137 
A Sketch of the Early History of the Printing 
ress in Derbyshire. 
By ALFRED WALLIS, 
Local Member of the Council of the British Archeological Association, Member of 
Council of D. A. and N. H. Society, Member of the William Salt Archeological 
Society, Editor of the Derby Mercury, &c., &c. 
XAT most able and painstaking bibliographer, Arch- 
deacon Cotton, has borne testimony to the great 
difficulty which besets the enquirer into matters 
connected with “the geography of printing.” In his ‘‘ Zyfo- 
graphical Gazetteer,’ he admits that the exact period at which the 
art was introduced into particular towns is often a disputed point, 
and it is highly probable that the conclusions arrived. at in the 
course of the present paper may require future modification as 
fresh facts connected with the subject become known. Only 
those writers who have endeavoured to fix floating tradition, and 
to extract from hear-say evidence valuable items of fact, can fully 
understand the traps and pit-falls which beset the path of one who 
essays to track a custom or an art to its inception. The lapse of 
a century creates, in many instances, a void which can be filled 
up only by dint of levelling a mass. of piled-up errors (the 
accumulations of former historians) ; substituting, in lieu thereof, 
such information as can be extracted from authentic records, 
_and other sources only accessible to honest, hard-working students. 
The force of this observation was felt by the writer when engaged 
