Robert Barker (printer) - Printing Career - The Wicked Bible

The Wicked Bible

The Wicked Bible, also known as "The Adulterous Bible" or "The Sinners' Bible" was published in 1631 by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, both royal printers in London, and was intended to be a word-for-word reprint of the King James Bible. However, in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:14) the word "not" in the sentence "Thou shalt not commit adultery" was omitted. About a year later, Barker and Lucas were fined £300 (roughly equivalent to 33,800 pounds today) and were deprived of their printer's licences by whom?. The fact that this edition of the Bible contained such a flagrant mistake outraged Charles I of England and George Abbot, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who said then:

"I knew the tyme when great care was had about printing, the Bibles especially, good compositors and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and the letter rare, and faire every way of the beste, but now the paper is nought, the composers boyes, and the correctors unlearned.

By order of the king, the authors were called to the Star Chamber, where, upon the fact being proved, the whole impression was called in, and they were fined. The majority of copies of the Wicked Bible were immediately cancelled and burned, and it is rumoured that only eleven survive.