Thomas Guy, more eminent certainly as a very successful money-maker, and a generous benefactor to charitable institutions, than as a bookseller, was born in Horsley-down, the son of a coal-heaver and lighterman. The year of his birth is uncertain, but in 1660, he was bound apprentice to John Clarke, bookseller, in the porch of Mercers’ Chapel, and, in 1668, having been admitted a liveryman of the Stationers’ Company, he opened a small shop in “Stock Market” (the site of the present Mansion House, then a fruit and flower market, where, also, offenders against the law were punished) with a stock-in-trade worth above £200. From the first, Guy’s chief business seems to have been in Bibles, for Maitland, his biographer relates, “The English Bibles, printed in this kingdom, being very bad, both in the letter and the paper, occasioned divers of the booksellers in this city to encourage the printing thereof in Holland, with curious types and fine paper, and imported vast numbers of the same to their no small advantage. Mr. Guy, soon becoming acquainted with this profitable commerce, became a large dealer therein.” As early as Queen Elizabeth’s time, the privilege of printing Bibles had been conferred on the Queen’s (or King’s) printer, conjointly, of course, with the two Universities, and the effect of this prolonged monopoly resulted, not only in exorbitant prices, but in great typographical carelessness, and, says Thomas Fuller, under the quaint heading of “Fye for Shame,” “what is but carelessness in other books is impiety in setting forth of the Bible.” Many of the errors were curious;--the printers in Charles I.’s reign had been heavily fined for issuing an edition in which, the word “not” being omitted, the seventh, commandment had been rendered a positive, instead of a negative injunction. The _Spectator_ wickedly suggests that, judging from the morals of the day, very many copies must have got abroad into continuous use. In the Bible of 1653, moreover, the printers allowed “know ye not that the _un_righteous shall inherit the kingdom of God” to stand uncorrected. However, the Universities and the King’s printer still possessed the monopoly, and this new trade of good cheap Bibles “proving not only very detrimental to the public revenues, but likewise to the King’s printer, all ways and means were devised to quash the same, which, being vigorously put in execution, the booksellers, by frequent seizures and prosecutions, became so great sufferers, that they judged a further pursuit thereof inconsistent with their interests.” Defeated in this manner, Guy cautiously induced the University of Oxford to contract with him for an assignment of their privilege, and not only obtained type from Holland, and printed the Bible in London, but was, later on, in 1681, according to Dunton, a partner with Parker in printing the Bible, at Oxford (Parker could have been no connection of the famous publishing family).