Appendix A

 John Hooker – States and Derivatives

 

John Hooker’s plan went through various stages of development and two further states[1] of the map are known and a number of copies were made. The first state is described on page 22 and is held at the British Library (BL Maps C.5.a.3).

The two later states are;

          State 2. The dividers and the scale bar are partly erased, a tree is omitted west of the bridge and Powe Lane is changed to Pound Lane. Only one copy is known, in the possession of the Dymond family of Chagford.

          State 3. A crude, wrongly orientated, compass rose is drawn over the space previously occupied by the dividers. Holloway Road has been incorrectly altered, turning east after Lark Beare and so wrongly moving Malford and the chapel of St. Leonard. Only one copy is known. This state is illustrated on page 23 and also (with state 1) in Todd Gray, 1992; the map is at Devon Record Office (4292A/BS1), part of the Exeter Guildhall Collection.

In c.1593 a four-fold screen was made in gilded leather which portrayed an enlarged copy of the map (1300 x 1640 mm) in a decorated border. Ravenhill and Rowe wrote an explanatory essay[2] which suggested that the screen was made for, or given to, one of the Cecil family, either to Sir William, Lord Burghley, or his son Robert. The screen map is more correct in many details but none more so than the cathedral where the towers are more correctly placed and the windows detailed. The covered walkway in front of the Guildhall is not shown, but nor is the renaissance colonnade, completed in 1594, leading to the suggested date of 1593.

The map was copied by John Speed, Braun & Hogenberg, Daniel Meisner, Matthäus Merian, Rugerus Hermannides and by Richard Izacke's unknown engraver, each adding his own style to the map (see entries 2-7) before Ichabod Fairlove's completely new map became the new standard from which to copy.

 Braun and Hogenberg derivatives can be seen by the inclusion of people and sometimes the original title or variation thereof (Civitas Exoniae). Various copies were made, the earliest being possibly that executed by Mutlow for Lysons Magna Britannia (see entry 19). Townsend (who did a lot of work for Besley) lithographed a copy for inclusion in W Cotton’s An Elizabethan Guild of the City of Exeter, published 1873 (illustration above); a small version was included in Cassell’s Our Own Country (50) in 1882; J G Commin, a local publisher, issued Exeter in circa AD 1570 (a reference to Hooker) but with subheading From Braun’s Civitates Orbis Terrarum from his premises in the High Street in 1886; Freeman included a small plan in 1887 in his History of Exeter (illustration below and see entry 53); and another copy, probably by Commins, was printed c.1895 with title Exeter in 1618 (a clear reference to Hogenberg) with advertisements on the reverse. Interestingly, Commins included the arms of John Hooker on his copies (not included by Braun & Hogenberg).



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[1] A state is meant to mean that the original plate on which the map was engraved was changed in some way and then used for a new printing run; a copy is a new engraving on a fresh plate.

[2] See William Ravenhill and Margery Rowe; A Decorated Screen Map of Exeter based on John Hooker’s Map of 1587 in Todd Gray, 1992. The screen is illustrated in full colour.


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