The received wisdom about Nicholas Bourman is summarized in Duff's Century (17). He was a printer in London in 1539–42, ‘probably a relative of Richard Stevenage, or Boreman, last abbot of St. Alban's’, and used a device ‘almost identical with that used by John Hertford’. After 1542 he ‘continued as a stationer’, was the twenty-seventh of the ninety-seven freemen listed in the Company's charter, served as a collector in 1558–60, and was last mentioned in the Company records in May 1560. But what has been received is not unalloyed wisdom. I have shown that the six books claiming to have been printed ‘by Nicolas Bourman’ were really printed by John Herford (p. 432), and McKerrow long ago observed that his device was in fact Herford's McK 84, with Richard Stevenage's initials expertly cut away and ‘N B’ typeset in the centre. And while attempting to establish that he was indeed related to the former abbot I found not only that Nicholas Bourmans (variously spelled) were unexpectedly numerous in the sixteenth century, but also that the publisher of 1539–42 could not possibly have been his namesake the Stationer. But before I focus on those two men I must eliminate a Nicholas who preferred to be spelled Bowreman, belonged to a prominent Hampshire family, was variously described in the 1530s and ’40s as ‘of Broke within the Ile of wyght’ or ‘nuper de Fresshewater in Insula vecta…Gentilman’, and died before 1560.