The Folger 1560 View of London

George Washington University

The Folger 1560 View of LondonAuthor(s): Kent CartwrightSource: Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Winter, 1978), pp. 67-76Published by: Folger Shakespeare Library in association with George Washington UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2869171 .

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tres

The Folger 1560 View Of London KENT CARTWRIGHT

IN 1964 RICHARD HOSLEY published in these pages a map-view of London, enti-

tled "A View of London about the Year 1560,," from the collection of the Folger Shakespeare Library. Hosley described the view as a previously undiscovered source of visual information about mid-sixteenth-century London.1

Hosley's article did not pass without no- tice: since its publication the illustration has become widely known as the "Folger Library Engraving," and it has been reproduced and treated as primary evidence con- cerning the appearance of the bull- and bear- baiting arenas predating the playhouses.2 New information about what the rings and their environs may have looked like is important, because these arenas have been univer- sally accepted by scholars as "ancestors" of the Elizabethan playhouse.

How big were the arenas? How many sto- ries high were they? Were there enclosed and roofed galleries, or were the rings more like circular corrals with spectators watching through the posts? Until Hosley's article scholars possessed only two sixteenth-century map-views, the "Agas" and the Braun and Hogenberg, as threads from which to

1 "The Origins of the Shakespearian Playhouse," SQ, 15 (1964), 29-39.

2 Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages. 1300 to 1660, II, Part 2 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1972), 54 and 234; also see plate VI, no. 7.

KENT CARTWRIGHT, District Administrative Assistant to Congressman Robert Carr of Michigan, is a former member of the Folger Library staff; he is completing a doctorate in English at Case Western Reserve University.

dangle a world of deductions about the bull- and bear-baiting arenas. And those illustrations were both uncomfortably stylized and chary of sufficient detail.

Though the "Folger Library Engraving" seems to be a later document than "Agas" and Braun and Hogenberg, Hosley's article presented it as a new and independent source, not derived from the earlier two, about the look of London in the 1560s. Un- fortunately, it now turns out that Hosley was wrong. His two assumptions about the "Fol- ger Library Engraving"-(1) that it offers a unique, independent view of London in 1560, and (2) that it is lineally close to a lost original contemporary engraving-can now be shown to be incorrect.

I

Though the "1560 View," as Hosley calls it, "may be tentatively dated early in the 18th century," Hosley asserts that it is a "hitherto unreproduced pictorial source" and con- tends that it forms a second tradition of evidence "independent" of the tradition of both the "Agas" and the Braun and Hogenberg maps (p. 30). Noting a number of details in the sixteenth-century "Agas" and Braun and Hogenberg map-views that are excluded from the "Folger Library Engraving" (p. 31), Hosley says that the Folger engraving "Throws into sharp relief the two pictorial sources hitherto relied on for information about the Bankside baiting-houses" (p. 30). Hosley allows that it is "unlikely that the 1560 View is the original document of its tradition, especially in view of its supposed late date" (p. 31). But he nevertheless thinks it "clear that the 1560 View of London pro- vides us with a second substantive source (in addition to the Agas Map) for the Bankside baiting-houses" (p. 32).

Actually, the "Folger Library Engraving" is by no means a unique copy. And though Hosley prefers to be tentative about an eighteenth-century date for the engraving, it can



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"A View of London about the Year 1560"



NOTES 69

The "Agas" Map, detail of the Bull- and Bear-Baiting Rings

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The Braun and Hogenberg Map; detail of the Bull- and Bear-Baiting Rings



70 SHAKESPEARE QUARTERLY

in fact be dated rather precisely. The "1560 View" is a duplicate of the copper plate engraving of London in 1560 (9 17/18 x 18 1/4

in.) published in William Maitland's The History of London (1739). The watermark on the "Folger Library Engraving" is difficult to distinguish, but it bears the initials LVG (for Lubertus van Gerrevink) and a shielded fleur-de-lis surmounted with a crown.

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"Folger Library Engraving" detail of the Bull- and Bear-Baiting Rings

Though difficult to date exactly, this watermark follows a popular eighteenth-century insignia for high quality paper' and is, in fact, very close to the watermark on the Fol- ger Library's own 1760 edition of Maitland. A bottom line below the index of the Mait- land View, reading "Reduced to this Size from a Large Print in the Collection of Sr Hans Sloane Bar' anno 1738," has been cropped from the "Folger Library Engrav- ing," but several fragments of the line are visible at the bottom of the sheet. The "Fol- ger Library Engraving" is identical to Mait-

s For similar watermarks see Edward Heawood, Mon- umenta Chartae Papyracae, I (Hilversum, Holland: The Paper Publications Society, 1950), plates 235-66.

land in every respect-size, detail, and even fold marks-and is clearly a pull from the same plate, published in one of the editions of Maitland and later cut out and cropped.' The "1560 View" is available in any copy of Maitland and properly ought to be under- stood henceforth as the "Maitland View" rather than as the "Folger Library Engrav- ing."

II

Hosley's " 1560 View," then, is not a unique source, nor is it even a "hitherto unreproduced pictorial source" for the appearance of the bull- and bear-baiting rings in London in the 1560s. But if the eighteenth-

4Hosley's presentation of this relationship is unclear. In a footnote (7a, p. 30) he quotes without comment a letter from the Superintendent of the Map Room, Brit- ish Museum, assigning the print to Maitland, remarking on the series of different versions of the view, and sug- gesting that some versions might spring directly from the copper plate original. Hosley's reluctance to accept the positive dating of Maitland suggests that he consid- ers the "Folger View" the source from which the Mait- land View was derived and one very close in descent to the lost contemporary view.



NOTES 71

century Maitland View is lineally close, perhaps, to a more contemporary document, a lost, original sixteenth-century map-view, then it might still be historically important. But is the Maitland View authentic evidence, "independent" of "Agas" and Braun and Hogenberg, about early Elizabethan Lon- don? I fear the answer is no.

The Maitland View was copied from another eighteenth-century map-view engraved by George Vertue. Vertue's View was in turn copied from "Agas," with corrections from

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The Vertue View (Third State); close-up of the Bull- dnd Bedr-Bdlting Rings

Braun and Hogenberg. And these last two, apparently sixteenth-century, documents were copied from a lost copper engraving of which only two fragmentary plates survive. The lineal relationships among these pictures are instructive, teaching us a good deal about the history of map-making, and they are fas- cinating in themselves. But reconstructing them is something like looking for footprints to the Lost City of Gold. Once the relationships are sorted out, however, it turns out that there are not two "independent" tradi- tions about the bull- and bear-baiting rings

in 1560 London, as Hosley suggests. There is only one. All the complete illustrations mentioned above are copied, ultimately, from the same lost copper plates. Though the leaves are many, the root is one.

III

To trace this lineage, let us start with the oldest complete map-view of London in the sixteenth century, the Braun and Hogenberg engraving in Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Co-

logne, 1572). It is a small fold-out view (13 x 19 U/8 in.), and it represents a view of Lon- don between 1553 and 1559.5 Though it was published in 1572, some of the details-the spire on St. Paul's, for example-had already disappeared by then from the London topog-

I Stephen Powys Marks, The Map of Sixteenth Ceni- tury London, London Topographical Society, no. 100 (London: London Topographical Society, 1964), pp. 11-12; and Ida Darlington and James Howgego, Printed Maps of London circa 1553-1850 (London: George Philip and Son, 1964), pp. 10-12.




raphy. Stephen Marks shows that the Ger- man engraving is not a first-hand picture of London but is copied from another map- view.6

The second complete view of sixteenth- century London is the "Agas" (or Godet)7 view, whose original state probably depicted London between 1561 and 1566. It is a large woodcut,8 and it survives in three 1633 copies printed from blocks altered and damaged from their original, apparently sixteenth-century condition (perhaps as early as 1562).9 As with Braun and Hogenberg, however, "Agas" too derives from another map-view, the same source as for Braun and Hogen- berg.'0

What is this lost sixteenth-century original?.Fortunately, not all of it is lost. In 1955 and 1962 two adjoining copper plates depict- ing Moorfields were discovered which form part of the larger, contemporary, lost view of London, 1553-59.1" Moorfields appears on all three sixteenth-century maps. Coinci- dence of topographical and decorative detail shows conclusively that the Moorfields copper engraving is, in fact, the original from which both Hogenberg and "Agas" were copied.'2

IV

Those are the sixteenth-century documents in our story. We need to skip a century and a half for the last two chapters, the Vertue View and the Maitland View.

George Vertue was a colorful and well- known artist and engraver of the first half of the eighteenth century who apparently

6 Marks, p. 12. 7 See M. R. Holmes, Moorfields in 1559: an Engraved

Copper Plate from the earliest known Map of London (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1963), pp. 33-34; and William Henry Overall, Civitas Londinum: Ralph Agas (London: Adams and Francis, 1874), p. 29.

8 The map was printed in 6 plates and 2 half plates (2 ft. 4 in. x 6 ft.) in its damaged 1633 condition and was probably two or three inches longer in its original state. For details see Marks, p. 15.

9Marks, p. 14. 10 Ibid., pp. 14-18. " It was probably 3 ft. 8 in. x 7 ft. 5 in. (Marks, p. 14).

For discussions of the copper plates see Marks, pp. 13- 14; Darlington, pp. 14-16; and Holmes.

12 Marks, pp. 9-18; Darlington, p. 16.

would not let a little bit of ethics get in the way of a good idea. In the late 1730s he made a map of 1560 London, extant in three different states, which he copied, according to the London Society of Antiquaries, to which he belonged, from "an ancient print in the pos- session of Sir Hans Sloane."'13 The "ancient print," which Vertue attributed to Ralph Agas, seems to have been an early pull (1618) from the same blocks that have come down to us in the 1633 edition of "Agas." Vertue apparently supplemented the information on the "Agas" map with other information. The first, unsigned state of Vertue's pewter engraving, for example, represents some details more precisely than does "Agas," details that may derive from Hogenberg, though we cannot rule out the possibility of other sources.'4 But when Vertue altered his first pewter plates into their third, signed state,' he changed them away from some of the details shown on Hogenberg-Lambeth Pal- ace, for example-and toward the "Agas" woodcut.'6

A question arises from this complexity. Might Vertue have actually copied his first- state engraving from the copper plate engraving, the "missing original," rather than from "Agas," and then altered that first-state engraving according to what he considered the more accurate "Agas" map?'7 The question is important: Maitland is copied from the first state of Vertue, and if Vertue's first state derives from the lost original, then the Maitland View is closer to the lost original and thereby closer to the true picture of Lon-

13 Minutes of the Society of Antiquaries of London, Thursday, 2 February 1837-38, as quoted in Overall, p. 9. "It appears to be done in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's reign, about 1560, having been done in blocks of wood. . . . this very impression is a second publication with the date 1618. . . The length of the printed Plan, 6 feet 3 inches by 2 feet 4 inches, contained in 6 sheets and 2 half sheets."

14 For a detailed discussion see Marks, pp. 18-19. 15 For further information on the transitional, second

state of Vertue's engraving, see Darlington, p. 18; and Marks, pp. 20 and 26.

16 Overall (pp. 15-27) believes that the unsigned plates were originally done by a Dutch engraver during the reign of William III and only retouched and signed by Vertue (see also Holmes, p. 34). Overall suggests that the map in Sloane's library mentioned by Vertue was really the first state of the pewter engraved map itself.

17 Darlington, p. 16.



NOTES 73

don in 1560 than we thought. In that case, Hosley will have been proven correct, though unwittingly: the Vertue View and its derivative Maitland will be shown to comprise a second "tradition" about the lost original and hence about the actual configu- ration of the bull- and bear-baiting rings.

Unfortunately, the Vertue View does not offer an independent, second tradition. The evidence from the Society of Antiquaries that Vertue copied from "Agas" may be supplemented by other evidence. A comparison of the Vertue pewter engraving, the "Agas" woodcut, and the Moorfields copper plates, for example, will show that Vertue clearly based his first view of London on "Agas" and drew only incidental details from else- where. It will show, moreover, that Vertue drew none of his details directly from the Moorfields plates.

The decorative figures in the Moorfields copper plates are copied in a reduced and simplified fashion by "Agas," and the same details are simplified again in Vertue's first- state engraving, which derives from "Agas." Another detail, the animals being watered in the Thames at the Steelyard, appears in all three versions, and here again the configura- tion by Vertue follows "Agas" rather than the copper plates. Similarly, Vertue's engraving of the houses on the site of the Royal Exchange bears no resemblance to the copper plates; rather, it seems to reproduce a view on the "Agas" blocks before they were altered after 1618 and the Royal Exchange included.

One of the most telling points of comparison among the three views is the perspective itself. The Vertue and "Agas" maps are actually perspective views; the copper plates, on the other hand, are plat studies. In the Vertue and "Agas" maps, Moorfields recedes into the distance.

I can find no details, topographical or decorative, that carry over from the copper plates to Vertue without the intervening translation of "Agas." Vertue's map, then, reproduces "Agas." There are a few correc- tive details from Hogenberg and perhaps a few more from personal knowledge, but there is no contribution from the Moorfields copper plates. And since the copper plates are vastly superior to "Agas" in detail, style,

and execution, Vertue certainly would have used them had they been available. On the information of the copper plates discovered in 1955 and 1962, then, we must conclude that Vertue knew nothing earlier than "Agas" and Hogenberg.

V

We now need only to prove the link between Vertue and Maitland to complete the history of the "Folger Library Engraving."

The map in Hans Sloane's library from which the Maitland View derives is George Vertue's map copy (first state), published in 1737.18 Although the Maitland View is much reduced from the Vertue pewter engraving (which is 2 ft. 3 in. x 6 ft. 1 '/4 in.), the two are strikingly similar in perspective and in area surveyed. Maitland's title follows the Vertue title, "Civitas Londinum Ano Dni circiter MDLX." Maitland also relies exclu- sively on Vertue for the depiction of West- minster Abbey and the buildings south of it-Somerset Place, St. Giles Church, the Royal Exchange, Winchester Place, the Tower of London, St. Mary Overys Church-as well as for the regularization of buildings around St. Anthony's, for the con- figuration of Moorfields, for the one crane at Three Cranes, for the location of lettering and the choice of landmarks' names, and even for the boats around the Temple, to mention only a few of the most obvious deri- vations.

In the portrayal of the baiting rings, Mait- land again follows Vertue. All the "signifi- cant variations" from "Agas" and Braun and Hogenberg mentioned by Hosley derive explicitly, in fact, from Vertue: the sixteen- bayed baiting house frames, the flags, the absence of animals, the absence of dogs and kennels (Vertue does show one line of them), the single pond between the rings, the absence of a rectangular space to the south, and the four bankside houses with peaks at right angles to the river. As to their "significance," almost all the variations from "Agas" that

18 Overall notes that the first state was actually in Hans Sloane's library when it was bought by the govern- ment for the British Museum in 1753. For discussions of the relationship see Marks, p. 20, and Darlington, p. 18.



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NOTES 75

Hosley mentions are matters of exclusion or simplification in Maitland and Vertue rather than basic changes. The flags, the right-angle peaks, and some minor variations in the pat- tern of the houses and garden farther to the left-these are the only distinctively new fea- tures in and around the baiting rings.

The garden and house details in Maitland and Vertue may simply reflect compression

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The "Agas" Map; detail of Moorfields

and stylization from "Agas" and Hogen- berg, but the multiple flags are likely to have originated either in another source or in Ver- tue's belief about what these details looked like (he also shows flags on the Tower of London). In any event, the three houses im- mediately behind and between the rings tell us only that Vertue went at least to Hogen- berg for some details pertaining to the South Bank; his depiction of Lambeth Palace shows the same debt. The new information Maitland and Vertue present about the baiting rings is merely incidental, then-too incidental to comprise a second "substantive"

tradition about the missing original map of 1560 London.

VI

The map in Hans Sloane's library that Maitland copied for his History of London, 1739, was the first state of Vertue's View. No details in either Maitland or Vertue suggest an independent indebtedness to the extant

copper plates. Maitland, then, cannot be accepted as a second tradition or as a substantive source about the appearance of the baiting rings on the missing primary copper plates. Indeed, our best conjecture is that the original was not even present in the library of Sir Hans Sloane.

To sum up, then, the Maitland View, which has recently become erroneously sin- gled out as the "Folger Library Engraving," is simply a copy (from Vertue) of a copy (from "Agas") of the original copper-plate source for London in 1560. It is of no independent significance.




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The Folger 1560 View of London