Joseph Moxon (1627–1691)
London, ca 1679
From the Map Department

The ‘English Globe’ was designed by Roger Palmer (1634–1705) Earl of Castlemaine (a well-travelled Cambridge-educated courtier and diplomat, and the husband of one of Charles II’s mistresses), with the construction (including the cartography) being undertaken by Joseph Moxon, London instrument and globemaker, map publisher, seller and engraver. It is very unusual in being an immobile globe—the sphere, which sits above a paper planisphere housed in the base, does not rotate. It was felt that this arrangement would allow it to be used to perform complex calculations more easily than with a conventional rotating globe, and it was accompanied by a book with instructions for its use. The University Library was an early adopter, having purchased this very globe in 1681 for five pounds and twelve shillings, but the idea did not catch on and Moxon’s is the only known example of an immobile globe. Two striking features of the geography are the incomplete coast of Australia (shown here) and the depiction of California as an island—an error that persisted on many maps in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries despite evidence to the contrary.