Saxton’s map of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire holds the position of being only the second of the maps to be finished according to Evans and Lawrence. Only that of Norfolk was similarly completed in the same year. This reflects the counties significance to Elizabethan England. They also show that the project was still in its infancy and its formula was still undergoing development. This example is in the usual second state, the first being an early pre-issue. It is one of the few maps where the engraver is unidentified. Skelton speculated that it was the hand of Johannes Rutlinger but the erasure he cites provides no clear evidence to support it.

Christopher Saxton produced one of the earliest national surveys of any kind and the first uniformly conceived cartographic survey of England and Wales. It was begun in about 1574 and completed by 1579: ‘in the long list of British atlases the first name is also the greatest, the name of Christopher Saxton’ (Chubb). Saxton (c.1542–c.1610) was born in the Dunningley, West Riding of Yorkshire. While the details of his early life are sketchy, it is known that he attended Cambridge University, and in 1570 he was apprenticed as a map maker to John Rudd, vicar of Dewsbury. Saxton began work on his county maps in about 1574. In 1577 he received letters patent from Elizabeth I protecting his maps against plagiarism for the next ten years. As well as the Queen’s protection, Saxton also enjoyed the patronage of Thomas Seckford, Master of the Queen’s Requests, whose mottoes are found on the maps.

Evans and Lawrence wrote that he ‘left a legacy of maps of the counties of England and Wales from which succeeding generations of map-makers drew extensively … amazingly accurate in detail, [the atlas] survives as testimony to his expertise when surveying techniques and comprehension of the mathematical sciences were still limited.’ They are arguably the most highly prized by collectors of county maps. Barber ‘Mapmaking in England, ca.1470-1650’ in ‘The History of Cartography’ volume 3 part 2 pp. 1623-31; Burden, Eugene (1994) 1.2; Chubb (1927) I; Evans & Lawrence (1979) pp. 9–43; Harley, Brian The Map Collector no. 8 pp. 2-11; Hind (1952-55) vol. 1 p. 73; Lawrence, Heather ‘Christopher Saxton’ in ‘The Map Collector’ 27 pp. 16-18; Shirley (1980) no. 128; Shirley (2004) T.Sax 1b-e; Skelton (1970) 1; Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011); Wyatt (1978) pp. 24-5.