The chief interest of St. Paul's Churchyard as a book locality centres itself in the publishing rather than the second-hand bookselling phase. One of our earliest printer-publishers, Julian Notary, was 'dwellynge in powles chyrche yarde besyde ye weste dore by my lordes palyes' in 1515, his shop sign being the Three Kings. At the sign of the White Greyhound, in St. Paul's Churchyard, the first editions of Shakespeare's 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Rape of Lucrece' were published by John Harrison; at the Fleur de Luce and the Crown appeared the first edition of the 'Merry Wives of Windsor'; at the Green Dragon the first edition of the 'Merchant of Venice'; at the Fox the first edition of 'Richard II.'; whilst the first editions of 'Richard III.,' 'Troilus and Cressida,' 'Titus Andronicus,' and 'Lear' all bear Churchyard imprints. Not only were there very many booksellers' shops around the Yard, but at the latter part of the sixteenth century bookstalls started up, first at the west, and subsequently at the other doors of the cathedral. From a letter addressed by Sir Clement Edmonds, March 28, 1620, to the Lord Mayor, we gather that two houses were erected at the west gate of St. Paul's without the sanction of the authorities, and these were ordered to be removed, as were also certain 'sheds or shops that were being erected near the same place.' A chief portion of the stock of these shops and stalls would naturally be devotional books of various descriptions. That these books were not always to be relied on we infer from an amusing anecdote in the Harleian manuscripts, related by Sir Nicholas L'Estrange, to the effect that 'Dr. Us[s]her, Bishop of Armath, having to preach at Paules Crosse, and passing hastily by one of the stationers, called for a Bible, and had a little one of the London edition given him out, but when he came to looke for his text, that very verse was omitted in the print.' [Illustration: _John Evelyn, Book-collector._]