23 Facts About Emery Molyneux

Emery Molyneux was an English Elizabethan maker of globes, mathematical instruments and ordnance.

Emery Molyneux became acquainted with many prominent men of the day, including the writer Richard Hakluyt and the mathematicians Robert Hues and Edward Wright.

Emery Molyneux knew the explorers Thomas Cavendish, Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh and John Davis.

Emery Molyneux emigrated to Amsterdam with his wife in 1596 or 1597.

Emery Molyneux is regarded as the maker of the first terrestrial and celestial globes in England and as the first English globe-maker.

Richard Polter, in his book The Pathway to Perfect Sayling, mentioned that Emery Molyneux had been a skilful maker of compasses and hourglasses.

The construction of globes by Emery Molyneux appears to have been suggested by Davis to his patron William Sanderson, a London merchant who has been described as "one of the most munificent and patriotic of merchant-princes of London in the days of Elizabeth I".

In making his terrestrial globes, Emery Molyneux examined ruttiers and pilots.

Emery Molyneux is known to have given a ruttier for Brazil and the West Indies to Thomas Harriot in 1590.

Emery Molyneux received advice and assistance from navigators and mathematicians.

However, Helen Wallis, former Map Curator of the British Library, observed in 1951 that this was unlikely, because Emery Molyneux incorrectly plotted Cavendish's course in Maritime Southeast Asia.

The mathematician and cartographer Edward Wright assisted Emery Molyneux in plotting coastlines on the terrestrial globe and translated some of the legends into Latin.

Emery Molyneux's source appears to have been Andrea Corsali's diagram of the Antarctic sky published in 1550.

Emery Molyneux's globes were the first to be constructed in such a way that they were unaffected by humidity at sea.

Emery Molyneux himself wrote a treatise, now lost, entitled The Globes Celestial and Terrestrial Set Forth in Plano, which Sanderson published in 1592.

Emery Molyneux's wife was granted administration of his estate in England later that month.

Emery Molyneux apparently had no other surviving family, and the English globe-making industry died with him.

Emery Molyneux duly published globes in 1600 and 1601, and his sons Henricus and Jodocus published a pair in 1613.

The appearance of Emery Molyneux's globes had a significant influence on the culture of his time.

Only six Emery Molyneux globes are known to exist today, two terrestrial globes and four celestial globes.

Emery Molyneux believes that they were probably acquired by Middle Temple on their publication in 1603.

For instance, if Hondius had obtained a copy of Raleigh's map of Guiana, Emery Molyneux was the most likely source.

The Middle Temple's Emery Molyneux globes are the subject of a book-length project, The Emery Molyneux Globes: Mathematical Practice and Theory, by Lesley Cormack of the University of Alberta.