The printer who succeeded Roger Daniel, John Legate the younger, has already been mentioned in connection with the agreement of 1639 between Buck and the Stationers. Admitted freeman of the Stationers' Company in 1619, he took over several of the books printed by his father, including Thomas's Dictionary. For many years before his appointment he had described himself as printer to the university and shortly after the grace for his election (5 July, 16 50) he and William Graves, another Cambridge stationer, “entered into recognisances with two sureties of £300 each not to print any seditious or unlicensed books, pamphlets, or pictures, nor suffer their presses to be used for that purpose” –a pledge similar to that given by the brothers Buck in the previous year.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of Legate's short tenure of the office of printer is the fact that Thomas Buck, without resigning his patent, made an agreement with him and Octavian Pulleyn by which he undertook to hand over his printing rights to the Stationers' Company of London: