Similarly in December, 1730, it was resolved to lease the university's right of printing bibles and prayer-books to "Mr James & Company" for the sum of £100 per annum, an additional £5 per annum to be paid during the lifetime of Jonathan Pindar, whose formal resignation had been arranged by a grace of 28 August[98].
This arose out of an application which has a special interest in the history of printing.
About the beginning of 1730 William Fenner, a London stationer,
did bring up from Edinburgh a Scotsman named Wm Ged; who had or pretended to have found out the Art of casting, upon Plates, whole Pages of Letters ... wch 'twas thought would be of great advantage to the publick, as well as to the proprietors of the Invention.
This invention came to the notice of a type-founder named Thomas James who was so much struck by its possibilities that he was
of opinion that the Design of printing by such plates would in short time be brought to such perfection as would greatly injure if not wholly ruine the business of letter-founding, by wch he then made shift to support a large family.
Accordingly a partnership was formed between Ged, Fenner, and Thomas James. The design, it was alleged, "had at that time all imaginable appearance of Success"; Thomas James, being unable to get any help from his father ("a Clergyman then living upwds of 85 years of age, who had, upon a small Endowmt in Hampshire, brought up a numerous family"), applied to his brother John, an architect at Greenwich, for financial assistance. John James came into the partnership, paying an entrance fee of £100, and, as the invention of stereotype plates was likely to be used with most advantage for the printing of bibles and prayer-books, undertook to apply for a licence to the University of Cambridge—"the only one at that time unemploied."[99]
This application was successful and the lease was granted to Fenner on 23 April, 1731; Fenner's name was used as that of the only member of the partnership who was a stationer, and John James gave a bond for £100.
The plates were at first made in London, at a house in Bartholomew Close, but in the summer of 1732 a house was hired in Cambridge and all the materials and implements moved thither. "For ye better prosecuting the Affair," a certain James Watson was sent to Holland "as well as to hire Men, as to buy Presses" and several Dutchmen were employed in printing the nonpareil bible and the small book of common prayer by the new process.
But the business did not prosper. Ged quarrelled with Fenner and "left the whole business at a stand, Secreting or taking with him several Tools and other things to which he had no Right"[100]; Baskett, the king's printer, filed a Bill in Chancery against Fenner for printing bibles; the injunction was subsequently withdrawn, but meanwhile John James was losing confidence in the scheme and growing anxious about his money; he urged Fenner to "go on with the Cambridge Patent Work in common Type Way by the Assistance of Mr Watson, and have nothing farther to do in the Plate Way." "As far as I can learn," wrote James in another letter (28 Nov. 1732), "the Booksellers all agree that the Prayer-Book that is done will by no means pass. So that to proceed farther in this Way will but run us more and more out of Pocket." Finally, Fenner died in debt in 1734; four specimens of his work in Cambridge have survived: an octavo Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Johnson's Letter to Mr Chandler, John Colbatch's Examination of the marriage treaty of Charles II, and A Collection of Poems, by the Author of A Poem on the Cambridge Ladies.