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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Edinburgh Printing Industry
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19 2021
Robert
Lekprevik was another printer deeply involved in the politics and
intrigue of his time. Closely associated with the reformed kirk
(the General Assembly lent him £200 towards printing the Psalms
in 1562 and, in 1569, awarded him a yearly stipend of £50).
He was made King’s Printer in 1567 after having printed the
Acts of Queen Mary and her predecessors. However, despite this wealth
of distinction and support, he was arrested in 1574 for the printing
of an unlicensed tract and jailed. He did not print again until
1581.
His work is distinguished in two particular respects. Firstly, in
1567 he printed the first book in Gaelic, Foirm Na Nurrnuidheadh
Agas freusdal na Sacramuinteadh, a translation of John Knox’s
Book of Common Order by the Bishop of the Isles. This was followed
in 1568 by the first medical treatise to be printed in Scotland,
Ane Breve Descriptioun of the Pest Quhair In the Causis, Signis
and sum special! preservatioun and cure thairof ar contenit, written
by an Edinburgh doctor, Gilbert Skeyne, whilst the town was plague-ridden.
In his edition of Henryson’s Moral Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian
(1570) can be seen, in the ‘civilit’ typeface, the continuing
attachment to French rather than English taste and technology.
The dominance of French influence can also be seen in the career
of Thomas Bassandyne who had worked in Paris and Leyden before returning
to Scotland where he took Queen Mary’s side. Bassandyne’s
main claim to fame rests with his role in the printing of the first
Bible in Scotland. With his partner, Alexander Arbuthnot, he produced
a reprint of the Geneva Bible of 1561; the New Testament appeared
under Bassandyne’s name in 1576, the Old Testament under Arbuthnot’s
in 1579.
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Volume 1, published 1990
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