ing that the right of printing the bible had been common to all printers up to that date, and that it had never been attached to the office of king's or queen's printer. The petition was signed by Barker as one of those who ‘do lyve by bookeselling, being free of other companies and also hindered by the same privileges’ (Arber, i. 111). But Barker soon afterwards himself joined the ranks of the privileged, as he purchased from Wilkes, on 28 Sept. 1577, a very extensive patent, especially including the Old and New Testament in English, with or without notes of whatever translation. He was thus appointed ‘queen's printer.’ It may be pointed out that this was merely a commercial transaction between two private persons, and that the patent was not given with any view of insuring the production of accurate editions of the Scriptures. By a legal fiction the deed specified that it was granted on account of Barker's great improvement in the art of printing. The subsequent bible-patents take their rise from this.
He was made free of the Stationers' Company on 4 June 1578, began to take apprentices on 16 June, and was admitted to the livery on 25 June. From a broadside in the library of the Society of Antiquaries we learn that in October of the same year he issued a printed circular to the London companies offering copies of his large bible at the special terms of 24s. each bound, and 20s. unbound. The clerks of the companies were to receive 4d. apiece for every bible sold, and whenever the members of a company subscribed 40l. worth and upwards, a presentation copy was to be offered to the hall (R. Lemon's Catalogue, p. 23). About this time he changed the spelling of his name from Barkar to Barker. In December 1582 he addressed to the lord treasurer as warden a petition which contains a most interesting account of the Stationers' Company and the publishing trade of the time, together with a report on the printing patents granted between 1558 and 1582. After complaining of the abridgment of his own patent by those of Seres and Day, he says: ‘But as it is I haue the printing of the olde and the newe testament, the statutes of the Realme, Proclamations, and the boke of common prayer by name, and in generall wordes, all matters for the Churche. … Proclamations come on the suddayne, and must be returned printed in hast: wherefore by breaking of greater worke I loose oftentymes more by one Proclamacon, then I gayne by sixe, before my servantes can comme in trayne of their worke agayne. … Testamentes alone are not greatly commodious, by reason the prices are so small, as will scarcely beare the charges. The whole bible together requireth so great a somme of money to be employed in the imprinting thereof; as master Jugge kept the Realme twelve yere withoute, before he Durst adventure to print one impression: but I, considering the great somme I paid to Master Wilkes, Did (as some haue termed it since) gyve a Desperate adventure to imprint fower sundry impressions for all ages, wherein I employed to the value of three thowsande pounde in the terme of one yere and an halfe, or thereaboute’ (Arber, i. 115).
Together with the other warden of the Stationers' Company, Francis Coldocke, Barker made a formal representation to Lord Burghley in 1583 on the dangers to be anticipated from the setting up of a printing press by the university of Cambridge (Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1581–90, p. 111). From an inquisition ordered to be made by the Bishop of London in the same year, we find that Barker owned five presses, being more than any one else except Wolfe. There were then in London twenty-three printers, who worked fifty-three presses, a number in Barker's opinion more than doubly sufficient for the whole of England and Scotland. There can be no doubt that between 1580 and 1586 the printing trade had fallen to a very prosperous state. Some of the smaller men had organised a system of unlawfully producing privileged books: John Wolfe was one of those of whom Barker had to complain in this respect. The quarrel raged for four or five years; eventually some of the richer members of the company gave up certain copyrights to their poorer brethren.
While elder warden, Barker was fined 20s. on 2 May 1586 ‘for reteyninge George Swinnowe [an apprentice] at his art of printinge a certen space before he presentid him, which is contrary to the ordonnance of the cumpanye’ (Arber, ii. 858). From the year 1588 he carried on his business by deputies, George Bishop and Ralph Newbery, and retired to his country house at Datchet, near Windsor. On the disgrace of Wilkes in 1589, Barker obtained (8 Aug.) an exclusive patent from the queen for the lives of himself and his son Robert [q. v.] embracing ‘all and singular the statutes, books, pamphlets, acts of parliament, proclamations, injunctions, as of bibles and new testaments of all sorts, of whatsoever translation in the English tongue … imprinted or to be imprinted … also of all books for the service of God’ (Egerton MS. 1835, f. 167). Bacon House, in Noble Street, Aldersgate, was occupied by Barker and by his son. Cotton describes thirty-eight editions of the Bible or parts thereof bearing the name of Chr. Barker, and dating from 1575 to 1588, and thirty-four editions as having
