Before appearing with this work as a publisher, Robert Crowley was by no means unknown to the reading world as a writer; nor was it probably a mere printer's venture that led him to select such a work as this for publication, but sympathy with the tendency of the book itself. He had been educated at Oxford, and received early the strong bent toward the doctrines of the Reformation which prompted the writing of his first three books, whose titles indicate something of his leaning in the religious controversies of the day: _The Confutation of the miſhapen Aunſwer to the miſnamed, wicked Ballade, called the Abuſe of y^e bleſſed ſacram[=e]t of the aultare ... that Myles Hoggard ... hath wreſted.... Compiled by Robert Crowley. Anno. 1548_; _The confutation of .xiii Articles, wherunto Nicolas Shaxton ... ſubſcribed and ... recanted ... at the burning of ... Anne Aſkue_, in [1548] and _An informacion and Peticion agaynſt the oppreſſours of the Pore Commons of this Realme_, in [1548]. We may picture to ourselves with what relish so controversial and partisan a soul must have prepared for the press, and then watched through it, what Ellis calls "the keenest ridicule of the vices of all orders of men, and particularly of the religious." Crowley's career as a printer was only an incident in a life devoted to championing the new doctrines of Protestantism. The three books mentioned were printed by Day and Sere; and Herbert thinks that it may have been in their office that our printer-writer learned the trade which he followed for three years only. Considering the fact that his press was situated in Ely Rents, where William Sere also dated his books in 1548, and thereabouts, this seems very probable. But from Crowley's use of the excellently designed and really charming woodcut border with Edward Whitechurch's cipher at the bottom and his symbol of the sun at the top, we may almost infer that he was on equally familiar relations with that printer, established at The Sun, over against the Conduit. We may add that William Copeland of The Rose Garland also used, at a later date, a similar compartment in several of his books. One might expect Crowley, serious and scholarly in his tastes, to be a careful editor; and his researches to find his author's name, as revealed in "The Printer to the Reader," prove that he was such an one, even if, for some reason or other, he did not choose to place the name upon the title-page. He says: