“Popishe Thackwell” and Early Catholic Printing in Wales

The distinction of putting into print the first book ever produced within the principality of Wales has recently been proved to belong to a group of Catholic outlaws operating in North Wales. Their book bears the date 1585 and though it was perhaps really printed in 1586 or early 1587, it antedates by over one hundred and thirty years the two ballads with which Isaac Carter inaugurated the modem press inside Wales at Trefhedyn in Cardiganshire in 1718 (1). The evidence for this press has gradually been pieced together over a number of years (2), but it is scattered in books and periodicals, and may here be brought together and compared with the bibliographical evidence of the book itself.