William Camden first published his venerable geo-historical
compendium of Great Britain and Ireland, “Britannia” in 1586 and it proved
extremely popular. By 1589, encouraged by the success of Christopher Saxton’s
atlas, Camden began preparations to illustrate his work with a
set of county maps. Despite this lengthy lead time, the first time the work
contained a set of county maps was in the 1607 sixth edition of the work. The
maps injected a new lease of life into the publication and it became such a library staple that further editions were issued into the early 19th century, albeit
with different maps.

The Saxton Kip or Saxton Hole maps, as they are generally
known, provide an almost unique opportunity for the collector to acquire either
the first available or second available map of a particular English county.
These maps were only present in the sixth, seventh and eighth edition of the
Britannia published 1607, 1610 and 1637 before the maps were revised and
updated by other cartographers. They were usually issued in black and white but
on very rare occasions, bespoke colouring was added at the time of publishing.

Although this map gives Saxton as its source, it was part of
a sheet in the atlas which combined the counties of Cambridgeshire,
Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire, Huntingdon, Rutland, Warwick and
Leicestershire.

The example offered here is from the 1637 edition of the
work and is distinguished by particularly fine original colouring from the same
year. [LEICS237]