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in Isai. i.–xxvii.”), but shews plainly that the privileged printers, Henry Hills and John Field, were scarcely a whit more careful. They had, in truth, to pay for their privilege a bribe of £500 per annum to certain men in power, “whose names, out of respect to them, I forbear to mention” (ibid. p. 14), and reimbursed themselves for that shameful outlay by taking no measures for the due correction of the press. In their Bibles of 1653, 1655 (two editions), 1656 (two editions), and 1657 (thought to be the worst of all), Kilburne computes that he discovered twenty thousand faults, some (which he particularises) being intolerably gross. On the other hand, he praises several editions in 8vo. and 12mo. issued “by Authority of Parliament” in 1646, 1648, 1651, &c., by Wm. Bentley of Finsbury, based upon the Cambridge folio of 1638.

Of the Bibles published during the latter part of the seventeenth century, that of Hills and Field, small 8vo. London, 1660, is remarkable for certain additions to the original marginal notes of 1611, subsequently improved upon in a Cambridge quarto of 1682–3 (see Sect. II. p. xxxi., and note 1), bearing the name of John Hayes, the University Printer, who had previously put forth a well-known edition in 1677. The later of Hayes’s two contains a great number of fresh textual references, the reputed work of Dr Anthony Scattergood, and mostly taken from his Bible, also published at Cambridge in 1678. But the most celebrated edition of the period was that undertaken on the motion of Archbishop Tenison, and at the alleged request of Convocation in 1699, by the eminently learned William Lloyd [1627–1717], successively Bishop of S. Asaph and of Worcester, under whose superintendence appeared

(12) The Holy Bible, large folio, 3 vol. “London, Printed by Charles Bill and the Executrix of Thomas Newcomb, deceased, Printers to the King’s most excellent Majesty, 1701.”

This splendid but somewhat cumbersome book is the first that contains the marginal dates (see Sect. VII. p. lxii.), and sundry marginal annotations of doubtful merit, discussing chronological difficulties and imparting other information (Sect. II. p. xxvi.). Annexed are Bp. Cumberland’s Tables of Scripture measures, weights, and coins (first published in 1685), Tables of Kindred, Time, and Offices and Conditions of men. The textual references also are increased, but not very materially, and in respect to punctuation many parentheses were restored, which had been gradually removed from the text (see Sect. IV. p. xli.). On the whole, this hasty labour added little to the fame of the veteran Lloyd, and in 1703 the Lower House of Convocation made a formal Representation to the Upper respecting the many errors it contains1. Except in regard to the dates, no principal edition has so little influenced succeeding Bibles as this, notwithstanding the high auspices under which it came forth.

It was doubtless through the care of Archbishop Wake (who, though himself but a feeble writer, had a genuine love of sacred letters) that persons from whom so little could be expected as George I. and his great minister, were induced to issue four salutary Rules, dated April 24, 1724, to the King’s Printers2, with a view to the more effectual removal of misprints from their copies of the Authorized Version. One of these rules strikes at what was beyond question the root of the mischief in the evil days of Hills and Field, and prescribes that those employed on so grave a work should receive competent salaries for their pains and skill. In the middle of the eighteenth century the Bibles of the Basketts, at once the King’s and Oxford University Printers, earned a fair name both for the beauty of their typography and their comparative freedom from misprints. Their quarto of 1756 is particularly commended, and will supply the student with a knowledge of the exact state of our Bibles just before the commencement of the kindred labours of Paris and Blayney, which yet remain to be described. In preparing the present volume we have used another of their editions, in substance almost identical with that of 1756.

(13) The Holy Bible, quarto, with “above two hundred historys curiously engraved by J. Cole