OTLAND AND IRELAND DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY[10]

On the 15th September 1507, King James IV. of Scotland granted to his
faithful subjects, Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, burgesses of
Edinburgh, leave to import a printing-press and letter, and gave them
licence to print law books, breviaries, and so forth, more particularly
the Breviary of William, Bishop of Aberdeen. Walter Chepman was a
general merchant, and probably his chief part in the undertaking at the
outset was of a financial character. Andrew Myllar had for some years
carried on the business of a bookseller in Edinburgh, and books were
printed for him in Rouen by Pierre Violette. There is, moreover,
evidence that Myllar himself learnt the art of printing in that city.

The printing-house of the firm in Edinburgh was in the Southgait (now
the Cowgate), and they lost no time in setting to work, devoting
themselves chiefly to printing some of the popular metrical tales of
England and Scotland. A volume containing eleven such pieces, most of
them printed in 1508, is preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.

Among the pieces found in it are--_Sir Eglamoure of Artoys_, _Maying or
desport of Chaucer_, _Buke of Gude Counsale to the Kyng_, _Flytting of
Dunbar & Kennedy_, and _Twa Marrit Wemen and the wedo_.

Three founts of black letter, somewhat resembling in size and shape
those of Wynkyn de Worde, were used in printing these books, and the
devices of both men are found in them. That of Chepman was a copy of the
device of the Paris printer, Pigouchet, while Myllar adopted the punning
device of a windmill with a miller bearing sacks into the mill, with a
small shield charged with three fleur-de-lys in each of the upper
corners.

[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Device of Andrew Miller.]

After printing the above-mentioned works, Myllar disappears, and the
famous _Breviarium Aberdonense_, the work for which the King had mainly
granted the license, was finished in 1509-10 by Chepman alone. It is an
unpretentious little octavo, printed in double columns, in red and
black, as became a breviary, but with no special marks of typographical
beauty. Four copies of it are known to exist, but none of these are
perfect. Chepman then disappears as mysteriously as his partner. In the
Glamis copy of the _Bremarium_, Dr. David Laing discovered a single
sheet of eight leaves of a book with the imprint: _Impressum Edinburgi
per Johane Story nomine & mandato Karoli Stule_. Noth