John Legate
English printer (c.1562–1620/21)
John Legate (died 1620?) was an English printer.
Biography
Legate was admitted and sworn a freeman of the Stationers' Company on 11 April 1586 (Arber, ii. 696). He was appointed printer to the University of Cambridge by grace, on 2 November 1588, as ‘he is reported to be skilful in the art of printing books.’ On 26 April 1589 he received as an apprentice Cantrell Legge, afterwards also university printer and his immediate successor in the conduct of the press at Cambridge. From 1590 to 1609 he appeared in the parish books of the Church of St Mary the Great, Cambridge, as paying 5s. a year for the rent of a shop. In 1609 he was elected churchwarden, and paid a fine of 10s. for his ‘dismission.’ The respective rights of the Company of Stationers and of the university were at this time not well defined, and there were frequent differences between them. By the help of their chancellor the rights of the university and of their printer were successfully defended, and in 1597 an entry in the ‘Stationers' Registers’ (ib. iii.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “John Legate” is english printer (c.1562–1620/21). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through John, Legate and English, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q18671980. VIAF identifies the subject as 82948181. The Library of Congress control number is nr97041613. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1620, 1586, 1588 and 1589.
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This entry incorporates text from “John Legate” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.