Career
He is most well-known for printing many editions of English Bibles during the Elizabethan Age, notably the Geneva Bible and the so-called Bishop"s Bible. He was the official printer of the court of Elizabeth I of England and held exclusive patents to print Bibles. An outstanding figure in the printing trade towards the end of the sixteenth century was Christopher Barker, a shrewd businessman who managed to acquire the most lucrative of all patents, namely the Bible patent.
Barker became interested in the printing trade and is first heard of as a publisher in 1569.
In 1576 he started on his career as a Bible printer, having obtained a privilege to print the Geneva version of the Bible in England. In 1577 he purchased from Sir Thomas Wilkes, Clerk of the Privy Council, an extensive patent which included the Old and New Testament in English, with or without notes, of any translation.
The full patent granted to Barker the office of royal printer of all statutes, books, bills, Acts of Parliament, proclamations, injunctions, Bibles, and New Testaments, in the English tongue of any translation, all service books to be used in churches, and all other volumes ordered to be printed by the Queen or Parliament. Barker’s business continued to thrive and from 1588 onwards he conducted it mainly through his deputies, George Bishop and Ralph Newbery.
Christopher Barker also had a house at Datchet, to which he retired after 1588, and there he died in 1599.
He and his deputies had supplied the country with about seventy editions of the Scriptures between 1575 and 1599 and they were accurate and well printed.
