The Cambridge Press, 1638-1692: A Reexamination of the Evidence concerning the Bay Psalm Book and the Eliot Indian Bible as Well as Other Contemporary Books and People

THE COMMISSIONERS discharged Johnson on May 14, 1663, but this did not take and they discharged him again at the end of another year, but it is not dear whether this was in May 1664 or twelve months from the date when the news arrived from London that the printer's salary was to be paid for a fourth year. The Corporation apparently paid in London for the period when Johnson absented himself from the Cambridge shop and afterward considered an adjustment to recover this amount, but the outcome is not known. The Commissioners on their part reported at their meeting on September 10, 1664:

wee dismissed Marmaduke Johnson the Printer att the end of his tearme agreed, for having improved him as well as wee could for the yeare past by imploying him with our owne printer to print such Indian workes as could be prepared which hee was not able to doe alone, with such other English Treatises which did present; for which allowance hath bine made proportionable to his labours.

John Eliot had already written on August 25 what reads like a letter of recommendation to be delivered in person to those to whom it was addressed:

My request also, in respect of Mr Johnson, is, that seeing the Lord hath made him instrumentall to finish the Bible, and Baxter, and is now returning for Engld, you would please to give him his due incouragmt, and such further countenance and commendation as your wisdomes shall see meet to afford him.

Evidently Johnson in Boston was getting ready to sail for London at the time the Massachusetts Commissioners were preparing to set out overland to attend their annual meeting held in 1664 at Hartford. There the regular letter to the Corporation was approved, containing one paragraph which reads as if it had been inserted in a draft which had been prepared in advance:

For after time wee hope to have all books for the Indians use printed upon ezier tearmes by our own printer especially if it please your honors to send over a

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