Andrew Brice

Long before the term of service expired he married, and as he found himself in a year or two unable to support his family he enlisted, with the object of cancelling his indentures.

His friends soon obtained his discharge, and helped him to commence business on his own account in 1714, though with such slender materials that he had but one size of type for all his work, including the printing of a weekly newspaper.

About 1722 the debtors in the city and county prisons induced him to lay their grievances before the public, with the result that he found himself entangled in a lawsuit and cast in damages which he could not discharge.

His dramatic tastes and his charitable feelings constantly involved him in pecuniary difficulties and obliged him to prosecute his trade until he was the oldest master printer in England.

James Davidson in his Bibliotheca Devoniensis assigns to Brice the authorship of the ironical A Short Essay on the Scheme lately set on foot for lighting and keeping clean the Streets of the City of Exeter, demonstrating its pernicious and fatal effects (1755).