An extremely rare sea chart of the English Channel and North Sea engraved by Francis Lamb. A first state with typographic side panels including keys to the letters on the map survives bound into an undated example of Robert Morden’s ‘Geography Rectified’ in the British Library (Maps C.39.a.11) dated to c.1687. The left side is keyed to the English coast, the right side keyed to the Dutch coast. However the address of William Berry in the title is for the premises occupied between 1672 and 1676. “Two of the most active publishers and mapsellers in London during the end of the seventeenth century were Robert Morden (fl. 1669-d.1703) and William Berry (1639-1718). At the beginning of their careers it appears they worked in partnership. The ‘Term Catalogues’ detail publications together between 1673 and 1677. Most early records, including those of the diarist Samuel Pepys, refer to their activity in the production of globes. The last known evidence of a partnership was their petition to the crown in September 1678 for a licence to produce a folio atlas of the world in an ‘alphabeticall manner’. This would become the sole production of Berry. Morden and Berry would both sell Richard Daniel’s map of c.1679. Morden began with a shop shortly after the Great Fire of 1666. His reputation is underrated, indeed Worms describes him as ‘a prolific and inventive map maker whose critical reputation despite a string of innovations, remains undeservedly low’ (Burden).

The atlas contains maps first printed in the 1680 edition of Morden’s ‘Geography Rectified’. In 1688 a new edition was published with a new series of copper plate maps. A further clue to the date of issue of this second state might be another very similar map engraved by Herman Moll entitled ‘A New Map of the Sea Coast of England Holland & France’ by John Taylor and Thomas Newbery which is dated 22 October 1688 (BL Maps 1068.(7)). The date is significant for this is the year of the Glorious Revolution in England when William, Prince of Orange, was invited to England to take the throne as William III. In October William had made his first attempt to sail to England only to be turned back by inclement weather. He finally arrived at Torbay on 5 November 1688. This Morden and Berry map undated in the first state is here dated 1688 for similar reasons.

This second state has had the two side keys engraved on the map itself, in doing so the previous title has had to be re-engraved and slightly re-worded. The key to the Dutch coast replaces the scale which is re-engraved at the top of the map. Likewise the rhumb lines appear to have been either erased or worn with use. This second state is found in an example of ‘Twenty four New and Accurate Maps of the several Parts of Europe’ 1707 bound with Robert Morden’s ‘Fifty Six New and Accurate Maps’ of the English Counties’ in the British Library (Maps C.24.b.25). The addition of ‘Pag. 77’ upper right has not been linked to any known work. Provenance: private English collection. Baynton-Williams MapForum no. 13 ‘Collation Hermann Moll’s ‘Maps of the Several Parts of Europe”; Burden (2007) 431; Shirley BL T.Moll 2a no. 24 & T.Mord 2b no. 3; Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).