[5] Roberts took over John Charlewood's books on 31 May 1594,[6] including the right of printing playbills, which William Jaggard unsuccessfully applied for.
He was presumably later widowered, as he is also said to have married a daughter of the stationer Thomas Heyes, to whom he sold the publishing rights of The Merchant of Venice on 28 October 1600.
The court of assistants ordered, on 1 September 1595, "that James Roberts shall clerely from hensforth surcease to deale with the printinge of the Brief Catechisme", recently printed by him, and that he should deliver up all sheets of the book.
He printed satires: Thomas Nashe's Christ's Tears over Jerusalem (1594), John Marston's Scourge of Villainy (1598), and Everard Guilpin's Skialatheia (1598).
He also entered a lost play Cloth Breeches and Velvet Hose and printed the second quarto of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus for Edward White.
[9] On 26 July 1602 he had entered to him The Revenge of Hamlett, Prince of Denmarke, as yt was latelie acted by the Lord Chamberleyne his servantes’.
One other Shakespearean entry to him is for Troilus and Cressida, "as yt is acted by my lord chamberlen's Men", 7 Feb. 1603,[11] of which the first printed edition came from the press of G. Eld in 1609.
A long list of books belonging to Roberts towards the end of his life is reprinted in Joseph Ames, Typographical Antiquities (ed.