THE FIRST BIBLE PRINTED IN SCOTLAND. Thomas Bassandyne was a native of Scotland who acquired the art of printing in Paris and Leyden. He seems to have espoused the side of Mary, Queen of Scots, whose followers at that time held Edinburgh Castle. In January of 1572 he was accused of treasonable practices and denounced as a rebel. However after a payment of ¨66 13s 4d [Scots] he was pardoned by Lord Regent Morton. Remarkably, this episode seems to have been forgotten, for, with his friend Alexander Arbuthnet, Bassandyne made a proposal to the General Assembly upon the 7th of March, 1574 "for printing and setting forward the Bible in the English Tongue." The undertaking was very large and the printers, having allowed eleven months for the completion of the work, found that they were somewhat out of their depth. The printing continued at a painfully slow pace. Bassandyne and Arbuthnet called for extentions and privileges protecting them from imports from foreign [i.e. English and Dutch] lands. The problems were compounded when, in October of 1577, Bassandyne died. This was probably not long after the New Testament, the first part to be printed, came off the press, as it has the date 1576 as well as his imprint. Arbuthnet struggled on with the work until it was published complete, with a general title, sometime between August and the end of 1579. He was also slow in delivering the completed work, as, at the general assembly held in Dundee in 1580, a petition states "that the Bybles may be delyverit according to his reciept of money from every parish ... and no suspension to be grantit without the sameit be delyverit." Arbuthnet died in 1585 and left a very small estate compared with his partner. He was not a printer to trade and although he held the post of King's Printer, with its attendent privileges, he was renowned for his incompetence.

The former owner of this copy, Francis Fry, amassed a collection of over thirteen hundred Bibles, and proved to be a meticulous bibliographer. His collection, according to the preface in Herbert's work (opp. cit), was secured unbroken for the Bible House Library, at a cost of ¨6,000. The present work was presumably sold or gifted by Fry before his death.