Philemone Hollando, apud Coventrianos medicinæ doctore, Latinitate donatum (T. Snodham apud Ioann Sudbury et Geo. Humble, London 1616) Bibliothèque Nationale Française His maps of English and Welsh counties were often bordered with costumed figures ranging from nobility to country folk.A. McRae God Speed the Plough: The Representation of Agrarian England, 1500–1660 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002, reprint), pp. xi, 231–232, 238. Speed drew historical maps as well as those depicting present times, showing (for instance) invasions of England and Ireland, or the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy,Goffart, Historical Atlases, pp. xi, 38, 54, 80–81, 83, 105, 112, 123, 201, 203, 443, 471.Gough Anecdotes of British Topography pp. 595, 608.Speed, ed. Nicolson and Hawkyard, Britain's Tudor Maps (2017), pp. 18–21. a subject previously attempted (probably by Laurence Nowell) for William Lambarde's Archaionomia published in 1568.W. Lambarde, Archaionomia, sive De Priscis Anglorum Legibus Libri (John Day, London 1568). View Lambarde's Map as re-used by Day in the Acts and Monuments at dhi.ac.uk.
The "Gardner copies" in the Cambridge University Library are a collection of proof impressions from the engraved copper plates, taken during the process of checking the detail before the publication of 1611. Theatre of the Empire, Gardner Collection, digitized images of the collection (Classmark: Atlas 2.61.1) at Cambridge University Library. In describing his intentions Speed admitted the possibility of errors despite his best endeavours:
The maps, in two-folio spreads, represented: Fol. 1, The British Isles; 3, England (General); 5, The Saxon Heptarchy; 7, Kent; 9, Sussex; 11, Surrey; 13, Hampshire; 15, Isle of Wight; 17, Dorset; 19, Devon; 21 73, Cornwall; 23, Somerset; 25, Wiltshire; 27, Berkshire; 29, Middlesex; 31, Essex; 33, Suffolk; 35, Norfolk; 37, Cambridgeshire; 39, Hertfordshire; 41, Bedfordshire; 43, Buckinghamshire; 45, Oxfordshire; 47, Gloucestershire; 49, Herefordshire; 51, Worcestershire; 53, Warwickshire; 55, Northamptonshire; 57, Huntingdon; 59, Rutland; 61, Leicestershire; 63, Lincolnshire; 65, Nottinghamshire; 67, Derbyshire; 69, Staffordshire; 71, Shropshire; 73 21, Cheshire; 75, Lancashire; 77, Yorkshire; 79, West Riding; 81, North Riding and East Ridings; 83, County Durham; 85, Westmorland; 87, Cumberland; 89, Northumberland; 91, Isle of Man; 93, Islands (Holy Island, the Farne Islands, the Channel Islands). 99, Wales (General); 101, Pembrokeshire; 103, Carmarthenshire; 105, Glamorganshire; 109, Radnorshire; 111, Cardiganshire; 113, Montgomeryshire; 115, Merionethshire; 117, Denbighshire; 119, Flintshire; 121, Carnarvonshire; 123, Anglesey. 131, Scotland (General). 137, Ireland (General); 139, Munster; 141, Leinster; 143, Connaught; 145, Ulster. In 2016, the British Library reprinted this collection of maps of the British Isles with an introduction by Nigel Nicolson and commentaries by Alasdair Hawkyard.Speed, ed. Nicolson and Hawkyard, Britain's Tudor Maps (2017), pp. 6–152.
===Town inserts (examples)===
At 40 shillings, its circulation was limited to wealthier sort of customers, and to libraries, where many copies are nowadays preserved.M. Wynne-Davies, Sidney to Milton, 1580–1660 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 138–141, 171, 179–180, 197.Library of Congress catalog The ilands LondonLibrary of Congress catalog newe mape of Poland 1611.F.J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America's Forgotten Founding Father (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 206.T. Suarez, Early Mapping of Southeast Asia: The Epic Story of Seafarers, Adventurers, and Cartographers Who First Mapped the Regions Between China and India (London: Tuttle Publishing, 2012), p. 512.
His arms, granted by William Camden, are: "Gules, on a chief or, two swifts volant proper". Crest: "On a wreath or and gules a swift volant proper." His monument, in the escutcheon within the broken pediment above the niche, shows these arms impaling "Azure a chevron Ermine between three estoiles Or."
From their funeral monument, it appears that John and Susanna Speed had 12 sons and 6 daughters in all.
Although the monument was damaged by enemy action in 1940–1941, an engraving of 1791 by John Thomas Smith shows how the panels carrying the inscriptions were originally disposed as if forming the opened hinged doors of a cabinet.See also J. J. Baddeley, An Account of the Church and Parish of St Giles, without Cripplegate, in London (Author, London 1888), pp. 90-92 (Internet Archive). The church's website notes that it was "one of the few memorials that survived the bombing" of this church during the London The Blitz of 1940–1941: a modern plaque records that the monument was restored in 1971 by the Merchant Taylors' Company, in which John Speed was a citizen and brother.
The latten is torn away at the toe, suggesting a forceful detachment, but the rivet-holes by which the brass was originally attached to its stone matrix are neatly preserved, suggesting careful removal. The position of the figure indicates that there was once a corresponding, facing plate representing a wife. The squared edge of the brass plate below the foot possibly rested against another brass plate bearing an inscription. The descriptions by Newcourt, Strype and Granger of Speed's monument agree with the text (including the words "On the other side of him" to introduce the inscription for Susanna) given in Anthony Munday's 1633 edition of Stow's Survey of London,'The Remaines', in A. Munday (ed.), The Survey of London; contayning the Orignall, Increase, Moderne Estate and Government of that Citie, begun by Iohn Stow (Elizabeth Purslow for Nicholas Bourne, London 1633), at pp. 776-77 (Internet Archive). and all clearly refer to the wall monument and inscriptions depicted by Smith and now remaining in restored form. If, however, the attribution of this brass to a tomb monument for John Speed is correct, it may enlarge the view of the original appearance of Speed's monument as it stood on the south side of the chancel of St Giles. The brass is on display in the Burrell Collection.
The author of The Three Conversions was the Jesuit Robert Persons, and the references to the Lollard martyr Oldcastle are in the third part of the work.(Robert Persons), The Third Part of A Treatise Intituled: of Three Conversions of England, conteyninge. an examen of the Calendar or Catalogue of Protestant Saints... etc. By N. D. (Imprinted with licence, Anno Dni 1604) pp. 196-99 and pp. 244-55. Speed is saying that Persons the Catholic author had infamously falsified the historical character of Oldcastle the Lollard martyr by representing him as the cowardly rebel portrayed in the late Elizabethan stage plays. Thomas Fuller, in his Church-History of Britain (1655), evidently echoes Speed where he remarks:
While Shakespeare's character of Sir John Falstaff is evidently based on the stage-Oldcastle model, under a different name, the inference drawn by some editors (since Nicholas Rowe) that Speed was referring specifically to Shakespeare,P. Corbin and D. Sedge (eds), The Oldcastle Controversy: "Sir John Oldcastle, Part 1" and "The Famous Victories of Henry V", The Revels Plays Companion Library (Manchester University Press, 1991). or (if he was), that he intended to associate Shakespeare directly with Robert Persons and his Catholic sympathies,H.J. Heller, Penitent Brothellers: Grace, Sexuality, and Genre in Thomas Middleton's City Comedies (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000) p. 181. has long been debated.J.-C. Mayer "This Papist and his Poet': Shakespeare's Lancastrian kings and Robert Parsons's Conference about the next Succession" in R. Dutton, A. G. Findlay and R. Wilson (eds), Theatre and Religion: Lancastrian Shakespeare (Oxford, UK: Manchester University Press, 2003), pp. 116-29, at pp. 116, 127, 128, 236.V.B. Richmond Shakespeare, Catholicism, and Romance (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing 2015), p. 13.G. Holderness The Faith of William Shakespeare (UK: British Library, 2016) p. 47.H. Bloom, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009), p. 75. Possibly, Speed was referring to the author of a different play in which the Oldcastle figure appeared by name. A summary of the argument was presented by Edmond Malone's editors.E. Malone (ed.), The Plays and Poems of William Shakspeare: with the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators (F.C. and J. Rivington, etc., London 1820), XVI, Note to Henry IV Part 1, p. 193 and note 3 and pp. 410-19, note.
John Speed's maps and associated commentaries are sometimes employed for the interpretation of William Shakespeare's plays.C.A. Matza Jr. (ed.), Boudica: Historical Commentaries, Poetry, and Plays (USA: XLibris, 2010), pp. 83–90.M. Cordner, P. Holland, and J. Kerrigan (eds), English Comedy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006 reprint), pp. 85, 98. Speed's historiography employs "theatrical metaphors" and makes use of medieval mythical content.I. Djordjevic, King John (Mis)Remembered: The Dunmow Chronicle, the Lord Admiral's Men, and the Formation of Cultural Memory (New York: Routledge, 2016), pp. 43, 61, 86, 117, 122.
"And thus" (says Thomas Fuller), "we take our leaves of Father Speed, truly answering his name, in both the acceptions thereof, for celerity and success."
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