2. The Wicked Bible contained an embarrassing printer’s error
In 1631, Royal Printers Robert Barker and Martin Lucas printed a new edition of the recently translated King James Version of the Bible. While composing the text in preparation for pressing the pages, at one rather critical point the printers omitted the word “not”. The result was several copies of the book appearing in the shops and churches of London with Exodus 20:14 reading “Thou shalt commit adultery”. When the Bishop of London became aware of the error, he informed the King of the blasphemous version of the Seventh Commandment, and the King ordered the printers be brought before the High Commission, known to history as the Star Chamber, to explain how so grave an error could occur.
It was the finding of the Star Chamber that printers who held the Royal Warrant were selected based on them, “being grave and learned men.” The commissioners found that not the case in the printing shop of Barker and Lucas, and found that the editors and proofreaders were “unlearned”. The printers were ordered to pay a substantial fine and all copies of the book, which became known as the Wicked Bible, were ordered collected and burned. Some copies survive in the twenty-first century. The printers were also stripped of their Royal Warrant, causing the loss of substantial business, and considerable public ridicule was drummed up from the pulpits, where the mistake was interpreted as a grave sin. Barker went into debt and eventually debtor’s prison, where he died in 1645. Lucas’s fate is unknown.