Legate was admitted and sworn a freeman of the Stationers' Company on 11 April 1586 (Arber, ii.
for his ‘dismission.’ The respective rights of the Company of Stationers and of the university were at this time not well defined, and there were frequent differences between them.
By the help of their chancellor the rights of the university and of their printer were successfully defended, and in 1597 an entry in the ‘Stationers' Registers’ (ib.
John Legate the younger (1600–1658), his eldest son, was baptised in the parish of St. Mary the Great, Cambridge, on 8 June 1600, was admitted freeman of the Stationers' Company on 6 Sept. 1619, and on the death of his father in the following year succeeded to his business.
He was appointed one of the Cambridge University printers by grace on 5 July 1650, probably in succession to Roger Daniel, but his patent was cancelled for neglect on 10 October 1655.
He died, ‘distempered in his senses,’ at Little Wood Street, London, 4 Nov. 1658 (R. Smyth, Obituary, Camd.
In the parish registers of St. Botolph at Cambridge, 25 June 1642, is a marriage of John Legate to Elizabeth Grime.