re is heard of him.

Contemporary with Lekpreuik was Thomas Bassandyne, who is believed to
have worked both in Paris and Leyden before setting up as a printer in
Edinburgh.

His first appearance, in 1568, was not a very creditable one. An order
of the General Assembly, on the 1st July of that year, directs
Bassandyne to call in a book entitled _The Fall of the Roman Kirk_, in
which the king was called 'supreme head of the Primitive Church,' and
also orders him to delete an obscene song called _Welcome Fortune_ which
he had printed at the end of a psalm-book. The Assembly appointed Mr.
Alexander Arbuthnot to revise these things.

In 1574 Bassandyne printed a quarto edition of Sir David Lindsay's
_Works_, of which he had 510 copies in stock at the time of his death.

[Illustration: FIG. 29.--Device of Alexander Arbuthnot.]

On the 7th March 1574-75, in partnership with Alexander Arbuthnot (who
was not the same as the Alexander Arbuthnot who had been appointed to
exercise a supervision of Bassandyne's books in 1568), Bassandyne laid
proposals before the General Assembly for printing an edition of the
Bible, the first ever printed in Scotland. The General Assembly gave him
hearty support, and required every parish to provide itself with one of
the new Bibles as soon as they were printed. On the other hand, the
printers were to deliver a certain number of copies before the last of
March 1576, and the cost of it was to be L5. The terms of this agreement
were not carried out by the printers. The New Testament only was
completed and issued in 1576, with the name of Thomas Bassandyne as the
printer. The whole Bible was not finished until the close of the year
1579, and Bassandyne did not live to see its completion, his death
taking place on the 18th October 1577.

Like most of his predecessors, Bassandyne was a bookseller; and on pp.
292-304 of their work _Annals of Scottish Printing_, Messrs. Dickson and
Edmond have printed the Inventory of the goods he possessed, including
the whole of his stock of books, which is of the greatest interest and
value. Unfortunately such inventories are not to be met with in the case
of English printers.

Bassandyne used as his device a modification of the serpent and anchor
mark of John Crespin of Geneva.

Arbuthnot was now left to carry on the business alone, and was made
King's printer in 1579. But he was a slow, slovenly, and ignorant
workman, and the General Assembly were so disgust