[1] The son of a citizen and Merchant Taylor in London,[2] 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 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.

[20] Speed came to the attention of learned individuals,[21] among whom was Sir Fulke Greville: Greville, "perceiving how his wide soul was stuffed with too narrow an occupation" (as Thomas Fuller has it),[7] thereafter made him an allowance to enable him to devote his whole attention to research:[22] [His] merits to me-ward I do acknowledge, in setting this hand free from the daily employments of a manual trade, and giving it his liberty thus to express the inclination of my mind, himself being the procurer of my present estate.

As a reward for these efforts, Elizabeth granted Speed the position of a Waiter (a customs officer): Mr Fulke Greville has just brought me word of Her Majesty's pleasure that I should write you that there is a waiter's room of the Custom-house fallen in, which she has long determined might be bestowed upon John Speed, who has presented her with divers maps; she therefore desires you will bestow the place upon him, whom she takes to be a very sufficient man to discharge the same.He was by then a scholar with a highly developed pictorial faculty.

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: he is a man of very rare and ingenious capacitie in drawing and setting forthe of mapps and genealogies and other very excellent inventions... three severall mappes of his own invention, which he freely gave unto this Companie...[26]In 1598 he contributed a genealogical and heraldic frontispiece to Thomas Speght's edition of the Works of Geffrey Chaucer, reprinted 1602.

[29]) 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 cloths[37]) in the prebendary lands at Moorfields, London which the Company held from the Chapter of St.

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.

[14] 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.

The Puritan clergyman scholar Hugh Broughton developed his study of Old Testament chronology and concordance in his work A Concent of Scripture in editions of 1588/89 and 1590, with illustrations said to be engraved by Jodocus Hondius.

[45] 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.

[32] 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.

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.

John Speed's fame today rests, in popular estimation, upon his work as map-maker, but this should not be held separate from his important contributions as a historian, chronologer, and scriptural genealogist.

The succession of King James VI of Scotland to the crown of England and Wales, and to that of Ireland, upon the death of Queen Elizabeth in 1603, brought the Tudor dynasty to a close and inaugurated the House of Stuart monarchy of Great Britain.

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.

[63] 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.

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.

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,[70] said to have been compiled by the elder William Burton.

[84] Speed drew historical maps as well as those depicting present times, showing (for instance) invasions of England and Ireland, or the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy,[85][86][87] a subject previously attempted (probably by Laurence Nowell) for William Lambarde's Archaionomia published in 1568.

"...the famous Chronologer and Historiographer John Speed, lies buried here, and hath a Monument on the South-side of the Chancel, with this inscription on one side for him, and on the other for his Wife": Piæ Memoriæ Charissimorum Parentum - Johannis Speed, Civis Londinensis Mercatorum Scissorum Fratris, servi fidelissimi Religiarum Majestatum, Eliz., Jacobi & Caroli nunc superstitis: Terrarum nostrarum Geographi accurati, & fidi Antiquitatis Britannicæ Historiographi, Genealogii sacræ elegantissimi delineatoris, qui postquam Annos 77. superaverat, non tam Morbo confectus, quam Mortalitatis taedio lassatus, Corpore se levavit, Julii 28.

[39] (To the Pious Memory of Most Beloved Parents"[107] – [that is to say,] of John Speed, Citizen of London of the Brethren of Merchant Taylors, a very faithful servant of their Devout Majesties Elizabeth, James and Charles that now is: the accurate Geographer of our Lands, reliable Historiographer of the Antiquity of Britain, and most elegant delineator of the sacred Genealogies, who, after he had lived 77 years, not so much defeated by illness as wearied out by the burden of Mortality, arose from the Body on 28 July 1629, and, being borne aloft in the joyous desire of his Redeemer, he laid down his flesh here in keeping, to be received anew when Christ shall come.

)Susannae suae suavissimae, quae postquam duodecim illi filios, & sex filias pepererat quinquaginta septem annos junctis utriusque solatiis, cum illo vixerat; liberos gravi et frequenti hortamine, ad Dei cultum solicitaverat; Pietatis et Charitatis opere quotidiano praeluxerat, emori demum erudiit suo exemplo.

[108][109] (Also of his sweetest Susannah, who after she had borne him twelve sons and six daughters, lived jointly in companionship with him for fifty seven years; she encouraged her children in their duty to God by serious and frequent exhortation; she shone brightly in the daily work of piety and charity, and at last gave instruction by her example of how to surrender life.

)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.

It is described as a tomb brass representing a full-length male figure, 62.7 cm tall, facing three-quarters to the right [i.e. his left side turned away], his hands joined in prayer.

[114] 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: Stage-poets have themselves been very bold with, and others very merry at, the memory of Sr John Oldcastle, whom they have fancied a boon Companion, a jovial Royster, and yet a Coward to boot, contrary to the credit of all Chronicles, owning him a Martial man of merit.

[125] In later years, Robert Sheringham (who recited Speed's text to his map of the Isle of Wight) referred to him as "summus et eruditus Antiquarius" (a foremost and erudite antiquary),[126] and he was called "our English Mercator";[127] "a person of extraordinary industry and attainments in the study of antiquities" (by William Nicolson);[128][129] an "honest and impartial historian... who was furnished with the best materials from some of the most considerable persons in this kingdom" (by Stephen Hyde Cassan),[130] a "faithful Chronologer" (in a text of 1656),[131] and "our Cheshire historian...a scholar...a distinguished writer on history" (by Charles Hulbert).

In 1673 and 1676 long after his death, other maps were published under his name obviously being counterfeits abusing the brand to[135] represent the British Isles, the Chesapeake Bay region, and specifically Virginia and Maryland,[136] the East Indies, the Russian Empire (then ruled by Peter the Great),[137] Jamaica, and Barbados, and other locations.