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This detailed English map of Artois and the Country Adjacent was published in London in 1713 by the eminent English cartographer and geographer John Senex, based on a map originally produced by French Royal Geographer Guillaume de l’Isl. It presents the northwestern French province of Artois—centered around towns such as Arras, Saint-Omer, and Béthune—along with portions of Flanders, Picardy, and Hainaut.
The map was issued during the final year of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), a context that may explain its dedication to a British general and its military utility, covering a strategically significant region stretching from the coast of the English Channel in the west to Cambrai and the upper reaches of the Scheldt River in the east.
The map bears a formal dedication to Sir Richard Temple, Baronet, who served as Lieutenant General of Her Majesty's Forces. Temple was a prominent British military officer and politician, later elevated to Viscount Cobham, and played a role in various campaigns of the War of the Spanish Succession. The choice to dedicate this map to a high-ranking officer is telling: such maps were valued not only for geographic knowledge but also as tools of war and diplomacy.
John Senex (1678-1740) was one of the foremost mapmakers in England in the early eighteenth century. He was also a surveyor, globemaker, and geographer. As a young man, he was apprenticed to Robert Clavell, a bookseller. He worked with several mapmakers over the course of his career, including Jeremiah Seller and Charles Price. In 1728, Senex was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society, a rarity for mapmakers. The Fellowship reflects his career-long association as engraver to the Society and publisher of maps by Edmund Halley, among other luminaries. He is best known for his English Atlas (1714), which remained in print until the 1760s. After his death in 1740 his widow, Mary, carried on the business until 1755. Thereafter, his stock was acquired by William Herbert and Robert Sayer (maps) and James Ferguson (globes).
