# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Middleton, Henry (d.1587)

​MIDDLETON, HENRY (d. 1587), printer, was most probably the son of William Middleton [q. v.], the printer, as he was ​admitted to the freedom of the Stationers' Company on 17 Feb. 1567 by patrimony, without having been an apprentice. He commenced business in partnership with Thomas East near to St. Dunstan's Church in Fleet Street, and on 29 March 1567 they completed their earliest known book, Phaer's ‘Regiment of Life.’ In 1569 they printed Ovid's ‘Invective against Ibis,’ translated by Thomas Underdowne, and in 1571, being then located in London Wall, near the sign of the Ship, they issued in a folio volume Vigo's ‘Most excellent workes of Chirurgerie.’ In 1571 also, they printed the ‘Psalms of David’ and Fulke's ‘Astrologorum Ludus,’ and in 1572 Bullinger's ‘Common Places of Christian Religion,’ Christopher Carlile's ‘Discourse, wherein is plainly proved that Peter was never at Rome,’ and Dr. John Jones's ‘Benefit of the auncient Bathes of Buckstones,’ for Luke Harrison, George Bishop, William Jones, and William Norton. In 1572 Middleton left East and set up his press at the sign of the Falcon in Fleet Street, and also opened a shop for the sale of his books in St. Dunstan's Churchyard. The earliest book which bears his name alone is Bull's ‘Christian praiers and holy meditations,’ printed in 1570, and this was followed in 1572 by Cato's ‘Disticha de Moribus;’ but more often than not the books which he printed were for Ralph Newbery, John Harrison, George Bishop, Christopher Barker, and other booksellers, by whom he continued to be fully employed. A report on London printing-offices made to the Bishop of London in May 1583 states that he had then three presses at work. The most important books printed by him were the works of Sallust, in Latin, 1573; Gascoigne's ‘Glasse of Governement,’ 1575; Sir Humphrey Gilbert's ‘Discourse of a Discoverie for a new Passage to Cataia,’ and Lambard's ‘Perambulation of Kent,’ 1576; several translations from Calvin; ‘The Heidelberg Catechism,’ 1578; the Bible and the works of Virgil, both in Latin, Bedford's ‘English Medicines,’ and Bishop Hooper's ‘Certeine expositions upon the Psalmes,’ 1580; Laurence Humphrey's ‘Jesuitismus,’ 1582; Cicero's ‘De Officiis’ and Sir Thomas Smith's ‘De Republica Anglorum,’ 1584; Ovid's ‘Metamorphoses,’ in Latin, and Archbishop Sandys's ‘Sermons,’ 1585; and Lambard's ‘Duties of Constables,’ 1587.
Middleton was admitted into the livery of the Stationers' Company on 1 July 1577, and after having served the office of renter from 1582 to 1584 was elected under-warden in July 1587. He died in September 1587, and his widow appears to have carried on the business until 4 March 1588, when she was forbidden by the company to print anything more ‘till such time as the Master, Wardens, and four of the Court of Assistants shall present her name to the High Commissioners for causes ecclesiastical, and that they admit her to be a printer, and governor of a press and printing house, according to a decree of the Star Chamber,’ an event which apparently never happened. Middleton used as a device a figure of the Good Shepherd, enclosed within a cartouche, and surrounded by the motto ‘Periit et inventa est.’
[Ames's Typogr. Antiq. (Herbert), 1785–90, ii. 1055–63; Arber's Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, i. 344, ii. 474, 865.]
R. E. G.