Following the death of Philip Lea 25 February 1700 his widow Anne continued the business. Although it is recorded that she sold some copper plates to George Willdey shortly after 1715 those belonging to the Saxton atlas were not amongst them. The date of her death is unknown but on 5 August 1730 the ‘Daily Journal’ carried an advertisement announcing the sale by auction of ‘all the Copper Plates belonging to the Estate of Mrs. Anne Lea, deceased … with all the County Maps of Great Britain and Ireland’. From 1709 early in his career Willdey was advertising maps for sale.

Willdey’s first advertisement announcing the county plates was placed in the Daily Post for 3 February 1732 (illustrated in Hodson I p. 142). Willdey was not able to secure all of the Lea plates despite securing those by Saxton. Some of the maps in the Saxton-Lea atlas were replacements by other cartographers and those of John Seller including the Hertfordshire went to Thomas and John Bowles. However of a full complement of county maps Willdey did not have ones for Cambridgeshire or Hertfordshire. Willdey was compelled to have new maps of these counties engraved which might explain the delay between acquisition in August 1730 and the first advert in February 1732.

This is the replacement engraved map for Hertfordshire that Willdey was compelled to produce having been unsuccessful in acquiring that by John Seller from the estate of Anne Lea. The first state of a very rare map, only five example of the atlas are recorded. Hodson (1974) 25.1; Hodson (1984-97) I pp. 143-145.