The next important undertaking which engaged Jackson’s talents was one of national interest. The House of Lords had, in the year 1767, determined upon printing the Journals and Parliamentary records, “a work, which,” says {320} Nichols, “will ever reflect honour on the good taste and munificence of the present reign” (George III). Jackson had been employed to cut several varieties of letter for this work; and he was now called upon to assist in a further outcome of the same good taste and munificence, in the production of type for the splendid facsimile of the _Domesday Book_, begun in 1773. This important work was projected and carried through by Dr. Nichols himself, and a brief account of the circumstances under which it saw the light may be interesting and not out of place here. The Lords, it appears, being petitioned to sanction the printing of the _Domesday Book_, the most important of the Anglo-Saxon records, as a matter of national importance, referred, through the Treasury Board, to the Society of Antiquaries as to the mode in which it should be published, whether by printing-types, or by having a copy of the manuscript engraved in facsimile. By the examination of several eminent printers, it was learned that according to the first plan very many unavoidable errors would occur; a tracing of the record was then proposed, to be transferred to copper plates. An estimate of the expense of this was next ordered by the Treasury Board, which amounted to £20,000 for the printing and engraving of 1250 copies, each containing 1664 plates; but this sum, however proportionate, was considered too large, and the first plan was again reverted to. It was then proposed by the learned Dr. Morton that a fount of facsimile types should be cut under his superintendence. This undertaking, however, failed, and Dr. Morton received £500 for doing little or nothing, and nearly £200 more for types that were of no use. The founder to whom Dr. Morton applied was Thomas Cottrell, a specimen of whose unsuccessful fount appeared shortly afterwards in Luckombe’s _History of Printing_, 1770.