A fine rare English seventeenth century road map. In September 1678 Robert Morden (fl. 1669, d. 1703) and William Berry (1639-1718) petitioned the crown for “a licence to do all general and particular maps of the several parts of the world according to an alphabeticall manner”. Morden’s connection with what appears to be the birth of the folio atlas is not heard of again. Berry began publishing a series of large two sheet maps with a group of the world and continents advertised in the ‘London Gazette’, from 1-5 July 1680. The world is also announced in the ‘Term Catalogues’ for the summer of that year. This only mentions the world map, which would undoubtedly have been finished first, and the continents would have followed. Berry did not advertise his next two sheet map, that of England and Berry’s first, until February 1682.

“Through the 1680s Berry published nearly forty large maps of parts of the world, sufficient to cover it all. From the late 1680s he clearly offered them bound together as a collection of maps as a handful of examples are known, but this was clearly not the intention for the maps, as none have borne any title page. Examples are known in the British Library, the Library of Congress and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, all bearing either thirty-seven or thirty-eight maps. An example has been noted for sale by Maggs Brothers, which bore sixty-nine maps, the balance being made up of contemporary English maps by other cartographers dating the atlas to c.1704, and two further offered at Christies auctions in London in the 1980s” (Burden).

This second map of England by Berry was announced in the ‘Term Catalogues’ for November 1685 and dedicated to James II who became King on 6 February 1685. He was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 by William III and for the second state offered here the dedication is altered to reflect the new King. The map is derived from the large wall map of the roads by John Adams published in 1677. It features the distances between towns within circles and by using straight lines. The inspiration for Adams’ original work was undoubtedly the success of John Ogilby’s book of roads entitled ‘Britannia’ published in 1675. Provenance: private English collection since the 1970s when it was acquired for £9! Burden (1996-2007) 532; Phillips (1909-) 3442; Shirley (1988) Berry 2.ii; Shirley (2004) T.Berr 1a no. 8; Tyacke (1973) p. 76; Tyacke (1978) no. 100 & pp. 109-10.