| Method | Copper engraved |
| Artist | Drake, Francis |
| Published | 1736 |
| Dimensions | 277 x 385 mm |
| Notes |
Map of the city of York with a numbered key on the left to places, and a lettered key on the right to antiquities. Inscription reads: To the Common Council of the City of York, this plate is particularly inscribed by their obliged humble servant Francis Drake. 1736. From Francis Drake's Eboracum: or the History and Antiquities of the City of York (London: William Bower, 1736). Francis Drake (1696-1771) was an English antiquary and surgeon. He is best known as the author of Eboracum, an influential history of the city of York. Born in Pontefract, Drake was apprenticed as a young boy to the York surgeon Christopher Birbeck. After Birbeck's death in 1717, Drake took over his practice. In 1720, in York Minster, Drake married Mary Woodyeare, daughter of a former secretary to Sir William Temple. Two of their five sons survived childhood. A keen historian, Drake began work on a history of York in April 1731. £50 was contributed by the city commission towards the cost of acquiring and printing illustrations for his book. Another £50 was contributed by Lord Burlington, who had rescued Drake from an unjust imprisonment for debt and was the dedicatee of the book. Eboracum was published in 1736, for 540 subscribers, who included the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London. Drake was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and of the Royal Society in the same year. In 1741 he was appointed honorary surgeon to York County Hospital but lost the position in 1745 due to his Jacobite sympathies. Between 1751 and 1760, he published, with the bookseller Caesar Ward, the thirty volumes of The Parliamentary or Constitutional History of England from the Earliest Times to the Restoration of King Charles II, with a second edition, in twenty-four volumes, appearing in 1763. Condition: Centrefold as issued. Crease to upper left part of sheet. |
| Framing | unmounted |
| Price | £250.00 |
| Stock ID | 32907 |