Bourke, Thomas

Bourke, Thomas (fl. 1643–4), printer, has been considered the first known printer in Waterford. Though his background is not known, it has been argued that the ‘good standard of the typesetting and printing of his extant works demonstrate that he was already a well-trained and skilled printer’ (Sessions, 6) at the time of the first of the imprints bearing his name, from 1643. At least twelve imprints are known from 1643–4, some of them describing him as ‘printer to the confederate Catholickes’, but other items have been attributed to him, and at least one London publication was claimed to be a reprint of one of his publications. He may have been responsible for works printed at Waterford in 1645–6, without a printer's name attached, but it has been suggested that his Waterford press had been taken over by Peter de Pienne by 1647. His name appears on one printed item from Kilkenny dated 13 August 1648, typographically distinct from the Waterford items, but of a piece with earlier, anonymous, Kilkenny productions, emanating from an originally Jesuit-owned press.

Most of his known publications were of documents closely associated with the confederate leadership, including proclamations and declarations, remonstrances and propositions, and laws of war. He also printed longer texts, including works by Patrick Darcy (qv) and Walter Enos. In his ‘Address’ from the ‘Printer’ to the reader, attached to the Inquisition of a Sermon (1644), he indicated the ‘incomparable good and benefit that doth redound to the Commonwealth by the print of which the Catholikes of this Kingdome were deprived since the revolt from the true religion’, and expressed himself ‘confident that . . . I will shortly publish other learned works, which hitherto, through the iniquity of former times, lay lurking in darkness’.