Code: 55687
Date:1598
Copper engraving with original hand colouring, perhaps refreshed in parts. Variant 2 according to John Booth’s Antique maps of Wales and dated using van den Broecke Ortelius Atlas Maps: 21. Marcel van den Broecke states that 525 examples were printed of this edition with French text . Copper engraving, overall sheet size: 54.8cms x 42cms; image size: 495mm x 368mm. Watermarked paper. Archival repairs to bottom margin edges and top right margin extensively strengthened with old paper and top left margin tip also replaced but all of this is skilful and barely visible and a mount would cover it ; two pinpricks on bottom yellow border only visible when held up to the light; one small circular area of weakness to the left of the swash lettering of ,’Angliae Pars’..again not obtrusive. First printed map of Wales and the only map in English, Latin and Welsh. Important map in good condition despite its faults
This is the first published individual map of the Principality. French text on verso with letter 13. Humphrey Lhuyd was an M.P. and personal physician to Lord Arundel ; tragically he died at the age of 41 , five years before his map was published. There are map dividers bottom left, a monster just off Ramsay Island and a sailing ship above. Translation of the text available - some delightful comments i.e. they (The Welsh) do not like hard work and are very proud of their nobility (so) they tend to enter the service of the king and the nobility rather than take up handicrafts...they are superior to the English in that, however poor, they spend some time in schools and those who show themselves apt scholars are sent to High Schools where most of them study law. Lower centre, leftish:'Maridunum.L.Caerdfyrdhyn/Merlini famigeratiB patria'translated as Maridunum in Latin, Caerdfyrdhyn in Welsh, the home of the famous Merlin.'Another note states,’this river is the only one in Britannia that has beavers’.Translation of text on back available as is an article on the map itself addressing the inclusion of Herefordshire and Shropshire in Wales and of using the river Severn as the boundary.
The day before he died Humphrey Lhuyd sent his manuscript maps to Ortelius with the following covering letter:
"Dearly beloved Ortelius. That day wherin I was constrayned to depart from London I receyued your Description of ASIA and before I came home to my house I fell into a very perillous Feuer, which hath so torne this poore body of mine, the X continuall dayes that I was brought into despayre of my life . .. Howbeit, neither the dayly shakynge of the continuall Feuer . . . neither the looking for present death ... could put the remembrance of my Ortelius out of my troubled brayne. Wherefore I send vnto you my Wales, not beutifully set forth in all poynctes, yet truly depeinted, so be that certeyn notes be obserued, which I gathered euen when I was ready to die. You shall also receaue the description of England, set forth as well with the auntient names as those which are now vsed, and an other England also drawne forth perfectly enough. Besides certein fragments written with mine owne hand ... Which, also (if God has spared me life) you should haue receaued in better
order, and in all respects perfect. Take therefore this last remembrance of thy Humfrey, and for ever adieu, my deare friend Ortelius.
From Denbigh in Gwynedh, or Northwales, the XXX of August 1568.
Yours both liuyng and diyng:
Humfrey Lhuyd."
