File:The Arches of Triumph (BM 1880,1113.5776).jpg

Height: 293 millimetres

Width: 205 millimetres

The complete series is 1880,1113.5776-5783; this comprises a second state impression of the title-page and first state impressions of the seven arches. There are two further sets in P&D: 1906,0719.11(1-8), a complete set, all second state impressions; and 1981,U.3017-3022, an incomplete set comprising six arches, and lacking the title-page and the arch titled 'Londinium'.

The set of plates show the seven temporary arches erected along the route of James I's formal procession from the Tower through the City of London to Temple Bar on 15 March 1604. The arches had originally been intended for James's coronation on 25 July 1603, but plague had forced him to postpone a formal procession through London on that occasion. The arches were constructed of wood and measured between 40 and 70 feet across the base. The costs were met by the City, with the exception of two arches built by the resident communities of Italian and Dutch merchants. For the event and its symbolism, see Graham Parry, 'The Golden Age Restor'd' (Manchester, 1981), pp. 2-21.

The plates were made soon after the event, and were accompanied by nine pages of letterpress text, printed by John Windet; a letterpress dedication to Sir Thomas Bennet, the Lord Mayor of London, is dated 16 June 1604. The letterpress text includes odes composed for the event by Thomas Dekker and John Webster, alongside explanations of the devices. The engraved title-plate records that the plates were 'invented and published by Stephen Harrison, joyner and architect', and in Dekker's 'The Magnificent Entertainment' (1604), a book about the event, Harrison is described as 'the sole inventor of the architecture' and to have been in charge of a team of more than 250 craftsmen.

Harrison's address to the reader provides some explanation for the set:

'The limmes of these great Triumphall bodies (lately disjoynted and taken in sunder) I have thou seest (for thy sake) set in their apt and right places again. So that now they are to stand as perpetuall monuments, not to be shaken in peeces, or to be broken downe, by the malice of that envious destroyer of all things, Time. Which labours of mine, if they yield thee either profit or pleasure, thou art (in requitall thereof) to pay many thankes to this honourable Citie, whose bounty towards me, not onely in making choice of me, to give directions for the intire workmanship of the five Triumphall Arch's builded by the same, but also (in publishing these Peeces) I do here gladly acknowledge to have been exceeding liberall.'

The order of the plates as they appear in the first edition of the work, with titles taken from the accompanying letterpress text, is as follows: (1) The Device called Londinium (2) The Italians Pegme stood in Gracious-streete (3) The Pegme of the Dutchmen (4) The Device called Nova foelix Arabia, The new Arabia foelix (5) The Device called Hortus Euporiae, Garden of Plentie (6) The Device called Cozmoz Neoz, New World (7) The Device called Templum Iani, Temple of Ianus

The success of the plates was such that they were later purchased and re-issued in 1613 by Sudbury & Humble (apparently without the letterpress text), then by George Lowe of Lothbury, before eventually ending up among Peter Stent's stock.