Next to the King's printing-house, the press of which we have the most accurate knowledge at this time was that of William Bowyer, the elder and the younger. The seven volumes of Nichols's _Literary Anecdotes_ give a complete record of the work of this printing-house, and from them the following brief account has been taken. William Bowyer, the elder, had been apprentice to Miles Flesher, and was admitted to the freedom of the Company of Stationers on October 4th, 1686. He started business on his own account in Little Britain in 1699, with a pamphlet of ninety-six pages on the _Eikon Basilike_ controversy. He afterwards moved into White Friars, where, on the night of January 29th, 1712, his printing office was burnt to the ground; among the works that perished in the flames being almost the whole impression of Atkyn's _History of Gloucestershire_, Sir Roger L'Estrange's _Josephus_, 'printed with a fine Elzevir letter never used before'; the fifteenth volume of Rymer's _Fœdera_; Thoresby's _Ducatus Leodiensis_, and an old book, _of Monarchy_, by Sir John Fortescue, in 'Saxon,' with notes upon it, printed on an 'extraordinary paper' (Nichols's _Literary Anecdotes_, vol. i. p. 56). This short list of notable works proves that Bowyer had a flourishing business at the time of the catastrophe. A subscription was at once raised for his relief, and £1162 subscribed by the booksellers and printers in a very short time. A royal brief was also granted to him for the same purposes, and by this he received £1377, making a grand total of £2539, with which he began business anew. In remembrance of his misfortune, Bowyer had several tail-pieces and devices engraved, representing a phoenix rising from the flames. In 1715 Bowyer the elder printed Miss Elstob's _Anglo-Saxon Grammar_. The types for this were cut by Robert Andrews from drawings made by Humphrey Wanley, and were given to the printer by Lord Chief-Justice Parker. But these types were very indifferently cut. Wanley himself said 'when the alphabet came into the hands of the workman (who was but a blunderer) he could not imitate the fine and regular stroke of the pen; so that the letters are not only clumsy, but unlike those that I drew.' In 1721 Bowyer printed an edition of Bishop Bull's Latin works in folio, but lost £200 by the impression. The following year his son, William Bowyer the younger, joined him in the business.