In 1674 the first press was established in Boston by permission of the General Court; and two additional licensers were appointed--one of whom was the Rev. Increase Mather. The printer was John Foster, who was also somewhat of an astronomer. He made and printed almanacs; but died at the early age of thirty-three. He was a man of so much consideration that two poems were published on the occasion of his death. One of them concluded with the following lines: 'This body, which no activeness did lack, Now 's laid aside like an old almanack;-- But for the present 's only out of date, 'Twill have at length a far more active state. Yea, though with dust thy body soiled be, Yet at the resurrection we shall see A fair EDITION, and of matchless worth, Free from ERRATAS, new in Heaven set forth; 'Tis but a word from God, the Great Creator, It shall be done, when he saith IMPRIMATUR.' 'Whoever,' says Isaiah Thomas, 'has read the celebrated epitaph of Franklin on himself, will have some suspicion that it was taken from this original.' One of Green's apprentices was an Indian lad, who became master of the business, and assisted in printing Eliot's Indian Bible. When King Philip's war came on, however, his bosom was fired with _amor patriae_, and he ran off and joined himself to his countrymen. Returning again, under the proclamation, after the death of the great Narragansett king, James, for such was his English name, obtained a pardon, and worked at the business for the remainder of his life. From Eliot's account of him, he was the most accurate printer in the colony--the only one 'who was able to correct the press with understanding.' He printed the Psalter and several other works in the Indian language; and being always known as James the Printer, he assumed the latter as his surname. He married and reared a family by that name, whose descendants were recently living in Grafton.