John Speed: Tailor, Antiquary, and the Maker of the First British County Atlas
John Speed was born in or around 1552 in Farndon, Cheshire, the son of a London Merchant Taylor of the same name. Like his father, he was trained to the tailoring trade, and in 1580 he was admitted to the freedom of the Merchant Taylors’ Company in his own right, working as a jobbing tailor…