This map is engraved by the noted Wenceslaus Hollar and is indeed the only one signed by him in the ‘Britannia’ which was intended as the third part of Richard Blome’s grand atlas in four volumes announced in 1668. Blome utilised different engravers and this map is one of six to bear a date. Here 1671, the earliest is 1669 indicated something of the publication history. The work was 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. Burden no. 15; Pennington ‘Hollar’ no. 659; Skelton 90.