Description:The earliest known illustration of Stafford, very romanticised, showing the town walls, the River Sow, St. Mary's Church (with its spire, left) and St. Chad's Church to the right. An inscription with it reads 'Stafford is a proper little towne walled about standing in the middest of the shyre uppon the River of Sow which falleth into the Trent 3 myles est from thence. The castell standeth almost a myle from the towne.'
A copy of the original drawing at the British Museum, drawn by W.N.Smith in 1588. Reproduced from a copy that is bound in 'Some Account of the Stafford Barony and of the Disputed Claim Thereof' by James Broughton, 1831, in the collections of the William salt Library.