At Cambridge a stationer named John Laer, of Siberch, i.e. Siegburg, near Cologne, settled, in or about 1520, and acted as publisher to an edition of Croke’s Introductiones in Rudimenta Græca, printed at Cologne by Eucharius Cervicornus. After this, in 1521 and 1522, Siberch himself printed nine small books at Cambridge, the first of them being a Latin speech by Henry Bullock addressed to Cardinal Wolsey. Among the other books was a Dialogue of Lucian’s (περὶ διψάδων), for which Siberch had to use some Greek type, and a work on letter-writing (De conscribendis epistolis) by Erasmus, with whom he seems to have been on friendly terms. After 1522 no more books were printed at Cambridge until 1583.
At Tavistock in 1525 a monk named Thomas Richard printed a translation of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae for “the ryght worschypful esquyer Mayster Robert Langdon.” Nine years later, in 1534, the same press printed the Statutes concerning the Devonshire Stannaries or Tin Mines. These are the only two early books known to have been printed at Tavistock.
At Abingdon in 1528, John Scolar, presumably the same man who had previously worked a few miles off at Oxford, printed a Portiforium or Breviary for the use of the monastery. No other early book is known to have been printed there.
From 1539, when John Hertfort was summoned from St. Albans, to the end of the reign of Henry VIII, we know of no provincial printing in England. But on the accession of Edward VI the extreme Protestants who had fled from England to the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, came flocking back, and some of them seem to have stopped at Ipswich. Two, or perhaps three printers, all in the Protestant interest, worked there in the first few months of the new reign. The first of these, Anthony Scoloker, printed seven books at Ipswich in 1547 and 1548, and then went on to London. The second, John Overton, brought over with him from Wesel the text of Bishop Bale’s Latin bibliography of the Illustrious Writers of Britain, printed there by Theodoricus Plateanus, otherwise Dirick van der Straten, and may or may not have printed at Ipswich two additional sheets, which he dated there 31 July, 1548.[56] The third printer, John Oswen, printed at Ipswich eleven tracts, mostly controversial, in or about 1548, and then removed to Worcester.
On his arrival at Worcester late in 1548, or early in 1549, John Oswen obtained a special privilege from Edward VI for printing service-books for use in the Principality of Wales, and produced there three editions of the first Prayer Book of Edward VI and a New Testament. Besides these, from 1549 to 1553 he printed eighteen other books, mostly of controversial theology, calling himself in his imprints “Printer appoynted by the Kinges Maiestie for the Principalitie of Wales and the Marches of the same.” On the accession of Mary, it being no longer safe to print Protestant theology, Oswen’s press ceased working.
At Canterbury in 1549 John Mychell, or Mitchell, who had moved there after producing a few books in London, printed an English psalter, “poynted as it shall be songe in churches.” During Edward’s reign Mychell printed at Canterbury altogether some twenty books and tracts, mostly more or less controversial treatises on the Protestant side. On the accession of Mary he ceased publishing till 1556, when his press was employed by Cardinal Pole to print his Articles of Visitation.
The next year, by the charter granted to the Stationers’ Company, printing outside London was forbidden, the prohibition being subsequently relaxed in favour of the two Universities, although it was nearly thirty years before they availed themselves of their right. In the previous eighty years only about a hundred books[57] had been produced at the provincial presses, and in the year in which the charter was granted it can hardly be said that any press outside London was in existence. The new regulation stood in the way of development, but it was a development for which there seems to have been little demand. We may see some slight confirmation of this view in the fact that during Elizabeth’s reign there was very little secret printing, though there had probably been a good deal under Mary. The three Elizabethan secret presses which have been chronicled were:
(1) A Puritan press which printed various tracts on Church government, written by Thomas Cartwright. These were printed secretly in 1572 and 1573, first at Wandsworth, afterwards at Hempstead, near Saffron Walden, in Essex. The press was seized in August, 1573, and the type handed to Henry Bynneman, who, the next year, used it to reprint Cartwright’s attack, interpolating Whitgift’s replies in larger type.
(2) A Jesuit press which printed for Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons in 1580 and 1581, first at Greenstreet House in East Ham, afterwards at Stonor Park, near Henley. The press was managed by Stephen Brinckley, who was ultimately captured and imprisoned for nearly two years.
(3) The Puritan travelling press, from which issued the famous Martin Marprelate tracts in 1588 and 1589. Some of these were printed in East Molesey, in Surrey; others in the house of Sir Richard Knightley at Fawsley, near Daventry, others in that of Roger Wigston of Wolston Priory, between Coventry and Rugby. The chief printer of them was Robert Waldegrave, who eventually fled first to La Rochelle, where he may have printed one of the tracts, and then to Edinburgh, where he became a printer of some importance.