Robert Plot (1640-96) was the first keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and official historiographer to James II. Following the success of Plot’s first published work, the ‘Natural History of Oxford’, published in Oxford in 1677 he issued this work on Staffordshire. It has been described as being better written than that of Oxfordshire. Both were accompanied by large and extremely attractive maps of the counties. The map of Staffordshire is by Gregory King (1648-1712), engraved by Joseph Browne (fl.1678-82) and dated 1682. King (1648-1712) from Lichfield was a surveyor, draughtsman and engraver, who went to London in 1672. There through the great engraver Wenceslaus Hollar he met John Ogilby and helped produce many of the road strips for his ‘Britannia’ in 1675. It is known from his autobiography that he had worked on a map of the county early on. It is an extremely ornate map decorated by numerous coats of arms of the subscribers. This is an example of the FIRST STATE of five known, a very fine dark engraving. Of the engraved plates by Michael Burghers (1647?-1727) twenty-six are double page images of county seats or towns in the county. They are very attractive often including scenes of life in the foreground. Burghers was a native of Holland and settled in Oxford by 1673.

It is also an important work on Freemasonry. Plot was a secretary of the Royal Society and friends of both Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn through whom he met Elias Ashmole. In this work he describes at length the Society of Freemasons and describes how it is “spread over the nation …”. This work carries even more weight when one bears in mind he was not a mason himself. Provenance: bookplate of Frances Mary Richardson Currer (1785-1861), of Eshton Hall, described as being one of the first great female book collectors and an acquaintance of Charlotte Bronte, possibly the inspiration for her pen name Currer Bell under which she wrote ‘Jane Eyre’; blindstamp of K. S. Lycett on front free endpaper; Marlborough Rare Books (2002); private English collection. Anderson (1881) p. 257; ESTC R21986; King (1988) pp. 25 & 66-8; Tooley (1999-2004); Upcott (1968) 1172-1174; Wing P2588; Worms & Baynton-Williams (2011).