Richard Atkyns (1615–1677), was an English writer on printing.
Education and early life
Atkyns was descended from an old Gloucestershire family that for upwards of a century leased from the dean and chapter of Gloucester the manor of Tuffley, two miles south-south-east from the cathedral city. After receiving a home education at the hands of two inefficient clerical tutors, he was sent to the Free (Crypt) Grammar School in Gloucester. Thence, at the age of fourteen, he proceeded to Balliol College, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, where he remained two years, probably without taking a degree, as he afterwards informs us "that he was not so well grounded as he ought to have been to read a Greek or Latin author with pleasure." Several members of his family on his father's side having already distinguished themselves in the study of the law, it was resolved to send him to Lincoln's Inn, where several of them "had anciently been and some of them there; but receiving some disgust at his entrance" he was recalled thence and sent to travel abroad with the only son of Lord Arundel of Wardour, who was about his own age. The Arundels being staunch Roman Catholics, while Atkyns was a Protestant, each youth was accompanied by a tutor of his own faith. The party left Dover in October 1636 or 1637, and travelled, by way of Calais, to Douai, where they stayed some time at the English College; thence they set out, by way of Cambray and St. Quentin, to Paris. Before the winter was ended the three years' travel was abruptly terminated by the death of young Arundel, who, "getting a heat and cold at tennis", probably in Paris, died from fever at Orléans. Soon afterwards Atkyns returned to England and betook himself to country affairs. On the death of his father, in 1636, he succeeded to the family estates at the age of twenty-one. After the days of mourning for his father were ended, "he put off his hounds", came to London, "and kept his coach", and made his bow at court, where he was invited by the queen to assist at masques. He does not appear to have shone as a courtier, having, as he informs us, "found himself guilty of three imperfections, a blushing modesty, a flexible disposition, and no great diligence." These festive scenes at the court of Henrietta Maria were, however, soon to terminate in the turmoil of the English Civil War.
Civil war
In 1642, Atkyns raised a troop of horse for the king at his own expense. His first skirmish appears to have taken place with Sir William Waller at Little Dean near Newnham on Severn. In the following year he was engaged at Reading and Bath, also at the taking of Bristol and at the raising of the siege of Gloucester in September. For his loyalty to the royal cause his estate was sequestrated by Parliament. In 1646, however, both houses passed an ordinance pardoning his delinquency after imposing a fine of £140. After the Restoration, he was made Deputy Lieutenant for Gloucestershire, and was also reappointed to an agency for the crown connected in some way with printing, a post which he appears to have held originally as early as 1631, as he had already involved himself "in several great and chargeable suites against the Company of Stationers at the cost of more than £1,000."
The "Exposicio" About 1660 there was discovered in the public library of Cambridge an early work, said to have been printed at Oxford in 1468, on the Apostles' Creed. Its title ran Exposicio sancti Jeronimi in simbolum apostolorum ad papam Laurentium. Impressa Oxonie et finita anno Domini 1468, 4to. Shortly after its appearance Atkyns printed and published an anonymous broadside entitled The Original and Growth of Printing. This was afterwards, in 1664, enlarged, with answers to objections, and published in his own name in quarto. It is to this broadside and its reprint that Atkyns owes his fame, and by means of which, it is supposed, he hoped to repair his shattered fortunes by proving that the right and title of printing belonged to the crown alone, and by securing for himself the office of patentee for the printing of law books.
He first endeavoured to establish that printing in England began at Oxford; and that Stow, Sir Richard Baker, and Howell, in asserting that the art of printing was introduced into England in 1472, "do most erroneously agree together", although their error might have arisen "through the mistake of the first writer only." His discovery of the Exposicio is his leading argument. He writes that: