The first notable promoter of the Oxford Press was Archbishop Laud, whose statutes contemplate the appointment of an _Architypographus_, and who secured for the University in 1632 Letters Patent authorizing three printers (each with two presses and two apprentices), and in 1636 a Royal Charter entitling the University to print ‘all manner of books’. The privilege of printing the Bible was not exercised at this date; but in 1636 Almanacks were produced, and this seems to have alarmed the Stationers’ Company, who then enjoyed a virtual monopoly of Bibles, Grammars, and Almanacks; for we find that in 1637 the University surrendered the privilege to the Stationers for an annual payment of £200, twice the amount of Joseph Barnes’s working capital. The most famous books belonging to what may be called the Laudian period were five editions of Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ and one of Bacon’s _Advancement of Learning_ in English. [Illustration: OXFORD UNIVERSITY ARMS Some ancient examples used by the Oxford University Press] [Illustration] [Illustration: From _The History of Lapland_ by John Shefferus, 1674, the first anthropological book published by the Press] The work of the Press during the Civil War is of interest to historians and bibliographers on account of the great number of Royalist Pamphlets and Proclamations issued while the Court of Charles I was at Oxford; a number swollen in appearance by those printed in London with counterfeit Oxford imprints. But this period is not important in the history of the Learned Press; and after 1649 it suffered a partial eclipse which did not pass until the Restoration. [Illustration: From W. Maundrell’s _Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem_, Oxford, 1703, engraved by M. Burghers]