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A REPUTATION FOR EXCELLENCE
A History of the Edinburgh Printing Industry
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Watson
had already led a somewhat chequered career. His father had been
ruined by a mob’s destruction of his Grassmarket printing premises
and had been forced to set up his press in the sanctuary of Holyrood
Abbey. In 1700 James Watson printed a controversial pamphlet called
Scotland’s Grievance Concerning Darien and was promptly jailed
for the aspersions it cast upon the good faith of various prominent
persons. Freed by the Edinburgh mob in a night of rioting to celebrate
the Toubacanti victory, Watson turned himself in to the authorities
the next morning. He was even-tually banished to the Gorbals for
a year.
Upon his return he soon found himself entangled in legal argument
with Mrs Campbell. the opening engagement in a general antagonism
which was to last until 1711 and which figured largely in Watson’s
History of Printing (1715). The book detailed the abuses of Mrs
Campbell’s regime and argued the necessity of a revival of
the high standards and good name of printing.
Robert Freebairn entered into partnership with James Watson following
the collapse of the Anderson empire, sharing the office of King’s
Printer. In 1715 he printed the Declaration of the Jacobite Earl
of Mar. After participating in a failed attempt to capture Edinburgh
Castle, Freebairn fled the town. He joined the Jacobite army at
Perth and used a printing press which had been commandeered in Aberdeen
to produce an understandably biased account of the Battle of Sherrifmuir.
On the failure of the rebellion he escaped to the Continent, returning
surreptitiously during the 1720’s to reclaim his post as King’s
Printer.
The collapse of the Anderson/Campbell printing monopoly signalled
a general proliferation in the number of printing shops as well
as an increase in the general quality of work This proliferation
drew men into the trade who had, previously, been only marginal
to it. Among these men was Thomas Ruddiman.
A noted academic, Ruddiman, in 1714, had written a classical textbook,
Rudiments of the Latin Tongue, which had become a standard. In the
next year he entered the printing trade with his brother Walter.
Together they produced a newspaper, The Caledonian Mercury. In recognition
of his reputation as ‘the most learned printer that North Britain
has ever enjoyed’ he was made printer to the College of Edinburgh
in 1728. A man of Jacobite sympathies he was said to have printed
the proclamation of James VII as King which the Young Pretender
caused to be read out from the Mercat Cross of Edinburgh when he
arrived in the town. In the aftermath of the 1745 rebellion he printed
a series of books on disputed areas of Scottish history. In escaping
punishment for his Jacobite leanings, Ruddiman was more fortunate
than some. One printer, Robert Drummond, who published a condemnation
of the atrocities which took place after Culloden had his works
publicly burned in the streets while he was forced to stand by wearing
a label which read ‘For printing and publishing a false scandalous
and defamatory libel’. He was then banished from the city for
a year on pain of a £100 fine and serving the year in jail.
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Volume 1, published 1990
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