Despite periodic attempts to reassess John Webb’s role in the development of seventeenth-century English architecture, he has remained something of an enigma. Born in London in 1611 of a Somerset family, Webb was educated at the Merchant Taylors’ School in the City. In 1628 he was taken as a pupil into the office of Inigo Jones. By that date Jones had been Surveyor of the King’s Works for well over a decade and, with his design for the Banqueting House, Whitehall, had introduced a revolutionary style of architecture into England. Jones’s earlier travels in Italy, his study of antiquities and of the architecture of Andrea Palladio had made him the first true Renaissance architect in this country, and his reputation was such that soon after his death he was credited with many buildings designed by others. Webb and his work were overshadowed by the legend of Jones. Drawings in Webb’s hand were already in the 1680s assumed to be by Jones, and Kent’s Designs of Inigo Jones (1727) consists mainly of engravings derived from drawings by Webb. More recently, while Webb’s draughtsmanship has been recognized, it has often been assumed that he was transcribing ideas of Jones’s.