The immediate official successor of Burges as university printer was John Deighton, elected on 28 April, 1802; he, however, held office only till 11 December of the same year and seems to have served the Press as publishing agent rather than as printer. Thus in 1803 he, with Francis Hodson of Cambridge and Richard Newcomb of Stamford, undertook to purchase the whole stock of royal octavo bibles belonging to the university (amounting to 5627 copies in all) for the sum of £2323 10s.

Deighton had begun business in Cambridge about 1777 and removed to London in 1786; in 1795 he appears to have returned to Cambridge, where he established the bookselling firm that has since become Deighton, Bell and Co.

About this time the Syndics seem to have taken counsel of, or at any rate to have compared notes with, the Oxford University Press; a rough notebook, kept by Isaac Milner, one of the most active of the Cambridge Syndics, contains various memoranda concerning the Oxford method of management. Milner seems particularly to have discussed with Mr Dawson, of the Clarendon Press, the proper percentage of profit on the printing and selling of bibles.