ABSTRACT
John Dee’s often-quoted observation from 1570, that ‘some, for one purpose: and some, for an other, liketh, loueth, getteth, and vseth, Mappes, Chartes, & Geographicall Globes’ (Dee 1570, sig. A4r), suggests not only the popularity and sheer sensual excitement of maps but also the widespread ownership of cartographic products in early modern England. That latter impression is almost certainly misleading; while maps and globes were undoubtedly prized possessions in the sixteenth century, they were also expensive items, and few contemporaries could actually afford them. One who had almost unlimited access to maps on account of his office was William Cecil, Elizabeth’s chief minister, who took cartography very seriously indeed and always asked to have the spatial context of any political issue explained to him in detail, often with the help of maps or rough sketches (Barber 1992; 2007, 1613). One particular map appears to have been a personal favourite: the small map of the British Isles which he had obtained in the 1560s from the antiquarian and Anglo-Saxon scholar Laurence Nowell was clearly such a useful acquisition that Cecil was later said to have ‘carried [it] always about him’ (written inscription, front cover of the map contained in the Nowell-Burghley atlas, British Library MS Add. 62540, ff. 3-4). The extant manuscript of Nowell’s map, now in the British Library, has its verso covered with extensive annotations in Cecil’s hand containing details of various itineraries to the northern counties and beyond to Scotland (Figure 3.1). It still shows the crease down the centre of the map where Cecil must have folded it so that it would fit more easily into his pocket on journeys round the country.
