the English in concert with the Scots.13 Certainly the English took the largest role in defining the topographical Britain and liked to see themselves as the driving imperial power behind the creation of Great Britain.14 Latter-day historical scholarship on early modern topographical and antiquarian scholarship has also tended both to privilege the English perspective and isolate the English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish traditions from each other, deemphasizing connections between them and perhaps unintentionally reinforcing a narrative of English dominance.15 What this chapter argues, however, is that Welsh, Scottish, and Anglo-Irish naturalists were by no means passive bystanders in the debates about the topographical Britain; rather they were crucial contributors (though the Catholic Irish and Highland Scots were largely, though not entirely, shut out of the process).
Ultimately, I argue that the images of Britain that these topographers created, in both their unity and their disunity, were grounded in the dispersed collaborative medium in which they worked, their correspondence. The quotation of this chapter’s title speaks to this relationship between printed visions and topographical investigators joined in correspondence. As explored in greater detail below, Joshua Childrey, in his Britannia Baconica, argued that his book reflected to Britons an image of themselves: “This book,” he wrote, “doth not shew you a Telescope, but a Mirror.”16 Visions of Britain such as Childrey’s were reflections of the correspondence through which they came into being. In the mirror of print, naturalists’ and antiquaries’ correspondence was made visible.
A Shared Landscape
One seemingly straightforward path to defining Britain led along the seashore, the idea being that the geographically contiguous lands of Wales, England, and Scotland could be considered “Britain.” This approach had the advantage of seeming natural: the limits of Britain were those set by the sea. Yet it faced several complications, including political tensions between Scotland and England and English topographers’ limited knowledge of Scotland and Wales. Digging into these works, we also see tension between the national definition of the topographical object of study and the natural historian’s project of collecting information about nature in order to theorize about the causes of natural phenomena. Naturalists hailed Britain as a microcosm of the world, offering in itself versions of all the rarities of nature that could be found abroad. Yet, as this description implies, natural phenomena (and their causes) were not necessarily unique to Britain. Naturalists found themselves adducing supporting examples from outside their texts’ declared geographical boundaries. Britain, as represented in these texts, was never a stable topographical object.
Defining “Britain” as a contiguous geographical unit involved both drawing links between the various regions of Britain and distinguishing Britain from other countries, particularly those in Europe: topographers looked both inward and outward. Joshua Childrey took this approach in his 1660 Britannia Baconica. Childrey encouraged readers to open their eyes to the wonders in their own country. Addressing gentle readers, he asked, “And what is there worth wonder abroad in the world whereof Nature hath not written a Copy in our Island? I would have those that know other Countreys so well, not to be strangers to their own, which is a compendium of all others.”17 He promoted his book in terms that appealed to his fellow Britons’ pride. Why travel abroad when Britain offered everything one might want in the way of natural curiosities and rarities? Childrey’s metaphor—Britain was a “compendium of all others”—suggests an image of Britain’s landscape as a book in which knowledge that was otherwise scattered was brought together and summed up. He offered his “Portable-book” as a guide to those wonders, a take-along index to the landscape-as-compendium.18
In contrasting the wonders of Britain with those on offer in other countries, Childrey defined Britain as a geographical unit in opposition to those countries, and he projected an alliance, based on shared geography, between Britons scattered across that land. This alliance included not just the gentry but also the “vulgar,” to whom Childrey also recommended the book. Britannia Baconica would broaden their minds by showing them how many strange and wonderful things could be found at their own doorsteps: as noted in the introduction, the book was not a “Telescope, but a Mirror,” Childrey wrote, “not about to put a delightful cheat upon you, with objects at a great distance, but shews you your selves.”19
Childrey so deeply identified Britons with their topography that his book was a mirror that showed them not their land but themselves. This identification of Britons with Britain is not wholly surprising coming from someone writing from within a chorographical tradition, as Childrey was. Chorographers sought to draw links between the characteristics of the land and the people living on it. However, Childrey expanded this chorographical mode of thinking beyond the local, applying it in a national context. It was not just that the Welsh were products of Wales or Northumbrians products of Northumbria: all were products of Britain.
Reflecting these aims, Childrey described natural rarities across England, Scotland, and Wales. He organized his Britannia Baconica regionally: England and Wales were broken up by counties; and Scotland was treated on its own. Yet he also drew links between similar natural phenomena that occurred in different regions, suggesting the ways in which people scattered across Britain might see each other as neighbors. These links were part of Childrey’s efforts to theorize about the causes of natural phenomena. As he passed through Kent, Childrey proposed that medicinal springs and iron mines (and hot springs and silver and tin mines) were causally linked, bringing as supporting evidence mines and springs in near propinquity to each other in Bath, Devonshire, Cornwall, Wales, Bristol, and Gloucestershire.20 He also offered descriptions of natural phenomena that encouraged readers to visualize Scotland, Wales, and England as a unified geographical space. Often these had to do with the seas surrounding Britain. Ocean tides reached notoriously far up the Thames, for example, because the “floods” (currents) that ran east from Cornwall and south from Scotland met at the mouth of the Thames “with very great noise and rippling,” and the sea swelled into the river.21 Elsewhere, several times in the book, Childrey mentioned the great schools of herring that circuited “our Island” and “round about Britain.”22
Imagined from the outside, as an island, England, Scotland, and Wales were unified as “Britain.” Yet viewed from within, Childrey’s Britain was variegated, particularized terrain. His description of Scotland clocked in at just six pages, much less extensive than his account of England and Wales, and it was not broken down into counties.23 He also tended to refer to “England” and “Scotland,” rather than Britain, as the national backdrop against which he illuminated the distinctive features of each county. For example, he noted that the quality of the air in Suffolk was “so good, that it is by some Physicians thought to be the best in England.”24 Similarly in his description of Northumberland he observed that “by Bywell Castle is a great store of Salmons: As indeed there is in most of the North of England, and in Scotland.”25 That Childrey described the individual nations as the relevant context for comparison, rather than, say, “Northern Britain,” suggests an ongoing disunity within his conception of Britain.
For all that Childrey attempted to draw national boundaries around his subject, the world beyond those boundaries kept seeping in. The nationalist aim of presenting a guidebook to Britain’s wonders was in conflict with the Baconian injunction to collect local particulars as broadly as possible. In adducing supporting evidence for the relationship between medicinal springs and iron mines, Childrey reached beyond British boundaries, including examples from Saxony on his list. Similarly when discussing a town that had been swallowed by the sea in Sussex, he mentioned further examples not only from Scotland but also from the Low Countries.26 Inspired by Bacon, Childrey hoped to theorize from individual instances to “universal maxims.”27 For that purpose non-British examples were also useful. Britannia Baconica, defined as a portable guidebook to Britain’s natural wonders, constantly escaped the limits of the first word of its title in service of the aims suggested by the second. At the same time, these non-British examples had the effect of reinforcing Childrey’s claim to the reader that there was
