A Map of Greater Cambria
Schwyzer, Philip
Early Modern Literary Studies 4.2/ Special Issue 3 (September, 1998)
Abstract
If the “gentlemen opposers” suspected that in the eyes of the world and of Westminster they were not counted as Englishmen, they had only to look to the atlas for cartographic confirmation of their fears. The supplement to Ortelius’s Theatrum Orbis Terrarum published in 1573 included a map drawn by the Welsh physician, philologist and antiquarian Humphrey Lhuyd. Here Wales, or Cambria, is divided into its three traditional regions, Gwynedd, Deheubarth, and Powys–none of which had possessed a political existence for several centuries–and the eastern border of Powys is the river Severn. Through this audacious cartographical land-grab, Wales is made to extend as far as Worcester and Tewkesbury, at some points more than doubling in width. This paper explores the fluid and contested boundaries of Wales around the river Severn and charts their description in the literature of Drayton, Shakespeare, Milton, and their contemporaries.
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