Note 239 — Chapter VI · THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY FOUNDRY.

Printing was introduced into Cambridge in 1521, when John Siberch printed Bullock’s Oratio and seven other works. He styled himself the first printer in Greek in England, although none of his works were wholly printed in that language. The fount used for the quotations in the Galeni de Temperamentis was probably procured from abroad. The residence of Erasmus at Cambridge lent undoubted impetus to the art, which progressed actively while the Oxford press was idle. The first University printers, three in number, were appointed in 1534, by virtue of a charter granted by Henry VIII, in terms considerably more liberal than those first granted to Oxford. At no period of its career has the Cambridge press boasted of a type-foundry. In 1626 Archbishop Usher made an effort to procure from Leyden, for the use of the press, matrices of Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic and Samaritan letters, which, had he been successful, might have formed the nucleus of a foundry. Unfortunately, the Archbishop was forestalled by the Elzevirs, who secured the matrices for their own press (Parr’s Life of Usher. London, 1686, fol., p. 342–3). The University made an effort in 1700 to enrich their press by the purchase of a fount of the famous Paris Greek types of Francis I, known as the King’s Greek. But as the French Academy insisted, as a condition of the purchase, that all works printed in these characters should bear the imprint “characteribus Græcis e Typographeo regio Parisiensi,” the Cambridge Syndics, unable to accede to the terms, withdrew from the negotiations (Gresswell’s Early Parisian Greek Press. Oxford, 1833, i, 411; and De Guignes’ Typographie Orientale et Grecque de l’Imprimerie Royale. Paris, 1787, p. 85).