With 'A View of London about the Year 1560', a bird's-eye view of Elizabethan London, which offers a sweeping perspective of the city in great detail. Extending from Westminster Abbey to the Tower of London, in addition to notations provided throughout the map, the key at the bottom provides a further guide to 95 other landmarks and streets throughout the city. The bear- and bull-baiting arenas are both depicted on the south side of the Thames - precursors of the playhouses of Elizabethan playwrights such as Shakespeare. It is probable, that the source for this view, is 'Civitas Londinium' attributed to Ralph Agas - one of the earliest views of London, along with Braun and Hogenberg's depiction of 1572. This map was originally printed from woodblocks around 1561, but no copies from that date survive. In the late 1730s, the artist and engraver George Vertue copied Agas's view from "an ancient print in the possession of Hans Sloane", a fact commemorated in the text below the key, "Reduced to this Size from a Large Print in the Collection of Sr Hans Sloane Bart anno 1738".

The engraver of the other views in Maitland's survey was William Henry Toms (died 1765), who is probably best known for engraving Henry Popple's large wall-map of North America 'A Map of the British Empire in America' (1733). The 1730s was his most prolific and most desperate period, as in addition to the Popple map and this series, he was engraving another two: for Francis Blomefield, 'An Essay towards a Topographical History of the County of Norfolk'; and with Robert West, 'Perspective Views of all the Ancient Churches, and other Buildings, in the Cities of London, and Westminster, and Parts adjacent, within the Bills of Mortality' (1736-1739). All to pay the medical bills for his ailing wife.

William Maitland's 'History of London' (c1693-1757), was a huge success, and ran to several editions. It was first published, as here, by Samuel Richardson, better known as the author of great English novels, such as 'Pamela' (1740) and 'Clarissa' (1748).