Chester was the centre of a large and important district, and was also the chief port of embarkation for Ireland (it was from there that Edward King set out on his ill-fated voyage), so that we might well expect its stationers to have published something, or some printer to have set up a press. And there are many other towns in a similar position. We know from records that they supported a number of stationers, and it is hard to believe that nothing was printed for them, even an almanack. Within the period we have been examining, roughly the hundred years since the invention of printing up to the passing of the Stationers’ Company’s Charter in 1557, printing had been practised in nine provincial towns. The two fifteenth-century presses, Oxford and St Alban’s, ceased simultaneously in 1486. York, away in the north of England, had a press at work between 1509 and 1516. Then comes a curious revival; a second press at Oxford from 1517 to 1519, a press at Cambridge in 1521 and 1522, at Tavistock in 1525 and 1534, at Abingdon in 1528, and a second at St Alban’s from 1534 to 1538. Then came the Reformation and the accompanying changes in the old order of things after which not one of the old presses ventured to start again. The accession of Edward VI. seems to have given a new impetus to book-production, and the remaining three of the early provincial presses were started during his reign, Ipswich working in 1547 and 1548, Worcester from 1548 to 1553, and Canterbury from 1549 to 1556. When we come to sum up the books produced, it must be admitted that the output was miserably small. Between 1478 and 1556 the provincial presses of England issued about one hundred and eleven books, not three books in two years; twenty-one more books were printed for provincial stationers, bringing up the number to one hundred and thirty-two, not two books a year. Between 1478 and 1516, thirty books were printed in three towns; between 1517 and 1538, twenty-six in five towns; and between 1548 and 1556, fifty-five books in three towns. The output of many foreign provincial towns far surpassed that of all the English put together. But in looking at the history of the book trade in England during the period, one point is especially striking, the very great disproportion between the numbers of printers and of stationers. The books produced by the English presses formed but an infinitesimal portion of the literature circulated in the country. The number of printers we can reckon fairly accurately, for there must be few, if any, who have left no trace; with stationers it is quite otherwise, for we are almost entirely dependent on records and registers, of which vast numbers have utterly perished. In these early times, fortunately for us, if unfortunately for themselves, people seem to have been continually engaged in lawsuits, and it is from records of law pleas and actions that much of our information is derived, though often it consists of mere names.