by Helen Wallis

A PUBLIC LIBRARY is the safest port; and of all public libraries the British Museum is on the most liberal plan, deficient only in the want of a sufficient fund to furnish itself with what it may not suit the wishes or the finances of many good collectors to bestow on it’. [1]

The antiquary Richard Gough (1735-1809) wrote this testimonial to the British Museum in his well-known work British Topography, published in 1780. The book was a second much enlarged edition of his earlier volume Anecdotes of British Topo¬graphy, or an Historical Account of what has been done for illustrating the topographical antiquities of Great Britain and Ireland, 1768. Gough’s aim was ‘to inform the curious what lights have from time to time been thrown on the topographical antiquities of the three kingdoms, and to rescue them and their authors from oblivion’. [2] His British Topography constituted the first really comprehensive survey of the geograph¬ical writings, maps and topographical views concerning the British Isles. Deploring the lack of a list of all the manuscript materials ‘concealed (note the word) in our libraries both public and private’, Gough wrote, ‘the catalogues of those already published, with all their defects, have their use; and it is the duty of librarians to amend them.’ [3] He regretted that more had not been done to preserve and record the treasures which had once existed; for ‘many capital collections of MSS. have been dispersed irrevocably’, Hence his praise of the British Museum and his self-appointed task to provide a chronicle of British topography. He concluded the preface to his second edition, ‘These Anecdotes have informed and amused the collector: if they only amuse the readers I shall not be absolutely condemned: if they inform them, my passion for British antiquities becomes a zeal to serve the public.’

Receive a free copy of ‘My Head Is A Map’, the complete series of essay's, in eBook format, suitable for any type of eReader and the Amazone Kindle. Yes I would like to download the free eBook >>

The British Museum had served the public for less than thirty years when Gough published his British Topography in 1780. Already it was pre-eminent in reputation as one of the great libraries of the world. Founded in 1753, it comprised initially the three magnificent collections of Sloane, Cotton and the Harleys. When Sir Hans Sloane, physician and antiquary, died in 1753, a codicil to his will desired that his fine collections of manuscripts, books and specimens be offered to the Crown for the sum of £20,000. At this time the Trustees of the Cotton Library were seeking a more secure home for their collections, which had been damaged by fire in 1731. The Elizabethan antiquary, Sir Robert Cotton, who died in 1631, may be regarded as one of the two ‘posthumous founders’ of the British Museum. [4] Described as ‘a worthy repairer of eating time’s ruines’, in pursuing ‘the discovery of British antiquity’ he had sought out and added to his collection many books and manuscripts which the dissolution of the monasteries by King Henry VIII had scattered throughout the land. He had secured some of the working papers of statesmen such as those of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Queen Elizabeth’s Treasurer, papers which to-day would be deposited in the Public Record Office, but which were then treated as private property. The Cotton collection was of major archival interest, comparable in political and geographical interest to the Cecil papers at Hatfield House, the home of the Cecils. Cotton himself regarded his library virtually as a public institution, and it became one in a full sense when secured for the nation under Trustees by the Cotton Library Act of 1700. The third collection was that put together by the first and second Earls of Oxford, Robert (1661-1724) and Edward Harley (1689-1741), members of a family distinguished for its service in high offices of state. English history was one of the main objects of the Harleys’ collecting policy. Their collections were offered to the nation by the Countess of Oxford, only daughter of Edward Harley, for the sum of £10,000, to be kept as an addition to the Cotton Library. Thus the British Museum was established, and a home for it was found through the purchase of Montagu House in Great Russell Street, in the Parish of Saint George, Bloomsbury. In 1757 a fourth collection was acquired, when King George II presented to the British Museum the library of the Kings and Queens of England. This is now called the Old Royal Library, to distinguish it from the later acquisition of the library of King George III, the King’s Library.

The three foundation collections were rich in manuscript maps. These and the maps transferred with the Old Royal Library reflect the rapid development of the geographical sciences in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and they also contain some of the finest examples of mediaeval map-making. Gough had deplored the apparent neglect of geography in the Middle Ages. His preface opened with the words ‘Among the infinite variety of writers which these kingdoms have produced in every period for so many centuries, we might expect that some in the earlier should have turned their thoughts to a geographical description of them. From the first establishment of monasteries there wanted not monks to record the transactions of their own societies, and the kingdom in general . . . But logic and divinity being so essential to their profession, we are not to wonder that men secluded from the world studied the arts of life so little’. [5] He continued: ‘It was not till the monks were turned adrift, and the invention of printing had given circulation to every improve¬ment the mind enlarged could make, that we began to be acquainted with the face of our own country.’ [6] Turning from an account of geographical writing to maps, Gough pointed out that ‘Mappa’ and ‘descriptio Angliae’ were convertible terms in the Middle Ages, meaning either verbal accounts or geographical tables. [7] Gough must be judged as too severe in his strictures against the monks. The arts of life in the Middle Ages did not demand a literate artisan class. The mediaeval mind was not geographically trained. Moreover, a high proportion of major works which do survive came from the monasteries and are products of the monastic life. Matthew Paris (c 1200-1259), a monk of St. Albans, a chronicler, historian and artist, was probably the founder of the Mediaeval English School of map makers, and produced the first scientific maps of Great Britain since the time of Ptolemy. The Cotton collection includes four thirteenth century manuscripts of Matthew Paris containing maps of Great Britain, and another manuscript with a map came in the Old Royal Library, all of which Gough described or illustrated. [8] The next major advance in the mapping of the British Isles is represented by the Gough map, c 1360, named after Gough, as its owner. [9] This map would have become one of the Museum’s most treasured specimens of mediaeval cartography had Gough fulfilled his original intention of leaving his own collections to the Museum. The foundation collections, especially Cotton, were also rich in mediaeval world maps. The tenth century world map Cotton MS Tiberius B.V. fol 59, sometimes called the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ world map, is one of the best known and was being reproduced in popular printed works in the early nineteenth century. A facsimile was made in 1830 by Mr Walker, of the Admiralty and presented to the Bibliothèque du Roi in Paris. The beautiful and now equally well-known ‘Psalter Map’ of the world of the thirteenth century came in later (Add MS 28681, fol 9). Itineraries for pilgrims to the Holy Land by Matthew Paris are preserved in the Old Royal Library, and are also featured by the indefatigable Gough in his Topography.

Landscape drawing likewise was achieved by miniaturists working on book illustrations in monasteries, and came to have an effect on later cartographic styles. The lively drawing of the English School can be traced to the influence of the Utrecht Psalter, executed in the Abbey of Hautvilliers, near Rheims, about 850 A D. By the beginning of the eleventh century, the Psalter was in Canterbury, where a copy (Harl MS 603) was made in about 1,000 AD, the monochrome original being interpreted in coloured outlines and occasional wash. Many of the vignettes depict landscape settings. The work had a great influence on Anglo-Saxon book illustration. A basic feature of the stylistic representation of the mediaeval landscape was the bird’s-eye view with a sharply rising ground. For the next zoo years landscape elements became more stylised, but in the fourteenth century interest in a naturalistic landscape revived. Pol de Limbourg in the Très Riches Heures of the Duc de Berri, originating from 1416, now at Chantilly, brought about the concept of a true landscape back¬ground. Yet even in the great age of landscape miniatures of the fifteenth century, topographical views were still uncommon. Among British Museum manuscripts of English origin of this period there are only three in which recognisable depicted places appear. Of these three one of the most well-known is the view of the Tower and London Bridge in Royal MS 16 F ii from the poem of Charles Duke of Orleans. It represents the Duke of Orleans in the Tower, 1418, with Tower Hill, the Pool, the arcaded warehouses of Billingsgate and part of London Bridge in the back¬ground.  [10]