William Bladen Publisher and his Printer Thomas Reading

time before 1692, in which year he was employed by the Lower House in
making a transcript of the laws and in other clerical work of the session. In
the year 1694 he signed the remonstrance of the citizens of St. Mary's against
the removal of the capital. He assumed prominence in public affairs ini695
as Clerk of the Lower House, a position which he held until he became Clerk
of the Upper House in 1697, in which capacity he served the Province until
four years before his death in 1718. He was Collector of the Port and Dis-
trict of Annapolis in 1697, Clerk of the Prerogative Court in 1699, Secre-
tary of Maryland in 1701, Attorney-General of Maryland in 1707, Architect
of the State House, 1704 to 1708, and Commissary-General of the Province
in 1714. He held office also as an alderman of Annapolis in 1708, and sev-
eral times served as vestryman of St. Anne's Parish. In the year 1696, he
married Anne, daughter of Garrett Van Swearingen, by whom he had two
children. One of these was Anne, who married the Hon. Benjamin Tasker
of Annapolis, and the other was that Thomas Bladen who lived promi-
nently not only in Maryland, of which he was Governor from 1742 to 1747,
but as well in England, where at a later period he sat in the House of Com-
mons as member for the Borough of Old Sarum.¹

It was characteristic of Bladen's enterprise that he should have perceived
the advantage both to himself and to the Province in the importation of a
press which should be capable of larger undertakings than those which form-
erly had been entrusted to the Nutheads. From the beginning he proposed
to perform ambitious tasks, although in the first notice that we have of the
press after its establishment in the colony, the character of the work sug-
gested for it differed in no particular from that which Dinah Nuthead had
been licensed to undertake four years earlier. It should be understood that
Bladen was not a printer; he was the entrepreneur only, and he brought
in with his press a practical printer, who was without doubt that Thomas
Reading of whom we shall hear a great deal as this relation proceeds. An
entry in the copy of the Lower House Journal which was transmitted to
the Board of Trade, omitted in the Maryland original, informs us that on
September 30, 1696, it was resolved that if Mr. Bladen were successful in
obtaining a printer and a press, he should have the sole benefit of their
operations, and the Council was asked to concur in that resolution for the
encouragement of his designs.² During the first years of the venture,
although the name of Thomas Reading appeared alone on the imprints,

¹ "The Bladen Family," by Christopher Johnston, Maryland Historical Magazine, 5:297; Archives of Maryland,
passim; Vestry Proceedings, St. Anne's Parish, in Maryland Historical Magazine, vols. 6-10; article "Maryland
Gleanings; Sidelights on Maryland History," by Hester Dorsey Richardson, in the Baltimore Sun, May 29,1904.

² Cal. State Papers, A. & W. /., 1696, No. 268, p. 155.

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