would allow. Even those who
were dignified as "his Majesty's Printers" were among these
manufacturers; for we have an account of a scandalous omission by them
of the important negative in the seventh commandment! The printers were
summoned before the Court of High Commission, and this _not_ served to
bind them in a fine of three thousand pounds! A prior circumstance,
indeed, had occurred, which induced the government to be more vigilant
on the Biblical Press. The learned Usher, one day hastening to preach at
Paul's Cross, entered the shop of one of the stationers, as booksellers
were then called, and inquiring for a Bible of the London edition, when
he came to look for his text, to his astonishment and horror he
discovered that the verse was omitted in the Bible! This gave the first
occasion of complaint to the king of the insufferable negligence and
incapacity of the London press: and, says the manuscript writer of this
anecdote, first bred that great contest which followed, between the
University of Cambridge and the London stationers, about the right of
printing Bibles.[270]

The secret bibliographical history of these times would show the
extraordinary state of the press in this new trade of Bibles. The writer
of a curious pamphlet exposes the combination of those called the king's
printers, with their contrivances to keep up the prices of Bibles;
their correspondence with the booksellers of Scotland and Dublin, by
which means they retained the privilege in their own hands: the king's
_London_ printers got Bibles printed cheaper at Edinburgh. In 1629, when
folio Bibles were wanted, the Cambridge printers sold them at ten
shillings in quires; on this the Londoners set six printing-houses at
work, and, to annihilate the Cambridgians, printed a similar _folio_
Bible, but sold with it five hundred _quarto_ Roman Bibles, and five
hundred _quarto_ English, at five shillings a book; which proved the
ruin of the folio Bibles, by keeping them down under the cost price.
Another competition arose among those who printed English Bibles in
Holland, in _duodecimo_, with an English colophon, for half the price
even of the lowest in London. Twelve thousand of these _duodecimo_
Bibles, with notes, fabricated in Holland, usually by our fugitive
sectarians, were seized by the king's printers, as contrary to the
statute.[271] Such was this shameful war of Bibles--folios, quartos, and
duodecimos, even in the days of Charles the First. T