Hampshire Map - Further information

John Speed's map of Hampshire appeared in his Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, first published in 1611-12, with the plate engraved in Amsterdam by Jodocus Hondius. That publishing history is shared by every sheet in the atlas, but the Hampshire plate carries its own detailed record of the county's civic and heraldic history, together with a striking piece of medieval legend.

Hampshire is shown divided into an unusually large number of hundreds — more than thirty in all, among them Alton, Basingstoke, Fawley, Portsdown, New Forest and Christchurch — each distinguished by colour wash in the manner Speed used throughout the atlas to show how local justice and administration were parcelled out across a shire. Set into the top left corner is a detailed plan of Winchester, one of the plans Speed noted he had surveyed himself, complete with a pace-scale for measurement; it shows the city's streets, gardens, walls and gates, the braided course of the River Itchen, the cathedral, Winchester College and the city's own coat of arms.

The map's border sets out two separate series of heraldic shields: one for the Earls of Southampton, running from a legendary Saxon warrior against the Normans down to William FitzWilliam, created earl by Henry VIII, and Thomas Wriothesley, created earl by Edward VI; and a second for the Earls of Winchester, including the medieval Saer de Quincy and Hugh Despenser and, by the sixteenth century, William Paulet, Marquess of Winchester. Together the two runs of arms turn the map's margin into a short heraldic record of the two great titles associated with the county's leading city.

The plate also recounts one of the most dramatic episodes of the twelfth-century civil war known as the Anarchy: Speed's map tells how, during her long struggle with King Stephen for the English crown, the Empress Matilda escaped from Winchester in 1141 by having herself carried out of the city feigning death in a coffin. The real episode, remembered by historians as the Rout of Winchester, saw Matilda's besieging army broken and her half-brother Robert of Gloucester captured while she herself was escorted safely away — the coffin story reflects the legend current in Speed's day rather than the documented military detail, but its inclusion shows how closely Speed tied his maps to the dramatic history of the places they depicted.

The sheet also takes in the Isle of Wight, lying off the Hampshire coast, and later seventeenth-century editions of the atlas, issued under publishers including George Humble, reused the plate largely unaltered, so hand-coloured impressions still carry the same Winchester plan, armorial columns and story of the Empress's escape that made the Hampshire sheet distinctive.