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Peter W M Blayney, Thomas Marshe Invents the Press Figure, The Library, Volume 19, Issue 4, December 2018, Pages 455–468, https://doi.org/10.1093/library/19.4.455
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Abstract
Press figures are at present believed to have originated in the King’s Printing House in 1629, but a few examples are also found in 1628. More than seventy years earlier, however, in 1557 the printer Thomas Marshe used the initial of his surname to identify the sheets he contributed to a missal otherwise printed by John Kingston. Two years later he similarly marked (although less consistently) most of the sheets he printed as part of a far more complex collaboration, namely one of the 1559 editions of the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer. While he is not known to have done likewise in any later book, and was never imitated by his contemporaries or successors, he should nevertheless be recognized as the first known user of press figures.
