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Peter Heylyn (1599-1662) produced a historical geography of the world which asserted England's rights over the Americas, India, and Africa. It was a work of significance in its day, which went through at least eleven editions in the thirty years after its first publication in 1652.

Heylyn was explicit about the fact that he wrote as both an Englishman and a member of the Church of England. He acknowledged that 'as I have been zealous to Record the Actions, so have I been careful to assert the Rights of the English Nation’.

There is a mention of the historic figure of Vlad Dracula in Heylyn’s Cosmographie, but in 1866 Stoker was almost certainly only interested in this volume because of the stories it told of the heroism and ‘derring-do’ of early English explorers.

Citation:
12. Peter Heylyn, Cosmographie in foure Books Contayning the Chorographie & Historie of the whole World (London, 1682).,
Marsh's Library Exhibits,
accessed May 16, 2025,
https://web.marshlibrary.ie/digi/items/show/501