This attractive map is from the ‘Britannia’ which was intended as the third part of Richard Blome’s grand atlas in four volumes announced in 1668. Lambasted by Bishop Nicolson in 1696 as ‘a most entire piece of theft out of Camden and Speed’ and by Richard Gough in 1780 as ‘a most notorious piece of plagiarism’. Blome himself disclaimed originality claiming in the Preface ‘I do not own myself the Author, but the Undertaker [i.e. publisher] of this work’. One should remember that this was the first edition of Camden’s ‘Britannia’ to be issued with maps since the 1630s. Blome was one of the earliest to finance his works by subscription. One later edition of the work is known in 1677 which survives in just one known example. This map is an example of the second state. Higham p. 24; Shirley BL T.Blom-2a; Skelton 90.