Illustration of Williamsburg buildings, flora and fauna (not titled)

This remarkable plate, discovered in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University in 1929, depicts the only surviving period view of many of the public buildings and gardens in the Virginia colonial capital. William Byrd II of Westover is thought to have commissioned this copper plate in an effort to promote the Virginia colony. It illustrates the only known 18th-century elevation of the Governor’s Palace, indicating the presence of oval beds and stone paths in the forecourt and the formal gardens with garden houses behind. The clipped rows of topiary evergreens and bushes at the Wren building, the main building of the College of William and Mary, are also represented.
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