William Leybourn

[1] During the late 1640s Robert Leybourn's press in Monkswell Street near Cripplegate, London was occupied with books and pamphlets of a political, martial and millenarian nature.

In 1646 he published a pamphlet A Defence of Master Chaloner's Speech, and an early edition of The Marrow of Modern Divinity attributed to Edward Fisher: in 1648 appeared The Differences in Scotland stil on foot, and from 1648 an almanack or Moderate Intelligencer of military affairs entitled Mercurius Republicus.

Robert Leybourn gave the apparently fraudulent ascription to Sir William Davenant of Edmund Bolton's historical poem London, King Charles his Augusta, or City Royal of 1648.

[2] He printed Joseph Mede's sermon on St. Peter's prediction of the apocalypse, and a work called The Englishe Catholike Christian by one Thomas de la More, minister, followed in 1649.

[5] The press closed in 1666, following the Great Fire of London (in which almost the entire second edition of Wing's Geodætes Practicus, 1666, was incinerated[6]), after which William moved to Northcott in Southall, Middlesex.

The contemporary expansion of the Royal Navy and Merchant Marines created a significant demand for such manuals, and The Art of Dialling was well written, easy to understand and cheaply produced.

[10] Leybourn's 1693 work Panarithmologia, being a mirror for merchants, breviate for bankers, treasure for tradesmen, mate for mechanicks, and a sure guide for purchasers, sellers, or mortgagers of land, leases, annuities, rents, pensions, etc.

[14][15] Leybourn identified the need for books that explained the techniques for measuring building materials that were widely accessible, both in cost and language.