The only other provincial town besides Oxford which possessed a printing press in the fifteenth century was St Alban’s, where an unnamed printer started to work about the year 1479. As to who the printer was we have no clue beyond the simple statement made by Wynkyn de Worde in the colophon of his edition of the _Chronicles of England_, “Here endyth this present cronycle of Englonde wyth the frute of tymes, compiled in a booke and also enprynted by one somtyme scole master of saynt Albons, on whoos soule God have mercy.” The printer is therefore generally known as the schoolmaster-printer. Sir Henry Chauncy, when he wrote his history of Hertfordshire, was not to be deterred by this vagueness from giving this printer a name, and he appears in that work, and others based on it, as John Insomuch. The proof is clear. The printer printed only two books in English. One begins: “In so muche that it is necessari to all creaturis of cristen religyon;” the other, “In so much that gentill men and honest persones.” What further proof could be wanted that the printer’s surname was Insomuch? As to the printer’s Christian name having been John, the arguments would appear to have been less weighty, at any rate no authority has condescended to mention them. Whoever the printer may have been, he was probably not a foreigner, at any rate no foreign design can be traced in his type, which is perhaps modelled on Caxton’s, though differing considerably. Though as a schoolmaster he might be supposed to have been connected with the Abbey, there is no reference to it in his colophons, which always mention clearly the town of St Alban’s. The saltire on a shield, which occurs in his mark, was alike the arms of the Abbey and of the town. The first book issued from this press was a small work of Augustinus Datus, usually called _Super eleganciis Tullianis_, of which the only known copy is in the Cambridge University Library. It is a small quarto of eighteen leaves and is printed in a peculiarly delicate gothic letter. It has no date, only the simple colophon, “Impressum fuit opus hoc apud Sanctum Albanum.” The type is very graceful and clear; it looks almost like the production of an Italian workman copying from a Caxton model, though, as I have said, we have no reason for supposing the printer to have been a foreigner. For some reason he seems not to have been satisfied with it, and so far as we know no other book was ever printed in it and beyond being used for signatures in two later books, no further use was made of it. This first book also stands apart from the rest in being without printed signatures, which would at once place it without any further proof at the head of the list of St Alban’s books.