A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667/Browne (Samuel)

by Henry Robert Plomer

BROWNE (SAMUEL), bookseller and printer in London and at the Hague. (1) Fountain, St. Paul's Churchyard, 1639; (2) St. Paul's Churchyard, at the sign of the White Lyon and Ball, 1641-43; (3) Hage. Samuel Browne English bookeseller dwelling in the Achter-Om at the signe of the English Printing Press, 1643-60; (4) At the sign of the Queen's Arms near the little north door of St. Paul's Church, 1661-65. (1638-65.) Took up his freedom June 3rd, 1633. [Arber, iii. 687], his first registered publication being an edition of Herodian's History of Greece in Greek and Latin, entered on February 3rd, 1637/8. At the outbreak of the Civil War, having strong royalist sympathies, he left the country and settled at the Hague, where he printed and published much royalist literature, including an edition of the Eikon Basilike in 1649, Jeremy Taylor's Martyrdom of King Charles, 1649, and a broadside ballad entitled Chipps of the Old Block, in 1659. [Lutt. Collection, ii. 40.] Returning to England at the Restoration, he settled at the sign of the Queen's Arms in St. Paul's Churchyard, and in partnership with a Frenchman named John de l'Ecluse, q.v., issued several French books. He died of the plague in the autumn of 1665, and Smyth, in his Obituary, p. 66, has the following notice of him: "Aug^t. 1665, Mr. Brown, once a bookseller at y^e Hague, who married the daughter of Mr. Nath. Hall of y^e Exchequer, died at y^e Pest House, ex peste, about this time."