would not have undertaken this work were it not for a double notion that he was too much a friend to truth and a friend to himself ‘not to love one of my best arguments of Instituting the King to this Art [of printing] in his private capacity,’ for which of course Atkyns was to be one of the agents. Atkyns's story has long since been discredited. It is only by implication that Atkyns himself infers from the manuscript that the printer of the ‘Exposicio’ was one Corsellis; the researches of a host of bibliographers, from the learned Dr. Conyers Middleton downwards, have proved, moreover, that the book was antedated by ten years, probably by the omission of an X by the printer by design or accident; it has also been shown that no other book was printed at Oxford until 1479. As to ‘the Record and MS. in Lambeth House,’ one fatal objection to the story of Caxton and Corsellis contained in it is, that the former has not made the slightest allusion to it even in his ‘Polychronicon,’ which is brought down to the end of the reign of Henry VI. Again, Dr. Ducarel, the librarian at Lambeth, one of the greatest antiquarians of his time, and who made complete indexes to the registers and manuscripts under his care, after fruitless research for the record alluded to by Atkyns, declared its existence to be a myth, and the whole story of Corsellis ‘a mere fable.’ Whether Atkyns was the inventor of it, or a dupe of others, cannot now be determined; but one thing is clear, that he was an interested person, and had it not been from a private motive he would not have advanced such a story, which has in almost every sentence a ring of falsehood and improbability. Whatever immediate advantage he may have gained by its publication, misfortune swiftly overtook him; within three years he was committed to the Marshalsea in Southwark for debt, brought about partly by his own imprudence, partly by the vagaries and extravagances of his wife. He died without issue on 14 Sept. 1677, and was buried two days later by relatives in the adjoining church of St. George-the-Martyr without any religious ceremony.
The writings of Atkyns are: 1. ‘The Original and Growth of Printing, collected out of History and the Records of this Kingdom,’ &c., London, 1664, 4to, 24 pp. 2. ‘The King's Grant of Privilege for Sole Printing of Common Law Books Defended,’ &c., London, 1669, 4to, 17 pp., b.l. (anonymous, ascribed to Atkyns from internal evidence). 3. ‘Vindication of Richard Atkyns, Esq., as also a Relation of several Passages in the Western War wherein he was concerned, together with certaine Sighs or Ejaculations at the end of every chapter,’ London, 1669, 4to, 80 pp. This last work has been wholly misunderstood by his biographers, the three paragraphs in the title having been taken for three separate works. It is an exceedingly curious ‘Apologia,’ with only one reference to his printing troubles, ‘dedicated to his particular Friends and intended to no other.’
[Biog. Britannica, vol. ii. art. ‘Caxton;’ Singer's Account of the Book printed at Oxford in 1468, 1812; Timperley's Encycl. of Literary and Typographical Anecdote, 1842; Encycl. Brit. 8th edition, art. ‘Printing’ by Hansard, x. 534; Bigmore and Wyman's Bibliography of Printing, 1880, part i. p. 21.]
ATKYNS, Sir ROBERT (1621–1709), lord chief baron of the exchequer, was the eldest son of Sir Edward Atkyns, one of the barons of the exchequer during the Commonwealth, and the elder brother of Sir Edward Atkyns, who preceded him as lord chief baron. There had been lawyers in the family for many generations : 'He himself, and his three immediate ancestors, having been of the profession for near two hundred years, and in judicial places ; and (through the blessing of Almighty God) have prospered by it' (Epistle dedicatory to his Enquiry into the Jurisdiction of the Chancery). In his son's 'History of Glocestershire' the record of the family is carried still further back, in an unbroken legal line, to a Richard Atkyns who lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and 'followed the profession of the law in Monmouthshire.' Robert Atkyns was born in Gloucestershire in 1621. It is not certain whether he went to Oxford or to Cambridge, Chalmers (i. 60) including him among the famous men of Balliol College, and Dyer (ii. 437) among those of Sidney Sussex College. Chalmers's statement may have originated in the fact that in 1663 Atkyns received from Oxford the degree of master of arts (Catalogue of Oxford Graduates; Wood mentions this, but does not connect him otherwise with Oxford (Fasti, ed. Bliss, ii. 273)). In 1638 he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1645. Mention of his name is made in some reported cases, but beyond that nothing is heard of him until 1659, when he entered Richard Cromwell's parliament as member for Evesham. Probably he was already known to sympathise with the king's party, for we find him among the sixty-eight who were made knights of the Bath at Charles's coronation (KENNET, Register, 410). His name does not appear in the list of members of Charles's first parliament, but in that of 1661 he sat for Eastlow, speaking frequently
