4. Pieter van den Keere / (John Speed) 1605

London in the late sixteenth century was a refuge for many from the Low Countries seeking to escape religious persecution: Pieter van den Keere (1571-c.1646) was one of these refugees. He moved to London from Ghent in 1583 with his sister, Colette, who later married Jodocus Hondius and returned to Amsterdam in 1593.¹ Pieter may have been apprenticed to his brother-in-law who was eight years older. He engraved a large number of maps for important cartographers, amongst these a map of London for John Norden’s Speculum Britanniae, an Atlas of the Netherlands (1617-22) and one complete and one incomplete set of county maps of the British Isles.

Back in Amsterdam, Keere engraved plates to 44 maps for a county atlas (some dated as early as 1599), the English maps being based on Saxton, the Scottish on Ortelius and the Irish on a map by Boazio which he had also engraved. These maps were not published at once in book form; one source suggests that individual maps were on sale in Amsterdam between 1605 and 1610, but perhaps they only existed in proof form until 1617 when Willem Blaeu issued them with an abridged Latin edition of William Camden’s Britannia by Regner Vittelius.

While the original maps had no text on the reverse (or manuscript text) references in the later printed text suggest a date of 1605 or shortly after.² For the 1617 issue maps of the British Isles and Yorkshire were added, the latter derived from Saxton. The title page of this edition is signed Guilielmus noster Janssonius, the Latinized form of Blaeu’s name he used up to 1619. Pieter van den Keere himself signed his maps Petrus Kaerius.

Sometime before 1619 George Humble, John Speed’s publisher, came into possession of the plates (6). Knowing the popularity of Speed’s Theatre and the liking for miniature atlases Humble reissued the Keere maps as a pocket edition abridged from a far larger volume by J Speed. In 1627, he added the abridged text and hence they mistakenly became known as Miniature Speeds. Of the 63 maps in the Atlas, 40 were reworked from the Keere plates, 16 copied from Speed and a further 7 maps were added. The pocket atlas was reissued as late as 1676.

A number of Devon towns do not appear on the map of Devon itself but do appear on the maps of neighbouring counties, correctly placed in Devon; Sauldon, Clauton, St Giles, Siddenham, St Budix and Redfort appear on the Cornwall map; Uplyme, Axmouth and Beare on the Dorset map; and Hight and Baunton on the Somerset map. Devon was the only map with a compass, perhaps to show that Devon had been tilted slightly to fit the frame. From about 1646 when a new edition (but still dated 1627) was issued bound with John Speed´s A Prospect of the Most Famous parts of the World the map of Devon starts to show signs of wear and two cracks appear (at Bideford Bay and by the D of Devonshire) and a third crack appeared about 1668.³

These were not the only county maps to be engraved by Pieter van den Keere. About 1620 he started working with Jan Jansson and in 1648 the German edition of Atlas Minor contained maps of four Irish provinces and eight English counties including another map of Devon (13).

  Size 85 x 120 mm.  Scala Miliarium (10 = 16.5 mm).

DEVONIA. Signature: P. Kaerius caelavit. Maps have no page number and no text on reverse (or have manuscript text).