A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume 2 (of 2) by Beckmann
1527. A privilege from the duke of Saxony to the edition of the New
Testament by Emser.
Anderson remarks on the year 1590, that the first exclusive patent,
for printing a book in England, which occurs in Rymer’s Fœdera[1280],
was granted in the above year by queen Elizabeth, to Richard Weight
of Oxford, for a Translation of Tacitus. I am much astonished that
Anderson, who was so often obliged to use Rymer’s Fœdera, and who seems
indeed to have consulted it with attention, should have overlooked
the oldest patents which are to be found in that collection. In that
laborious work, so important to those who wish to be acquainted with
the history of British literature, Ames’ Typographical Antiquities,
there are privileges of still greater antiquity. The oldest which I
observed in this work are the following:--