John Ogilby is one of the most interesting of all British mapmakers, remarkable for the way that he dealt with successive adversities in his private life: having to work at an early age to pay off his father’s debts, a dancer whose career ended with a dance injury, a theatre owner who saw the theatre destroyed in riots, along with all his possessions, and a literary publisher whose stock was destroyed in the Great Fire of London, but surviving, going on to become Cosmographer to King Charles II.