A beautifully coloured map of County Durham, with an inset of the city of Durham and a tableau and text cartouche explaining the battle of Neville’s Croft in 1346, when David II of Scotland was prevented from advancing into England.

John Speed (1552-1629) was the outstanding cartographer of his age. His ‘Theatre of Great Britain’ was the first atlas of the British Isles: Speed prepared the maps himself about two years before they were published. His maps and books dominated the seventeenth-century English market. The present map is taken from the 1627 English edition published by George Humble.