In 1580, at the express invitation of the General Assembly, Thomas Vautrollier visited Edinburgh, and set up as a bookseller, no doubt with the view of seeing what scope there was likely to be for a printer with a good stock of type. The Treasurer's accounts for this period show that he received royal patronage.
On his second visit, a year or two later, he went armed with a letter to George Buchanan from Daniel Rodgers, and set up a press in Edinburgh. But in spite of the support of the Assembly and the patronage that an introduction to Buchanan must have brought him, he evidently soon found there was not enough business in Edinburgh to support a printer, for he remained there little more than a year, when he again returned to London. During his short career as a printer in Edinburgh he printed at least eight books, of which the most important were Henry Balnave's Confession of Faith, 1584, 8vo, and King James's Essayes of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesie, 4to.
Scotland's next important printer was Robert Waldegrave, who, after his adventures as a secret printer in England, set up a press in Edinburgh in 1590, and continued printing there till the close of the century.
One of his first works was a quarto in Roman type entitled The Confession of Faith, Subscribed by the Kingis Maiestie and his householde: Togither with the Copie of the Bande, maid touching the maintenaunce of the true Religion. Among his other work, which was chiefly theological, may be mentioned King James's Demonologie, 1597, 4to, and the first edition of the Basilikon Doron, in quarto, of which it is said only seven copies were printed.
Contemporary with him was a Robert Smyth, who married the widow of Thomas Bassandyne, and who in 1599 received license to print the following books:—'The double and single catechism, the plane Donet, the haill four pairtes of grammar according to Sebastian, the Dialauges of Corderius, the celect and familiar Epistles of Cicero, the buik callit Sevin Seages, the Ballat buik, the Secund rudimentis of Dunbar, the Psalmes of Buchanan and Psalme buik.'
The only known copy of Smyth's edition of Holland's Seven Sages is that in the British Museum.
The last of the Scottish printers of the sixteenth century was Robert Charteris, the son and successor of Henry Charteris, but he did not succeed to the business until 1599, and his work lies chiefly in the succeeding century.
It may safely be said that the earliest press in Ireland of which there is any authentic notice was that of Humphrey Powell, of which there is the following note in the Act Books of the Privy Council (New Series, vol. iii. p. 84), under date 18th July 1550:—
'A warrant to ——, to deliver xxli unto Powell the printer, given him by the Kinges Majestie towarde his setting up in Ireland.'
Nothing is known of Humphrey Powell's work in England beyond several small theological works issued between 1548 and 1549 from a shop in Holborn above the Conduit.