[IV]
PRINTERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH AND RESTORATION
The printer who succeeded Roger Daniel, John Legate the younger, has already been mentioned in connection with the agreement of 1639 between Buck and the Stationers. Admitted freeman of the Stationers' Company in 1619, he took over several of the books printed by his father, including Thomas's Dictionary. For many years before his appointment he had described himself as printer to the university and shortly after the grace for his election (5 July, 1650) he and William Graves, another Cambridge stationer, "entered into recognisances with two sureties of £300 each not to print any seditious or unlicensed books, pamphlets, or pictures, nor suffer their presses to be used for that purpose"—a pledge similar to that given by the brothers Buck in the previous year.
Perhaps the most interesting feature of Legate's short tenure of the office of printer is the fact that Thomas Buck, without resigning his patent, made an agreement with him and Octavian Pulleyn by which he undertook to hand over his printing rights to the Stationers' Company of London:
The said Mr Buck shall surcease to print in Cambridge, and soe long as he shall forbeare to exercise his printing place there, that the said Companie of Stationers ... shall pay unto the said Mr Buck the summe of twenty pounds per Annum....
Neither the said Thomas Buck nor his brother John Buck shall resyne their ... Patents for the Printers place, without the consent of the aforesaid John Legate ... soe as the said Mr Legate may enjoy the sole exercise of Printing in the University of Cambridge....
In regard Mr Buck hath many Bookes which he hath lately printed in Cambridge now lieing upon his hand (some whereof he hath lately printed whilst he freed Mr Legate from takeing the share of the Presse in Cambridge whereunto he had otherwise been obliged) the said Companie of Stationers shall really, and bona fide, use the utmost of their best indeavours to sell all the said bookes....
For all the letter in the Printinge house of Cambridge (mentioned in founders' Bills and bought since Mr Legate was first chosen to be a Printer in Cambridge, as also the long Primmer and Pica-greeke ...) the Companie of Stationers shall pay unto the said Thomas Buck two full third parts of the several prices they cost....