Robert Barker's name calls for more than passing notice, since he it was who, more than any one else after the forty-seven translators, was responsible for the production of the Authorized Version. On January 3, 1599, the court of assistants of the Stationers' Company recognized the letter patent of Queen Elizabeth granting Robert Barker the reversion for life, after his father's death, of the office of Queen's Printer, with the right of printing English Bibles, Books of Common Prayer, statutes and proclamations. Christopher Barker, the father, who was also Queen's Printer, made an interesting report in December, 1582, on the printing patents which had been granted from 1558-1582, and in it he speaks of his own rights. Mr. Edward Arber, in quoting the report, calls it a masterly summary, whose importance and authority as a graphic history of English printing, it would be hardly possible to exaggerate. In "A note of the offices and other speciall licenses for printing, graunted by her maiestie to diuerse persons; with a coniecture of the valuation" he says: "Myne owne office of her Maiesties Printer of the English tongue gyven to Master Wilkes, (and which he had bought) is abbridged of the cheefest comodities belonging to the office, as shall hereafter appeare in the Patentes of Master Seres and Master Daye: but as it is I haue the printing of the olde and newe testament, the statutes of the Realme, Proclamations, and the booke of common prayer by name, and in generall wordes, all matters for the Churche." If the monopoly of printing the Bible brought its gains it also brought its risks. Christopher Barker in his report goes on to speak of this: "The whole bible together requireth so great a somme of money to be employed, in the imprinting thereof; as Master Jugge kept the Realme twelve yere withoute, before he Durst adventure to print one impression: but I, considering the great somme I paide to Master Wilkes, Did (as some haue termed it since) gyve a Desperate adventure to imprint fouer sundry impressions for all ages, wherein I employed to the value of three thousande pounde in the term of one yere and a halfe, or thereaboute: in which tyme if I had died, my wife and children had ben vtterlie vndone, and many of my frendes greatlie hindered by disbursing round sommes of money for me, by suertiship and other meanes...."