A map of Great Britain and Ireland, with inset views of London and Edinburgh and a map of the Orkneys. The pendants to the views are each side of a coin issued by Cunobeline, an Ancient British king, later immortalised by William Shakespeare in his play Cymbeline, produced for the first time the year before Speed’s work was published.

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.