It is very difficult for us now to arrive at a clear conception of the position of a stationer or the character of the book trade of that period. Reading and writing were not very common accomplishments, books were relatively expensive and purchasers must have been few, yet in a small town like Bury St Edmund’s we find about the year 1505 no fewer than six stationers. We know the names of six, there may have been more, yet how were even six to earn a livelihood? The trade of a stationer then was more comprehensive than now, for he was a bookseller and a bookbinder, but even then his business cannot have been large and would hardly be sufficient to keep him. It is clear, however, from numerous contemporary references, that stationers often engaged in other business apart from their own. We find them dealing in various things besides books, but by far the most favourite occupation supplementary to selling books was to keep a public-house. Numbers of the early stationers are spoken of also as beer brewers. In the Oxford University Archives we constantly find licences granted to the booksellers to sell wine or beer. The early English printer, Jean Barbier, who had worked at London and Westminster at the end of the fifteenth century, is cited in a London lawsuit as “Johannes Barbour nuper de Coventre, bere brewer, alias dictus Jehanne Berbier nuper de Coventre, prenter.” Anthony de Solen, the first printer at Norwich, was admitted a freeman of that city on the condition “that he shall not occupye eny trade of marchandise eyther from the parts beyonde the seas or from London, but onely his arte of prynting and selling of Renysh wyne.” References to this dual business are very frequent, and it seems to have continued as late as the seventeenth century. The importation of foreign books into England during the end of the fifteenth and early part of the sixteenth centuries must have been very large. The revival of learning was setting in, the country was gaining a reputation for scholarship and attracting foreign students, and every encouragement was given by the authorities to the book trade. In the grant given to Peter Actors, he was allowed to import books without paying customs, so that there was some tax upon imported books, though it was probably very slight. For almost every class of book of a learned character the English purchaser was dependent on the foreign printer, and English scholars as a rule sent their own works to the Continent to be printed on account of the greater facilities and probably also for the lesser cost.