By it [Katherine Hall] the Printing Room, which is about 60 foot long and 20 foot broad. Six presses. Had my cousin Hull and my name printed there. Paper windows, and a pleasant garden along one side between Katherine Hall and that. Had there a print of the Combinations[72].
During Hayes's lifetime several other appointments to the office of printer were made: John Peck (1680), Hugh Martin (1682), James Jackson (1683), Jonathan Pindar (1686), H. Jenkes (1693), another Jonathan Pindar (1697)[73]. All these appointments seem, however, to have been merely formal. They were, presumably, the last to be made in accordance with the original provision of the charter of 1534, by which the university was empowered to elect three printers simultaneously. Far more important was the arrival of Cornelius Crownfield. As early as 1694 his name appears on the title-page of Joshua Barnes's edition of Euripides of which Dyer says: "the magnificence and typographical excellence ... form an epoch in the History of Greek Printing at Cambridge. It reminds us of the blooming infancy of this useful art, and the Harlem press"; and Crownfield's appointment, in 1698 or earlier, as Inspector of the Press, was part of an energetic movement to establish Cambridge printing on a new basis.
V
RICHARD BENTLEY—THE FIRST PRESS SYNDICATE
In the movement for the revival of Cambridge typography at the end of the seventeenth century the most prominent name is that of Richard Bentley.
The renovation of the University Press (writes his biographer, Monk), which had continued in decay since the Usurpation, was projected by him, and mainly accomplished through his agency. New buildings, new presses, and new types were all requisite; and the University itself being destitute of funds, a subscription for these purposes was procured principally by his exertions; and the deficiency was made up by the Senate borrowing a thousand pounds. The task of ordering types of every description was absolutely committed to his discretion by a grace in very complimentary terms; and the power of attorney given him on this occasion is the most unlimited I recollect ever to have seen[74].
The reference to the continuous decay of the Press during fifty years savours of exaggeration. The typographical inaccuracies in Field's bibles, it is true, became notorious; but it was Field who built the new printing-house and from 1655 onwards there is no year in which the continuity of book-production is broken.