The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Short History of English Printing, by Henry R. Plomer.

hen Mr. Plomer consented at my request to write a short history of English printing which should stop neither at the end of the fifteenth century, nor at the end of the sixteenth century, nor at 1640, but should come down, as best it could, to our own day, we were not without apprehensions that the task might prove one of some difficulty. How difficult it would be we had certainly no idea, or the book would never have been begun, and now that it is finished I would bespeak the reader's sympathies, on Mr. Plomer's behalf, that its inevitable shortcomings may be the more generously forgiven. If we look at what has already been written on the subject the difficulties will be more easily appreciated. In England, as in other countries, the period in the history of the press which is best known to us is, by the perversity of antiquaries, that which is furthest removed from our own time. Of all that can be learnt about Caxton the late Mr. William Blades set down in[Pg viii] his monumental work nine-tenths, and the zeal of Henry Bradshaw, of Mr. Gordon Duff, and of Mr. E. J. L. Scott, has added nearly all that was lacking in this storehouse. Mr. Duff has extended his labours to the other English printers of the 15th century, giving in his Early English Printing (Kegan Paul, 1896) a conspectus, with facsimiles of their types, and in his privately printed Sandars Lectures presenting a detailed account of their work, based on the personal examination of every book or fragment from their presses which his unwearied diligence has been able to discover. Originality for this period being out of the question, Mr. Plomer's task was to select, under a constant sense of obligation, from the mass of details which have been brought together for this short period, and to preserve due proportion in their treatment.

Of the work of the printers of the next half-century our knowledge is much less detailed, and Mr. Plomer might fairly claim that he himself, by the numerous documents which he has unearthed at the Record Office and at Somerset House, has made some contributions to it of considerable value and interest. It is to his credit, if I may say so, that so little is written here of these discoveries. In a larger book the[Pg ix] story of the brawl in which Pynson's head came so nigh to being broken, or of John Rastell's suit against the theatrical costumier who impounded the dresses used in his private theatre, would form pleasant digressions, but in a sketch of a large subject there is no room for digressions, and these personal incidents have been sternly ignored by their discoverer. Even his first love, Robert Wyer, has been allotted not more than six lines above the space which is due to him, and generally Mr. Plomer has compressed the story told in the Typographical Antiquities of Ames, Herbert, and Dibdin with much impartiality.

When we pass beyond the year 1556, which witnessed the incorporation of the Stationers' Company, Mr. Arber's Transcripts from the Company's Registers become the chief source of information, and Mr. Plomer's pages bear ample record of the use he has made of them, and of the numerous documents printed by Mr. Arber in his prefaces. After 1603, the date at which Mr. Arber discontinues, to the sorrow of all bibliographers, his epitome of the annual output of the press, information is far less abundant. After 1640 it becomes a matter of shreds and patches, with no other continuous aid than Mr. Talbot[Pg x] Reed's admirable work, A History of the Old English Letter Foundries, written from a different standpoint, to serve as a guide. His own researches at the Record Office have enabled Mr. Plomer to enlarge considerably our knowledge of the printers at work during the second half of the seventeenth century, but when the State made up its mind to leave the printers alone, even this source of information lapses, and the pioneer has to gather what he may from the imprints in books which come under his hand, from notices of a few individual printers, and stray anecdotes and memoranda. Through this almost pathless forest Mr. Plomer has threaded his way, and though the road he has made may be broken and imperfect, the fact that a road exists, which they can widen and mend, will be of incalculable advantage to all students of printing.

Besides the indebtedness already stated to the works of Blades, Mr. Gordon Duff, Mr. Arber, and Mr. Reed, acknowledgments are also due for the help derived from Mr. Allnutt's papers on English Provincial Printing (Bibliographica, vol. ii.) and Mr. Warren's history of the Chiswick Press (The Charles Whittinghams, Printers; Grolier Club, 1896). Lest Mr. Plomer should[Pg xi] be made responsible for borrowed faults, it must also be stated that the account of the Kelmscott Press is mainly taken from an article contributed to The Guardian by the present writer. The hearty thanks of both author and editor are due to Messrs. Macmillan and Bowes for the use of two devices; to the Clarendon Press for the three pages of specimens of the types given to the University of Oxford by Fell and Junius; to the Chiswick Press for the examples of the devices and ornamental initials which the second Whittingham reintroduced, and for the type-facsimiles of the title-page of the book with which he revived the use of old-faced letters; to Messrs. Macmillan for the specimen of the Macmillan Greek type, and to the Trustees of Mr. William Morris for their grant of the very exceptional privilege of reproducing, with the skilful aid of Mr. Emery Walker, two pages of books printed at the Kelmscott Press.

That the illustrations are profuse at the beginning and end of the book and scanty in the middle must be laid to the charge of the printers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in whose work good ornament finds no place. It was due to Caslon and Baskerville to insert their portraits, though they can hardly[Pg xii] be called works of art. That of Roger L'Estrange, which is also given, may suggest, by its more prosperous look, that in the evil days of the English press its Censor was the person who most throve by it.

CONTENTS AND LIST OF PLATES

LIST OF PLATES

CHAPTER I

CAXTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

he art of printing had been known on the Continent for something over twenty years, when William Caxton, a citizen and mercer of London, introduced it into England.

Such facts as are known of the life of England's first printer are few and simple. He tells us himself that he was born in the Weald of Kent, and he was probably educated in his native village. When old enough, he was apprenticed to a well-to-do London mercer, Robert Large, who carried on business in the Old Jewry. This was in 1438, and in 1441 his master died, leaving, among other legacies, a sum of twenty marks to William Caxton.

In all probability Caxton, whose term of apprenticeship had not expired, was transferred to some other master to serve the remainder of his term; but all we know is that he shortly afterwards left England for the Low Countries. In the prologue to the Recuyell of the Historyes of[Pg 2] Troye he tells us that, at the time he began the translation, he had been living on the Continent for thirty years, in various places, Brabant, Flanders, Holland, and Zealand, but the city of Bruges, one of the largest centres of trade in Europe at that time, was his headquarters. Caxton prospered in his business, and rose to be 'Governor to the English Nation at Bruges,' a position of importance, and one that brought him into contact with men of high rank.

In the year 1468 Caxton appears to have had some leisure for literary work, and began to translate a French book he had lately been reading, Raoul Le Fevre's Recueil des Histoires de Troyes; but after writing a few quires he threw down his pen in disgust at the feebleness of his version.

Very shortly after this he entered the service of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV. of England, either as secretary or steward. The Duchess used to talk with him on literary matters, and he told her of his attempt to translate the Recueil. She asked him to show her what he had written, pointed out how he might amend his 'rude English,' and encouraged him to continue his work. Caxton took up the task again, and in spite of many interruptions, including journeys to both Ghent and Cologne, he completed it, in the latter city, on the 19th September 1471. All this he tells us in the[Pg 3] prologue, and at the end of the second book he says:—

'And for as moche as I suppose the said two bokes ben not had to fore this tyme in oure English langage | therefore I had the better will to accomplisshe this said werke | whiche werke was begonne in Brugis | and contynued in Gaunt, and finyshed in Coleyn, ... the yere of our lord a thousand four honderd lxxi.' He then goes on to speak of John Lydgate's translation of the third book, as making it needless to translate it into English, but continues:—

'But yet for as moche as I am bounde to contemplate my fayd ladyes good grace and also that his werke is in ryme | and as ferre as I knowe hit is not had in prose in our tonge ... and also because that I have now god leyzer beying in Coleyn, and have none other thing to doo at this tyme, I have,' etc.

Then at the end of the third book he says that, having become weary of writing and yet having promised copies to divers gentlemen and friends,—

'Therfor I have practysed and lerned at my grete charge and dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner and forme as ye may here see,' etc.

The book when printed bore neither place of imprint, date of printing, or name of printer. The late William Blades, in his Life of Caxton (vol. i. chap. v. pp. 45-61), maintained that this[Pg 4] book, and all the others printed with the same type, were printed at Bruges by Colard Mansion, and that it was at Bruges, and in conjunction with Mansion, that Caxton learned the art of printing. His principal reasons for coming to this conclusion were: (1) That Caxton's stay in Cologne was only for six months, long enough for him to have finished the translation of the book, but too short a time in which to have printed it. (2) That the type in which it was printed was Colard Mansion's. (3) That the typographical features of the books printed in this type (No. 1) point to their having all of them come from the same printing office.

Caxton's own statement in the epilogue to the third book certainly appears to mean that during the course of the translation, in order to fulfil his promise of multiplying copies, he had learned to print. He might easily have done so in the six months during which he remained in Cologne, or during his stay in Ghent. That it was in Cologne rather than elsewhere, is confirmed by the oft-quoted stanza added by Wynkyn de Worde as a colophon to the English edition of Bartholomæus de proprietatibus rerum.

If any one should have known the true facts of[Pg 6] the case it was surely Caxton's own foreman, who almost certainly came over to England with him. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that type No. 1 is totally unlike any type that we know of as used by a Cologne printer, and, moreover, Caxton's methods of working, and his late adoption of spacing and signatures, point to his having learnt his art in a school of printing less advanced than that of Cologne. In the face of the statements of Caxton himself and Wynkyn de Worde, we seem bound to believe that Caxton did study printing at Cologne, but the inexpertness betrayed in his early books proves conclusively that his studies there did not extend very far. In any case it must have been with the help of Colard Mansion that he set up and printed the Recuyell, probably in 1472 or 1473. In addition to this book several others, printed in the same type, and having other typographical features in common with it, were printed in the next few years. These were:—

The Game and Playe of the Chess Moralised, translated by Caxton, a small folio of 74 leaves.

Les Fais et Prouesses du noble et vaillant chevalier Jason, a folio of 134 leaves, printed, it is believed, by Mansion, after Caxton's removal to England. And,

Meditacions sur le sept Psaulmes Peniten[Pg 7]ciaulx, a folio of 34 leaves, also ascribed to Mansion's press, about the year 1478.

About the latter half of 1476 Caxton must have left Bruges and come to England, leaving type No. 1 in the hands of Mansion, and bringing with him that picturesque secretary type, known as type 2. This, as Mr. Blades has undoubtedly proved, had already been used by Caxton and Mansion in printing at least two books: Les quatre derrenieres choses, notable from the method of working the red ink, a method found in no other book of Colard Mansion; and Propositio Johannis Russell, a tract of four leaves, containing Russell's speech at the investiture of the Duke of Burgundy with the order of the Garter in 1470.

On his arrival in England, Caxton settled in Westminster, within the precincts of the Abbey, at the sign of the Red Pale, and from thence, on November 18th 1477, he issued The Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers, the first book printed in England. It was a folio of 76 leaves, without title-page, foliation, catchwords or signatures, in this respect being identical with the books printed in conjunction with Mansion. Type 2, in which it was printed, was a very different fount to that which is seen in the Recuyell and its companion books. It was undoubtedly modelled on the large Gros Batarde type of Colard Mansion, and was in all probability cut by Mansion himself. The letters are[Pg 9] bold, and angular, with a close resemblance to the manuscripts of the time, the most notable being the lowercase 'w,' which is brought into prominence by large loops over the top. The 'h's' and 'l's' are also looped letters, the final 'm's' and 'n's' are finished with an angular stroke, and the only letter at all akin to those in type No. 1 is the final 'd,' which has the peculiar pump-handle finial seen in that fount. The Dictes and Sayinges is printed throughout in black ink, in long lines, twenty-nine to a page, with space left at the beginning of the chapters for the insertion of initial letters. It has no colophon, but at the end of the work is an Epilogue, which begins thus:—

'Here endeth the book named the dictes or sayengis | of the philosophers, enprynted, by me william | Caxton at Westmestre the yere of our lord ·M· | CCCC·LXXVij.'

Caxton followed The Dictes and Sayinges with an edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a folio of 372 leaves. The size of the book makes it probable that it was put in hand simultaneously with its predecessor, and that the chief work of the poet, to whom Caxton paid more than one eloquent tribute, engaged his attention as soon as he set up his press in England. He also printed in the same type a Sarum Ordinale, known only by a fragment in the Bodleian, and a number of small quarto tracts, such as The Moral Proverbs[Pg 10] of Christyne, which bears date the 20th of February; a Latin school-book called Stans Puer ad Mensam; two translations from the Distichs of Dionysius Cato, entitled respectively Parvus Catho and Magnus Catho, of which a second edition was speedily called for; Lydgate's fable of the Chorl and the Bird, a quarto of 10 leaves, which also soon went to a second edition; Chaucer's Anelida and Arcite, and two editions of Lydgate's The Horse, the Sheep, and the Goose.

During the first three years of Caxton's residence at Westminster he printed at least thirty books. In 1479 he recast type 2 (cited in its new form by Blades as type 2*), and this he continued to use until 1481. But about the same time he cast two other founts, Nos. 3 and 4. The first of these was a large black letter of Missal character, used chiefly for printing service books, but appearing in the books printed with type 2* for headlines. With it he printed Cordyale, or the Four Last Things, a folio of 78 leaves, the work being a translation by Earl Rivers of Les Quatre Derrenieres Choses Advenir, first printed in type 2 in the office of Colard Mansion. A second edition of The Dictes and Sayinges was also printed in this type, while to the year 1478 or 1479 must be ascribed the Rhetorica Nova of Friar Laurence of Savona, a folio of 124 leaves, long attributed to the press of Cambridge.[Pg 11]

After 1479 Caxton began to space out his lines and to use signatures, customs that had been in vogue on the Continent for some years before he left. In 1480 he brought the new type 4 into use. This was modelled on type 2, but was much smaller, the body being most akin to modern English. Although its appearance was not so striking as that of the earlier fount, it was a much neater letter and more adapted to the printing of Indulgences, and it has been suggested that it was the arrival of John Lettou in London, and the neat look of his work, that induced Caxton to cut the fount in question. The most noticeable feature about it is the absence of the loop to the lowercase 'd,' so conspicuous a feature of the No. 2 type. With this type No. 4 he printed Kendale's indulgence and the first edition of The Chronicles of England, dated the 10th June 1480, a folio of 152 leaves. In the same year he printed with type 3 three service-books. Of one of these, the Horæ, William Blades found a few leaves, all that are known to exist, in the covers of a copy of Boethius, printed also by Caxton, which he discovered in a deplorable state from damp, in a cupboard of the St. Albans Grammar School. This was an uncut copy, in the original binding, and the covers yielded as many as fifty-six half sheets of printed matter, fragments of other books printed by Caxton. These proved the existence of three hitherto unknown examples of[Pg 12] his press, the Horæ above noted, the Ordinale, and the Indulgence of Pope Sixtus IV., the remaining fragments yielding leaves from the History of Jason, printed in type 2, the first edition of the Chronicles, the Description of Britain; the second edition of the Dictes and Sayinges, the De Curia Sapientiæ, Cicero's De Senectute, and the Nativity of Our Lady, printed in the recast of type 4, known as type 4*.

The first book printed by Caxton with illus[Pg 13]trations was the third edition of Parvus and Magnus Chato, printed without date, but probably in 1481. It contained two woodcuts, one showing five pupils kneeling before their tutor. These illustrations were very poor specimens of the wood-cutter's art.

To this period also belongs The History of Reynard the Fox and the second edition of The Game and Play of Chess, printed with type 2*, and distinguished from the earlier edition by the eight woodcuts, some of which, according to the economical fashion of the day, were used more than once.

In type 4, Caxton printed (finishing it on the 20th November 1481) The History of Godfrey of Bologne; or, the Conquest of Jerusalem, a folio of 144 leaves. In the following year (1482) appeared the second edition of the Chronicles, and another work of the same kind, the compilation of Roger of Chester and Ralph Higden, called Polychronicon. This work John of Trevisa had translated into English prose, bringing it down to the year 1387. Caxton now added a further continuation to the year 1460, the only original work ever undertaken by him. Another English author whom Caxton printed at this time was John Gower, an edition in small folio (222 leaves in double columns) of whose Confessio Amantis was finished on the 2nd September 1483. In this we see the first use of type 4*, the two founts[Pg 14] being found in one instance on the same page. The first edition of the Golden Legend also belongs to 1483, being finished at Westminster on the 20th November. This was the largest book that Caxton printed, there being no less than 449 leaves in double columns, illustrated with as many as eighteen large and fifty-two small woodcuts. The text was in type 4*, the headlines, etc., in type 3. For the performance of this work Caxton received from the Earl of Arundel, to whom the book was dedicated, the gift of a buck in summer and a doe in winter, gifts probably exchanged for an annuity in money. Several copies of this book are still in existence, its large size serving as a safeguard against complete destruction, but none are perfect, most of them being made up from copies of the second edition. The insertions may be recognised by the type of the headlines, those in the second edition being in type 5. Other books printed in type 4* were Chaucer's Book of Fame, Chaucer's Troylus, the Lyf of Our Ladye, the Life of Saint Winifred, and the History of King Arthur, this last, finished on July 31, 1485, being almost as large a book as the Golden Legend.

No work dated 1486 has been traced to Caxton's press, but in 1487 he brought into use type 5, a smaller form of the black letter fount known as No. 3, with which he sometimes used a set of Lombardic capitals. With this he printed, between[Pg 16] 1487 and 1489, several important books, among them the Royal Book, a folio of 162 leaves, illustrated with six small illustrations, the Book of Good Manners, the first edition of the Directorium Sacerdotum, and the Speculum Vitæ Christi. During 1487 also he had printed for him at Paris an edition of the Sarum Missal, from the press of George Maynyal, the first book in which he used his well-known device. The second edition of the Golden Legend is believed to have been published in 1488, and to about the same time belongs the Indulgence which Henry Bradshaw discovered in the University Library, Cambridge, and which seems to have been struck off in a hurry on the nearest piece of blank paper, which happened to be the last page of a copy of the Colloquium peccatoris et Crucifixi J. C., printed at Antwerp. This was not the only remarkable find which that master of the art of bibliography made in connection with Caxton. On a waste sheet of a copy of the Fifteen Oes, he noticed what appeared to be a set off of another book, and on closer inspection this turned out to be a page of a Book of Hours, of which no copy has ever been found. It appeared to have been printed in type 5, was surrounded by borders, and was no doubt the edition which Wynkyn de Worde reprinted in 1494.

In 1489 Caxton began to use another type known as No. 6, cast from the matrices of No. 2[Pg 17] and 2*, but a shade smaller, and easily distinguishable by the lowercase 'w,' which is entirely different in character from that used in the earlier fount. With this he printed on the 14th July 1489, the Faytts of Armes and Chivalry, and between that date and the day of his death three romances, the Foure Sons of Aymon, Blanchardin, and Eneydos; the second editions of Reynard the Fox, the Book of Courtesy, the Mirror of the World, and the Directorium Sacerdotum, and the third edition of the Dictes and Sayinges. To the same period belong the editions of the Art and Craft to Know Well to Die, the Ars Moriendi, and the Vitas Patrum.

But in addition to type 6, which Blades believed to be the last used by Caxton, there is evidence of his having possessed two other founts during the latter part of his life. With one of them, type No. 7 (see E. G. Duff, Early English Printing), somewhat resembling types Nos. 3 and 5, he printed two editions of the Indulgence of Johannes de Gigliis in 1489, and it was also used for the sidenotes to the Speculum Vitæ Christi, printed in 1494 by Wynkyn de Worde. Type No. 8 was also a black letter of the same character, smaller than No. 3, and distinguished from any other of Caxton's founts by the short, rounded, and tailless letter 'y' and the set of capitals with dots. He used it in the Liber[Pg 18] Festivalis, the Ars Moriendi, and the Fifteen Oes, his only extant book printed with borders, and it was afterwards used by Wynkyn de Worde.

Caxton died in the year 1491, after a long, busy, and useful life. His record is indeed a noble one. After spending the greater part of his life in following the trade to which he was apprenticed, with all its active and onerous duties, he, at the time of life when most men begin to think of rest and quiet, set to work to learn the art of printing books. Nor was he content with this, but he devoted all the time that he could spare to editing and translating for his press, and according to Wynkyn de Worde it was 'at the laste daye of his lyff' that he finished the version of the Lives of the Fathers, which De Worde issued in 1495. His work as an editor and translator shows him to have been a man of extensive reading, fairly acquainted with the French and Dutch languages, and to have possessed not only an earnest purpose, but with it a quiet sense of humour, that crops up like ore in a vein of rock in many of his prologues.

Of his private life we know nothing, but the 'Mawde Caxston' who figures in the churchwarden's accounts of St. Margaret's is generally believed to have been his wife. His will has not yet been discovered, though it very likely exists among the uncalendared documents at Westminster Abbey, from which Mr. Scott has already[Pg 20] gleaned a few records relating to him, though none of biographical interest. We know, however, from the parish accounts of St. Margaret's, Westminster, that he left to that church fifteen copies of the Golden Legend, twelve of which were sold at prices varying between 6s. 8d. and 5s. 4d.

Caxton used only one device, a simple square block with his initials W. C. cut upon it, and certain hieroglyphics said to stand for the figures 74, with a border at the top and bottom. It was probably of English workmanship, as those found in the books of foreign printers were much more finely cut. This block, which Caxton did not begin to use until 1487, afterwards passed to his successor, who made it the basis of several elaborate variations.

Upon the death of Caxton in 1491, his business came into the hands of his chief workman, Wynkyn de Worde. From the letters of naturalisation which this printer took out in 1496, we learn that he was a native of Lorraine. It was suggested by Herbert that he was one of Caxton's original workmen, and came with him to England, and this has recently been confirmed by the discovery of a document among the records at Westminster, proving that his wife rented a house from the Abbey as early as 1480. In any case there is little doubt that Wynkyn de Worde had been in intimate association with Caxton during the greater part of his career as a printer, and when[Pg 21] Caxton died he seems to have taken over the whole business just as it stood, continuing to live at the Red Pale until 1500, and to use the types which Caxton had been using in his latest books. This fact led Blades to ascribe several books to Caxton which were probably not printed until after his death. These are The Chastising of Gods Children, The Book of Courtesye, and the Treatise of Love, printed with type No. 6; but, in addition to these, two other books, probably in the press at the time of Caxton's death, were issued from the Westminster office without a printer's name, but printed in a type resembling type 4*. These are an edition of the Golden Legend and the Life of St. Catherine of Sienna. Wynkyn de Worde's name is found for the first time in the Liber Festivalis, printed in 1493. In the following year was issued Walter Hylton's Scala Perfectionis, and a reprint of Bonaventura's Speculum Vite Christi, the sidenotes to which were printed in Caxton's type No. 7, which de Worde does not seem to have used in any other book. Besides this, there was the Sarum Horæ, no doubt a reprint of Caxton's edition now lost. He used for these books Caxton's type No. 8, with the tailless 'y' and the dotted capitals. Speaking of this type in his Early Printed Books, Mr. E. G. Duff points out its close resemblance to that used by the Paris printers P. Levet and Jean Higman in 1490, and[Pg 22] argues that it was either obtained from them or from the type-cutter who cut their founts.[1]

To the year 1495 belongs the Vitas Patrum, the book of which Caxton had finished the translation on the day of his death, and beside this, there were reprints of the Polychronicon and the Directorium Sacerdotum. The reprint of the Boke of St. Albans, which was issued in 1496, is noticeable as being printed in the type which De Worde obtained from Godfried van Os, the Gouda printer. This broad square set letter is not found in any other book of De Worde's, though he continued to use a set of initial letters which he obtained from the same printer for many years.

Among other books printed in 1496, were Dives and Pauper, a folio, and several quartos such as the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, the Meditations of St. Bernard, and the Liber Festialis. In 1497 we find the Chronicles of England, and in 1498 an edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a second edition of the Morte d'Arthur, and another of the Golden Legend, in fact nearly all De Worde's dated books up to 1500 were reprints of works issued by Caxton. But amongst the undated books we notice many new works, such as Lydgate's Assembly of Gods, and Sege of Thebes, Skelton's Bowghe of Court, The Three Kings of Cologne, and several school books.[Pg 23]

In 1499 De Worde printed the Liber Equivocorum of Joannes de Garlandia, using for it a very small Black Letter making nine and a half lines to the inch, probably obtained from Paris. This type was generally kept for scholastic books, and in addition to the book above noted, Wynkyn de Worde printed with it, in the same year or the year following, an Ortus Vocabulorum. From the time when he succeeded to Caxton's business down to the year 1500, in which he left Westminster and settled in Fleet Street, De Worde printed at least a hundred books, the bulk of them undated.

As will be seen, several printers from the Low Countries seem to have come to England soon after Caxton. The year after he settled at Westminster, a book was printed at Oxford without printer's name, and with a misprint of the date, that has set bibliographers by the ears ever since. This book was the Exposicio sancti Jeromini us simbolum apostolorum, and the colophon ran, 'Impressa Oxonie et finita anno domini M.cccc.lxviij., xvij. die decembris.' The facts that two other books that are dated 1479 (the Aegidius de originali peccato and Sextus ethicorum Aristotelis) have many points in common with the Exposicio, that the Exposicio has been found bound with other books of 1478, and that the dropping of an x from the date in a colophon is not an uncommon misprint, have led to the conclusion[Pg 24] that the Exposicio was printed in 1478 and not 1468. The printer of these first Oxford books is believed to have been Theodoric Rood of Cologne, whose name appeared in the colophon to the De Anima of Aristotle, printed at Oxford in 1481. This was followed in 1482 by a Commentary on the Lamentation of Jeremiah, by John Lattebury, and later editions of these two books are distinguished by a handsome woodcut border printed round the first page of the text.

About 1483 Rood took as a partner Thomas Hunt, a stationer of Oxford, and together they issued John Anwykyll's Latin Grammar, together with the Vulgaria Terencii, Richard Rolle of Hampole's Explanationes super lectiones beati Job, a sermon of Augustine's, of which the only known copy is in the British Museum, a collection of treatises upon logic, one of which is by Roger Swyneshede, the first edition of Lyndewode's Provincial Constitutions (a large folio of 366 leaves with a woodcut, the earliest example found in any Oxford book), and the Epistles of Phalaris, with a lengthy colophon in Latin verse. The last book to appear from the press was the Liber Festivalis by John Mirk, a folio of 174 leaves, containing eleven large woodcuts and five smaller ones, apparently meant for an edition of the Golden Legend, as they were cut down to fit the Festial. After the appearance of this book, printing at Oxford suddenly ceased, and it has been surmised that[Pg 25] Theodoric Rood returned to Cologne. Altogether the Oxford press lasted for eight years, and fifteen books remain to testify to its activity. In these, three founts of type were used, the first two having all the characteristics of the Cologne printers, while the third shows the influence of Rood's residence in England. A full account of these will be found in Mr. Falconer Madan's admirable work The Early Oxford Press.

The St. Albans Press started in 1479. Only eight books are known with this imprint, not all of them perfect, none give the name of the printer, and only one has a device. Most of them are scholastic books, printed for the use of the Grammar School. These included the Augustini Dati elegancie, a quarto, dated 1480, the Rhetorica Nova, which Caxton was printing at Westminster at the same time, and Antonius Andreæ super Logica Aristotelis. But in addition to these, two other notable works came from this press, the Chronicles of England and the Book of St. Albans.

Out of the four types which are found in these books, two at least were Caxton's type No. 2 and type No. 3. There was plainly some connection between the two offices, and as it was a frequent custom for monasteries to subsidize printers to print their service books, it seems possible that Caxton may have had some hand in establishing this press, and that it was for St. Albans Abbey[Pg 26] that he cast type No. 3, which (putting aside its subordinate employment for headlines) we find used exclusively for service books.

Three years after Caxton had settled at Westminster, viz. in 1480, an Indulgence was issued by John Kendale, asking for aid against the Turks. Caxton printed some copies of this, and others are found in a small neat type, and are ascribed to the press of John Lettou. Lettou is an old form of Lithuania, but whether John Lettou came from Lithuania is not known.

In this same year 1480, Lettou published the Quæstiones Antonii Andreæ super duodecim libros metaphysicæ Aristotelis, a small folio of 106 leaves, printed in double columns, of which only one perfect copy is known, that in the Library of Sion College. The type is small, and remarkable from its numerous abbreviations. Mr. E. G. Duff in his Early Printed Books, p. 161, speaks of its great resemblance to those of Matthias Moravus, a Naples printer, and suggests a common origin for their types. In his Early English Printing, on the other hand, he writes: 'There are very strong reasons for believing that he [Lettou] is the same person as the Johannes Bremer, alias Bulle, who is mentioned by Hain as having printed two books at Rome in 1478 and 1479. The type which this printer used is identical (with the exception of one of the capital letters) with[Pg 27] that used in the books printed by John Lettou in London.'

A few years later Lettou was joined by William de Machlinia. They were chiefly associated in printing law-books, but whether they had any patent from the king cannot be discovered. Only one of the five books they are known to have printed, the Tenores Novelli, has any colophon, and none of them has any date. The address they gave was 'juxta ecclesiam omnium sanctorum,' but as there were several churches so dedicated, the locality cannot be fixed.

We next find Machlinia working alone, but out of the twenty-two books or editions that have been traced to his press, only four contain his name, and none have a date. All we can say is that he printed from two addresses, 'in Holborn,' and 'By Flete-brigge.' Mr. Duff inclines to the opinion that the 'Flete-brigge' is the earlier, but it seems almost hopeless to attempt to place these books in any chronological order from their typographical peculiarities.

In the Fleet-Bridge type are two books by Albertus Magnus, the Liber aggregationis and the De Secretis Mulierum. The type is of a black letter character, not unlike that in which the Nova Statuta were printed, and is distinguishable by the peculiar shape of the capital M. In the same type we find the Revelation of St. Nicholas to a Monk of Evesham, a reprint of the[Pg 28] Tenores Novelli, and some fragments of a Sarum Horæ found in old bindings; a woodcut border was used in some parts of it. Besides these Machlinia printed an edition of the Vulgaria Terentii.

A larger number of books is found in the Holborn types, the most important being the Chronicles of England, of which only one perfect copy is known.

The Speculum Christiani is interesting as containing specimens of early poetry, and The Treatise on the Pestilence, of Kamitus or Canutus, bishop of Aarhus, ran to three editions, one of which contains a title-page, and was therefore presumably printed late in Machlinia's career, i.e. about 1490.

In addition to these, there were three law-books, the Statutes of Richard III., and several theological and scholastic works. One of the founts of type used by Machlinia is of peculiar interest, by reason of its close resemblance to Caxton's type No. 2*, and its still greater similarity to the type used by Jean Brito of Bruges.

Machlinia's business seems to have been taken over by Richard Pynson. There is no direct evidence of this, but like Machlinia he took up the business of printing law-books (being the first printer in this country to receive a royal patent); he is found using a woodcut border used in Machlinia's Horæ; and, in addition to this, waste from Machlinia books has been found in Pynson bindings.[Pg 29]

Richard Pynson was a native of Normandy. He had business relations with Le Talleur, a printer of Rouen. His methods also were those of Rouen, rather than of any English master. Wherever he came from, Richard Pynson was the finest printer this country had yet seen, and no one, until the appearance of John Day, approached him in excellence of work.

The earliest examples of his press appear to be a fragment of a Donatus in the Bodleian and the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. The type he used for these was a bold, unevenly cast fount of black letter, somewhat resembling that used by Machlinia at Fleet Bridge. The Chaucer, however, contained a second fount of small sloping Gothic.

The first book of Pynson found with a date is a Doctrinale, printed in November 1492, now in the John Rylands Library. This was followed by the Dialogue of Dives and Pauper, printed in 1493 with a new type, distinguishable by the sharp angular finish to the letter 'h.' Several quartos without date were printed in the same type.

From this time till 1500, the majority of his[Pg 30] books were printed in the small type of the Chaucer.

Another printer who worked at this time was Julian Notary. He was associated in the production of books with Jean Barbier, and another whose initials, J. H., are believed to be those of J. Huvin, a printer of Paris. They established themselves in London at the sign of St. Thomas the Apostle, and their most important book was the Questiones Alberti de modis significandi, which they followed up in 1497 with an octavo edition of the Horæ ad usum Sarum. In 1498 Barbier and Notary removed to King Street, Westminster, where they printed in folio a Missale ad usum Sarum. Soon afterwards Notary was printing by himself, his partner, Barbier, having returned to France. Two quartos, the Liber Festivalis and Quattuor Sermones, are all that can be traced to his press in 1499, and a small edition of the Horæ ad usum Sarum is the sole record of this work in 1500.

Notary was also a bookbinder, and some of his stamped bindings are still met with.

CHAPTER II

FROM 1500 TO THE DEATH OF WYNKYN DE WORDE

n the year 1500 Wynkyn de Worde moved from Westminster to the 'Sunne' in Fleet Street. His business had probably outgrown the limited accommodation of the 'Red Pale,' and the change brought him nearer the heart of the bookselling trade then, and for many years after, seated in St. Paul's Churchyard and Fleet Street. He carried with him the black letter type with which he had printed the Liber Festivalis in 1496, and continued to use it until 1508 or 1509, when he seems to have sold it to a printer in York, Hugo Goes. He brought with him also the scholastic type in use in 1499.

Besides these, we find, e.g. in the 1512 reprint of the Golden Legend, two other founts of black letter. The larger of the two seems to have been introduced about 1503, to print a Sarum Horæ. The smaller fount came into use a few years later. It was somewhat larger, less angular, and much more English in character, than that which the[Pg 32] printer had brought with him from Westminster. The bulk of Wynkyn de Worde's books to the day of his death were printed with these types. They were, doubtless, recast from time to time, but a close examination fails to detect any difference in size or form during the whole period.

De Worde first began to use Roman type in 1520 for his scholastic books, but he does not seem ever to have made any general use of it, remaining faithful to English black letter to the end of his days. The only exceptions are the educational books, which he invariably printed, as in fact did all the other printers of the period, in a miniature fount of gothic of a kind very popular on the Continent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, being used by the French and Italian printers as well as those of the Low Countries. De Worde's, however, was an exceptionally small fount. Those most generally in use averaged eight full lines of a quarto page, set close, to the inch, whereas De Worde's averaged nine lines to the inch. But in 1513 he procured another fount of this type, in which he printed the Flowers of Ovid, quarto, and in this the letters are of English character, as may be seen particularly in the lowercase 'h.' This fount, which was slightly larger, averaging only eight lines to the inch, he does not seem to have used very frequently. As Julian Notary printed the Sermones Discipuli in 1510, in the same type, it may have[Pg 33] been lent by one printer to the other. In or about 1533 De Worde introduced the italic letter into some of his scholastic books, and in Colet's Grammar, which was amongst the last books he printed, we find it in combination with English black letter, the small 'grammar type,' and Roman.

In these various types, between the beginning of the century and his death in 1534, Wynkyn de Worde printed upwards of five hundred books which have come down to us, complete or in fragments. Thanks to the indefatigable energy of Mr. Gordon Duff, we possess now a very full record of his books, enabling us not only to estimate his merit as a printer, but to see at a glance how consistently as a publisher he maintained the entirely popular character which Caxton had given to his press.

As regards books which required a considerable outlay, he was far less adventurous than Caxton, his large folios being confined almost entirely to those in which his master had led the way, such as the Golden Legend, of which he issued several editions, the Speculum Vitæ Christi, the Morte d'Arthur, Canterbury Tales, Polychronicon, and Chronicles of England. The Vitas Patrum of 1495 he could hardly help printing, as Caxton had laboured on its translation in the last year of his life, and it may have been respect for Caxton also which led to the[Pg 34] publication of his finest book, the really splendid edition of Bartholomæus' De Proprietatibus Rerum, issued towards the close of the fifteenth century, from the colophon of which I have already quoted the lines referring to Caxton's having worked at a Latin edition of it at Cologne. The Book of St. Albans was another reprint to which the probable connection of the Westminster and St. Albans presses gave a Caxton flavour; and when we have enumerated these and the Dives and Pauper, produced apparently out of rivalry with Pynson in 1496, and a few devotional books such as the Orcharde of Syon and the Flour of the Commandments of God, to which this form was given, very few Wynkyn de Worde folios remain unmentioned.

But to one book in folio, Wynkyn de Worde printed some five-and-twenty in quarto, eschewing as a rule smaller forms, though now and again we find a Horæ, or a Manipulus Curatorum, or a Book of Good Manners for Children in eights or twelves.[2]

He was in fact a popular printer who issued small works in a cheap form, and without, it must be added, greatly concerning himself as to their appearance. Popular books of devotion or of a moral character figure most largely among the[Pg 35] books he printed; but students of our older literature owe him gratitude for having preserved in their later forms many old romances, and also a few plays, and he published every class of book, including many educational works, for which a ready sale was assured. The majority of these books were illustrated, if only with a cut on the title-page of a schoolmaster with a birch-rod, or a knight on horseback who did duty for many heroes in succession. When the illustrations were more profuse, they were too often produced from worn blocks, purchased from French publishers, or rudely copied from French originals, and used again and again without a thought as to their relevance to the text. It must also be owned that many of Wynkyn de Worde's cheap books are badly set up and badly printed, and that altogether his reputation stands rather higher than his work as a printer really deserves. But he printed some fine books, and rescued many popular works from destruction, and we need not grudge him the honour he has received—an honour amply witnessed by the high prices fetched by books from his press whenever they come into the market.

There was no originality about Wynkyn de Worde's devices, of which he used no fewer than sixteen different varieties. The most familiar, as it was the earliest of these, was Caxton's, and next to this must be placed what is[Pg 36] usually described as the Sagittarius device. There were two forms of this, a square and an oblong. It consisted of three divisions, the upper part containing the sun and stars, the centre, the Caxton device, and the lower part, a ribbon with his name, with a dog on one side and[Pg 37] an archer on the other. There are three distinct stages of this device, that used between 1506-1518 being replaced in 1519, and again in 1528. This last is distinguished by having only ten small stars to the left of the sun and ten to the right, whereas the two preceding had eleven stars to the left of the sun and nine to the right. The oblong block had the moon added in the top compartment, and in the bottom division the sagittarius and dog are reversed. This block continued in use from 1507 to 1529, and the stages in its dilapidation are useful in dating the books in which it occurs. Besides these, and some smaller forms, Wynkyn de Worde used a large architectural device, sometimes enclosed with a border of four pieces, the upper and lower of which seem to have afterwards come into the possession of John Skot.

Wynkyn de Worde died in 1534, his will being proved on the 19th January 1535. His executors were John Byddell, who succeeded to his business, and James Gaver, while three other London stationers, Henry Pepwell, John Gough, and Robert Copland were made overseers of it, and received legacies.

Julian Notary remained at Westminster two years after the departure of Wynkyn de Worde, when he too flitted eastwards, settling at the sign of the Three Kings without Temple Bar, probably to be nearer De Worde. He combined with his[Pg 38] trade of printer that of bookbinder, and probably bound as well as printed many books for Wynkyn de Worde. His printing lay principally in the direction of service books for the church, but he printed both the Golden Legend and the Chronicle of England in folio, one or two lives of saints, and a few small tracts of lighter vein, such as 'How John Splynter made his testament,' and 'How a serjeaunt wolde lerne to be a frere,' both in quarto without date.

In the Golden Legend of 1503 and the Chronicles of England of 1515, the black letter type used was identical in character with that of Wynkyn de Worde.

No book is found printed by Notary between the years 1510 and 1515. In the former year he appears to have had a house in St. Paul's Churchyard, as well as the Three Kings without Temple Bar. In 1515 he speaks only of the sign of St. Mark in St. Paul's Churchyard, and three years later this is altered to the sign of the Three Kings. It is just conceivable that this last was a misprint, or that the St. Mark was a temporary office used only while the Three Kings was under repair.

In 1507 Notary exchanged the simple merchant's mark that had hitherto served him as a device for one of a more elaborate character. This took the form of a helmet over a shield with his mark upon it, with decorative border, and[Pg 39] below all his name. From this a still larger block was made in the same year, and this was strongly French in character. It showed the smaller block affixed to a tree with bird and flowers all round it, and two fabulous creatures on either side of the base. The initials 'J. N.' are seen at the top. This he sometimes used as a frontispiece, substituting for the centre piece a block of a different character.

Richard Pynson also changed his address shortly after Wynkyn de Worde, moving from outside Temple Bar to the George in Fleet Street, next to St. Dunstan's Church. He also appears to have entirely given up the use of Gothic type in favour of English black letter about this time. It is not easy to form a conjecture as to the motive which led to the abandonment of this type, and it is impossible to regard the step without regret. Even in its rudest forms it was a striking type; in the hands of a man like Pynson it was far more effective than the black letter which took its place. With regard to this latter, there seems reason to believe, from the great similarity both in size and form of the fount in use by De Worde, Notary, and Pynson at this time, that it was obtained by all the printers from one common foundry. Nor is it only the letters which lead to this conclusion, but the common use of the same ornaments points in the same direction. The only difference between the black letter in use by[Pg 40] Pynson in the first years of the sixteenth century and that of his contemporaries, is the occurrence of a lower case 'w' of a different fount.

In 1509 Pynson is believed to have introduced Roman type into England, using it with his scholastic type to print the Sermo Fratris Hieronymi de Ferraria. In the same year he also issued a very fine edition of Alexander Barclay's translation of Brandt's Shyp of Folys of the Worlde. In this, the Latin original and the English translation are set side by side. The book was printed in folio in two founts, one of Roman and one of black letter. It was profusely illustrated with woodcuts copied from those in the German edition.

About 1510 Pynson became the royal printer in the place of W. Faques, and continued to hold the post until his death. At first he received a salary of 40s. per annum (see L. and P. H. 8, vol. 1, p. 364), but this was afterwards increased to £4 per annum (L. and P. H. 8, vol. 2, p. 875). In this capacity he printed numbers of Proclamations, numerous Year-books, and all the Statutes, and received large sums of money. In 1513 he printed The Sege and Dystrucyon of Troye, of which several copies (some of them on vellum) are still in existence. Other books of which he printed copies on vellum are the Sarum Missal of 1520, and Assertio Septem Sacramentorum of 1521.[Pg 41]

Besides these and his official work, Pynson printed numbers of useful books in all classes of literature. The works of Chaucer and Skelton and Lydgate, the history of Froissart and the Chronicle of St. Albans; books such as Æsop's Fables and Reynard the Fox, romances such as Sir Bevis of Hampton are scattered freely amongst works of a more learned character. On the whole he deserves a much higher place than De Worde. It is rare, indeed, to find a carelessly printed book of Pynson's, whilst such books as the Boccaccio of 1494, the Missal printed in 1500 at the expense of Cardinal Morton, and known as the Morton Missal, and the Intrationum excellentissimus liber of 1510 are certainly the finest specimens of typographical art which had been produced in this country.

Pynson's earliest device, as Mr. Duff has noted, resembled in many ways that of Le Talleur, and consisted of his initials cut on wood. In 1496 he used two new forms. One shows his mark upon a shield surmounted by a helmet with a bird above it. Beneath is his name upon a ribbon, and the whole is enclosed in a border of animals, birds, and flowers. The other was a metal block of much the same character, having the shield with his mark, and as supporters two naked figures. The border, which was separate and in one piece, had crowned figures in it and a ribbon. The bottom portion of this border began[Pg 42] to give way about 1500, was very much out of shape in 1503, and finally broke entirely in 1513. This border was sometimes placed the wrong way up, as in the British Museum copy of Mandeville's[Pg 43] Ways to Jerusalem (G. 6713). It was succeeded by a woodcut block of a much larger form, which may be seen in the Mirroure of Good Manners (s.a., fol.). The block itself measures 5-5/8'' x 3-5/8'' and has no border. The initials print black on a white ground. The figures supporting the shield have a much better pose, and those of the king and queen differ materially. The bird on the shield is much larger, and is more like a stork or heron.

Pynson died in the year 1529, while passing through the press L'Esclarcissement de la Langue Francoyse, which was finished by his executor John Hawkins, of whom nothing else is definitely known.

Whilst these three printers had been at work, many other stationers, booksellers, and printers had settled in London. They seem to have favoured St. Paul's Churchyard and Fleet Street; but they were also scattered over various parts of the city and outlying districts, even as far west as the suburb of Charing.

In 1518, Henry Pepwell settled at the sign of the Trinity in St. Paul's Churchyard, and used the device previously belonging to Jacobi and Pelgrim, two stationers who imported books printed by Wolfgang and Hopyl. His books fall into two classes—those printed between 1518-1523, and those between 1531-1539. The first were printed entirely in a black-letter fount[Pg 44] that appears to have belonged to Pynson. The second series were printed entirely in Roman letter. A copy of his earliest book, the Castle of Pleasure, 4to, 1518, is in the British Museum, as well as the Dietary of Ghostly Helthe, 4to, 1521; Exornatorium Curatorum, 4to, n.d.; Du Castel's Citye of Ladyes, 4to, 1521. His edition of Christiani hominis Institutum, 4to, 1520, is only known from a fragment in the Bodleian. Several books have been ascribed wrongly to this printer (Duff, Bibliographica, vol. i. pp. 93, 175, 499).

In the year 1504, a printer named William Faques had settled in Abchurch Lane. He was a Norman by birth, and Ames suggested that he learnt his art with John Le Bourgeois at Rouen, but this is unconfirmed. He styled himself the king's printer. Of his books only some eight are in existence, three with the date 1504, and the remainder undated. His workmanship was excellent. The Psalterium which he printed in octavo was in a large well cut English black letter, and each page was surrounded by a chain border. The Statutes of Henry VII. are also in the same type with the same ornament, but the Omelia Origenis, one of the undated books, is in the small foreign letter so much in vogue with the printers of this time. His device has the double merit of beauty and originality. It consisted of two triangles intersected with his initials[Pg 45] in the centre and the word 'Guillam' beneath. His subsequent career is totally unknown, but his type, ornaments, etc., passed into the hands of Richard Fawkes or Faques, who printed at the sign of the Maiden's Head, in St. Paul's Churchyard, in the year 1509, Guillame de Saliceto's Salus corporis Salus anime, in folio. Not only is the type used in this identical with that in the Psalterium of William Faques, but the chain ornament is also found in it. After this we find no other dated book by Richard Faques until 1523, when he printed Skelton's Goodly Garland in quarto, in three founts of black letter, and a fount of Roman, and a great primer for titles. Amongst his undated works is a copy of the Liber Festivalis, believed[Pg 46] to have been printed in 1510, and an Horœ ad usum Sarum printed for him in Paris by J. Bignon. During the interval he had moved from the Maiden's Head in St. Paul's Churchyard to another house in the same locality, with the sign of the A. B. C, and he also had a second printing office in Durham Rents, without[Pg 47] Temple Bar, that is in some house adjacent to Durham House in the Strand. The earliest extant printed ballad was issued by Richard Faques, the Ballad of the Scottish King, of which the only known copy is in the British Museum, and amongst his undated books is one which he printed for Robert Wyer, the Charing Cross printer, under the title of De Cursione Lunæ. It was printed with the Gothic type, and the blocks were supplied by Wyer. Richard Faques' device was a copy of that of the Paris bookseller Thielmann Kerver, with an arrow substituted for the tree, and the design on the shield altered. The custom of adapting other men's devices was very common, and is one of the many evidences of dearth of originality on the part of the early English printers.

Another prominent figure in the early years of the sixteenth century was that of Robert Copland. He was a man of considerable ability, a good French scholar, and a writer of mediocre verse. Apart from this, he was also, in the truest sense of the word, a book lover, and used his influence to produce books that were likely to be useful, or such as were worth reading. In the prologue to the Kalendar of Shepherdes, which Wynkyn de Worde printed in 1508, he described himself as servant to that printer. This has been[Pg 48] taken to mean that he was one of De Worde's apprentices. But in 1514, if not earlier, he had started in business for himself as a stationer and printer, at the sign of the Rose Garland in Fleet Street. Very few of the books that he printed now exist, and this, taken in conjunction with the fact that he translated and wrote prologues for so many books printed by De Worde, has led all writers upon early English printing to conclude that he was an odd man about De Worde's office, and that he was in fact subsidised by that printer.[Pg 49] There is evidence, however, that many of the books printed by De Worde, that have prologues by Robert Copland, were first printed by him, and that in others he had a share in the copies.

In the British Museum copy of the Dyeynge Creature, printed by De Worde in 1514, it is noticeable that on the last leaf is the mark or device of Robert Copland, not that of the printer, while in the copy now in the University Library, Cambridge, De Worde's device is on the last leaf.

This would appear to indicate that both printers were associated in the venture, though the work actually passed through De Worde's press, and that those copies which Copland took and paid for were distinguished by his device. Again, in several of these books, found with De Worde's colophons, Copland speaks of himself as the 'printer,' or 'the buke printer,' and the inference is that they were reprints of books which Copland had previously printed. Indeed in one instance the evidence is still stronger. In 1518, Henry Pepwell printed at the sign of the Trinity the Castell of Pleasure. The prologue to this takes the form of a dialogue in verse between Copland and the author, of which the following lines are the most important:—

If this means anything, it is impossible to avoid the inference that Robert Copland printed the first edition of this book. Amongst others that he was in some way interested in may be noticed a curious book by Alexander Barclay, Of the Introductory to write French, fol., 1521, of which there is a copy in the Bodleian; The Mirrour of the Church, 4to, 1521, a devotional work, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, with a variety of curious woodcuts; the Rutter of the Sea, the first English book on navigation, translated from Le Grande Routier of Pierre Garcie; Chaucer's Assemble of Foules and the Questionary of Cyrurgyens, printed by Robert Wyer in 1541.

Copland was also the author, and without doubt the printer, of two humorous poems that are amongst the earliest known specimens of this kind of writing. The one called The Hye Way to the Spyttell hous took the form of a dialogue between Copland and the porter of St. Bartholomew's, and turns upon the various kinds of beggars and impostors, with a running com[Pg 51]mentary upon the vices and follies that bring men to poverty. Iyll of Brentford, the second of these compositions, is a somewhat different production. It recounts the legacies left by a certain lady, but the humour, though to the taste of the times, was excessively broad.

In 1542 Dr. Andrew Borde spoke of his Introduction of Knowledge as printing at 'old Robert Copland's, the eldest printer in England.' Whether he meant the oldest in point of age or in his craft is not clear; but it may well be that, seeing that De Worde, Pynson, and the two Faques were dead, this printing house was the oldest then in London.

John Rastell also began to print about the year 1514. He is believed to have been educated at Oxford, and was trained for the law. In addition to his legal business, he translated and compiled many law-books, the most notable being the Great Abridgement of the Statutes. This book he printed himself, and it is certainly one of the finest examples of sixteenth century printing to be found. The work was divided into three parts, each of which consisted of more than two hundred large folio pages. When it is remembered that the method of printing books at this period was slow, at the most only two folio pages being printed at a pull, the time and capital employed upon the production of this book must have been very great. The type was[Pg 52] the small secretary in use at Rouen, and it is just possible the book was printed there and not in England.

John Rastell's first printing office in London was on the south side of St. Paul's Churchyard. Williarn Bonham, the stationer with whom Rastell was afterwards associated, had some premises there, and as late as the seventeenth century there was a house in Sermon Lane, known as the Mermaid, and it may be that in one or other of these Rastell printed the undated edition of Linacre's Grammar, which bears the address, 'ye sowth side of paulys.' But in 1520 he moved to 'the Mermayd at Powlys gate next to chepe syde.' There he printed The Pastyme of People, and Sir Thomas More's Supplicacyon of Souls, besides several interludes and two remarkable jest-books, The Twelve mery gestys of one called Edith and A Hundred Mery Talys. The last named became one of the most popular books of the time, but only one perfect copy of it is now known, and that, alas! is not in this country. Rastell was brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, and up to the year 1530 a zealous Roman Catholic. So strong were his religious opinions that in that year he wrote and printed a defence of the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory, under the title of the New Boke of Purgatory. This was answered by John Frith, the Reformer, who is credited with having achieved[Pg 53] John Rastell's conversion. By whatever means the change was brought about, John Rastell did soon afterwards become a Protestant; but the change in his belief made him many enemies. He was arrested for his opinions, and if he did not die in prison, he was in prison just before his death, which took place in 1536. During the last sixteen years of his life he does not appear to have paid much attention to his business. A document now in the Record Office shows that he was in the habit of locking up his printing office in Cheapside, and going down into the country for months at a time. But a part of the premises he sublet, and this was occupied for various periods by several stationers—William Bonham, Thomas Kele, John Heron, and John Gough, being particularly named. Like all his predecessors, he dropped the use of the secretary type in favour of black letter, and his books, as specimens of printing, greatly deteriorated. Dibdin, in his reprint of The Pastyme of the People, was very severe upon the careless printing of the original, but it is more than likely that it was the work of one of Rastell's apprentices, rather than his own. Amongst those whom he employed we find the names of William Mayhewes, of whom nothing is known; Leonard Andrewe, who may have been a relative of Laurence Andrewe, another English printer; and one Guerin, a Norman.[Pg 54]

John Rastell left two sons, William and John. The former became a printer during his father's lifetime and succeeded him in business, but his work lies outside the scope of the present chapter. The same remark applies to William Bonham.

John Gough began his career as a bookseller in Fleet Street in 1526. In 1528 he was suspected of dealing in prohibited books (see Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. iv. pt. ii. art. 4004), but managed to clear himself. In 1532 he moved to the 'Mermaid' in Cheapside, and in the same year Wynkyn de Worde printed two books for him concerning the coronation of Anne Boleyn. In 1536, whilst still living there, he issued a very creditable Salisbury Primer. He calls himself the printer of this, but it is extremely doubtful if this can be taken to mean anything more than that he found the capital, and, perhaps, the material with which it was printed. Wynkyn de Worde appointed John Gough one of the overseers of his will. Of his subsequent career more will be said at a later period.

Another of the printers who worked for Wynkyn de Worde during the latter part of his life was John Skot. In 1521, when we first meet with him, he was living in St. Sepulchre's parish, without Newgate. In that year he printed the Body of Policie and the Justyces of Peas, and in 1522 The Myrrour of Gold; amongst his[Pg 55] undated books are, Jacob and his xii sons, Carta Feodi simplicis, and the Book of Maid Emlyn, all these being in quarto. His next dated book appeared in 1528, with the colophon 'in Paule's Churchyard,' and here he appears to have remained for some years. He is next found in Fauster Lane, St. Leonard's parish, where he printed, amongst other books, the ballad of The Nut Browne Maid. He also appears to have been at George Alley Gate, St. Botolph's parish, where he printed, but without date, Stanbridge's Accidence. His devices were three in number, and several of his border pieces were obtained from Wynkyn de Worde.

Richard Bankes began business at the long shop in the Poultry, next to St. Mildred's church, and six doors from the Stockes or Stocks Market, which at that time stood on the present site of the Mansion House. In 1523 he printed a very curious tract with the following title:—

'Here begynneth a lytell newe treatyse or mater intytuled and called The ix. Drunkardes, which tratythe of dyuerse and goodly storyes ryght plesaunte and frutefull for all parsones to pastyme with.'

It was printed in octavo, black letter, and the only known copy is in the Douce collection at the Bodleian. Another equally rare piece of Bankes' printing was the old English romance[Pg 56] of Sir Eglamour, known only by a fragment of four leaves in the possession of Mr. Jenkinson of the University Library, Cambridge. This was also somewhat roughly printed in black letter. In 1525 he printed a medical tract called the Seynge of Uryns, in quarto, and three years later was associated with Robert Copland in the production of the Rutter of the Sea. He also issued from this address A Herball, and another popular medical work called the Treasure of Pore Men. Bankes is, however, best known as the printer of the works of Richard Taverner, the Reformer, but this was later, and will be noticed when we come to them.

Peter Treveris, or Peter of Treves, was working at the sign of the Wodows, in Southwark, between the years 1521 and 1533. He used as his device the 'wild men,' first seen in the device of the Paris printer, P. Pigouchet. The fact of his printing the Opusculum Insolubilium, to be sold at Oxford 'apud J. T.', that is probably for John Thome the bookseller, points to his being at work about the year 1520. In 1521 he is believed to have issued an edition of Arnold's Chronicles, translated by Laurence Andrewe. Two other books of his printing were the Handy Worke of Surgery, in folio, 1525, a book notable for the many anatomical diagrams with which it was illustrated, and as a companion to that work, The Great Herball Treveris also shared with[Pg 57] Wynkyn de Worde most of the printing of Richard Whittington's scholastic works, all in quarto, and mostly without date.

Laurence Andrewe, who lived for some years at Calais, translated one or more books for John van Doesborch, the Antwerp printer, set up a press in London about 1527, and printed a second edition of the Handy Worke of Surgery, above noticed, a tract called The Debate and Strife betwene Somer and Winter, to be sold by Robert Wyer at Charing Cross; The destillacyon of Waters, in 1527; and a reprint of Caxton's edition of the Mirroure of the Worlde, in folios, 1527. His printing calls for no special notice, but Mr. Proctor, in his monograph on Doesborgh, surmises that he learnt his art in an English printing house rather than abroad, and the presence of a Leonarde Andrewe in the service of John Rastell may mean that the two men were related and were both pupils of the same master.

Turning now westwards, we find 'in the Bishop of Norwiche's Rentes in the felde besyde Charynge Cross,' that is near the present Villier Street, a printer named Robert Wyer, the sign of whose house was that of St. John the Evangelist. There are several early references to the house as that of a bookseller's, but without any name mentioned. For instance, Richard Pynson printed, without date, an edition of the curious tract of Solomon and Marcolphus, to be sold at[Pg 58] the sign of St. John the Evangelist beside Charing Cross; the Debate between Somer and Winter, printed by Laurence Andrewe, has the same colophon, and the De Cursione Lune, from the press of Richard Faques, has the same words, but not Wyer's name. His first dated book was the Golden Pystle, printed in 1531. It was printed in a small secretary of Parisian character. His great primer, for which he has been especially noted by some bibliographers, was very probably that used by Richard Faques. He had also a number of woodcut face initials similar to those used by Wynkyn de Worde, and many of the small blocks found in his books were copies of those belonging to Antoine Verard, the famous Paris publisher.

Robert Wyer was essentially a popular printer. Many of his publications were mere tracts of a few leaves, abridgments of larger works, and the subjects which they chiefly treated were theology and medicine. Unfortunately, the great bulk of his work bears no date, but several circumstances in his career, coupled with internal evidence gathered from the books themselves, enable us to get very near their date of issue. Like his contemporaries he abandoned the secretary type in favour of black letter, but neither so readily nor so entirely as they did. His first black letter, in use before 1536, was also a very well cut and beautiful letter; with it he[Pg 59] printed the Epistle of Erasmus, in octavo, and the Book of Good Works, of which the only copy known is in the library of St. John's College, Oxford. But unquestionably the two most important books known of this printer are William Marshall's Defence of Peace, folio, 1535, printed in secretary, and the Questionary of Cyrurgyens, which he printed for Henry Dabbe and R. Bankes. In 1536 the house in which he was working changed hands, passing into the pos[Pg 60]session of the Duke of Suffolk, consequently all books which have in the colophon 'in the Duke of Suffolkes Rentes,' or 'Beside the Duke of Suffolkes Place,' were printed after that year. As Wyer continued to print until 1555, this circumstance does not help us much; it may, however, be taken as some further guide that all his later work was done in black letter.

Robert Wyer appears to have done a great deal of work for his contemporaries, notably Richard Bankes, Richard Kele, and John Gough.

Most of his books have woodcuts, the most profusely illustrated was his translation of Christine de Pisan's Hundred Histories of Troy. This book had been printed in Paris by Pigouchet, and the illustrations in Wyer's edition are rude copies of those in the French edition. They are, without doubt, wretched specimens of the woodcutter's art; but in this respect they are no worse than the woodcuts found in other English books at this date, and the number and variety of them speak well for the printer's patience. Robert Wyer's device represented the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos, with an eagle on his right hand holding an inkhorn. With this he used a separate block with his name and mark. He had also a smaller block of the Evangelist from which the eagle was omitted. This is generally found on the title-page or in the front part of his books.

CHAPTER III

THOMAS BERTHELET TO JOHN DAY

n the death of Pynson, in 1529, the office of royal printer was conferred upon Thomas Berthelet, who was in business at the sign of the Lucretia Romana in Fleet Street. Herbert gives the first book from his press as an edition of the Statutes, printed in 1529; but there is some evidence that he was at work two or three years, and perhaps more, before this. Among the writings of Robert Copland, the printer-author, was a humorous tract entitled The Seuen sorowes that women have when theyr husbandes be dead (British Museum, C. 20, c. 42 (5)), which has at the end this curious passage:—

This is, without doubt, an allusion to the two London printers, Thomas Berthelet and John[Pg 62] Skot; and certain references in the prologue seem to point to the printing of the first edition of the Seuen Sorowes, as a year or two earlier than the date given by Herbert.

[Pg 63]There also seems to be conclusive evidence that Berthelet, or, as he was sometimes called, Bartlett, was a native of Wales. He certainly held land in the county of Hereford, and he was succeeded in business by a nephew, Thomas Powell, a Welshman. Berthelet was one of the few English printers of that period whose work is worth looking at. He had a varied assortment of types, all of them good, and his workmanship was as a rule excellent; and as very few of his books are illustrated, we may infer that he was loth to spoil a good book with the rough and often unsightly woodcuts of that time.

Berthelet was also a bookbinder and bookseller, and some of his fine bindings for Henry VIII. and his successors are still to be seen. He was apparently the first English binder to use gold tooling.

Of his official work very little need be said. It consisted in printing all Acts of Parliament, proclamations, injunctions, and other official documents. In the second volume of the Transcript (pp. 50-60), Professor Arber has printed three of Berthelet's yearly accounts, in which the titles of the various documents are given, with the number of copies of each that were struck off, and the nature and cost of their bindings.

In the year 1530 the divorce of Queen Katherine and the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn filled the public mind, and in connection[Pg 64] with this event he printed, both in Latin and English, a small octavo, with the title:

The determinations of the moste famous and moofte excellent Vniversities of Italy and France that it is so unlefull for a man to marie his brother's wyfe that the Pope hath no power to despense therewith.

Berthelet, in 1531, printed Sir Thomas Elyot's Boke named the Governour, an octavo, in a large Gothic type, very bold and clear. This type, however, is seen to much better advantage in the folio edition of Gower's Confessio Amantis, which came from this press in 1532. In this instance the title-page is striking, the title being enclosed within a panel which gives it the appearance of a book cover. The text of the work was printed in double columns of forty-eight lines each.

In 1533 Berthelet appears to have purchased a new fount of this type, with which he printed Erasmus's De Immensa Dei Misericordia. If possible this new letter was more beautiful than the other, the lowercase 'h' finishing in a bold outward curve, which was absent in the earlier fount. These founts of Gothic closely resemble some in use in Italy at this time.

To the year 1534 belongs St. Cyprian's Sermon on the mortality of man, translated by Sir Thomas Elyot, as well as a second edition of The Boke named the Governour.[Pg 65]

Berthelet also brought into use during this year a woodcut border of an architectural character, with the date 1534 cut upon it. It was used only in octavo books, and he continued to use it for some years without erasing the date, a fact that has led to much confusion in the classification of his books.

We meet with the large Gothic type again in 1535, in an edition of the De Proprietatibus Rerum of Bartholomæus Anglicus, which Berthelet printed in that year. But his most notable undertaking during the next few years was the book for regulating and settling nice points of religious belief, which had been compiled by the bishops, and was issued under the King's authority, with the title:—

The Institution of a Christian Man conteyninge the Exposition or Interpretation of the commune Crede, of the Seven sacraments, of the X commandments, and of the Pater Noster, and the Ave Maria, Justyfication & Purgatory.

When the book was finished, Latimer, then Bishop of Worcester, suggested to Cromwell that the printing should be given to Thomas Gibson. But Latimer's recommendation was overlooked, and the work was given to Berthelet. It would be interesting to know how many copies of the first edition of this book he printed. It was issued both in quarto and octavo form, the quarto printed in a very beautiful fount of English black[Pg 66] letter, modelled on the lines of De Worde's founts. The opening lines of the title were, however, printed in Roman of four founts, and the whole page was enclosed within a woodcut border of children.

The octavo editions of this notable book were printed in a smaller fount of black letter, and the title-page was enclosed within the 1534 border. Several editions were issued in 1537, and the book was afterwards revised and reprinted under a new title.

At the same time Berthelet was passing through the press Sir Thomas Elyot's Dictionary, a work of no small labour, if one may judge from the number of founts used in printing it. It was finished and issued in 1538.

Berthelet, who, as befitted a royal printer, plainly took some pains to keep himself clear of all controversies, did not stir in the matter of Bible translation until the 1538 edition by Grafton and Whitchurch was already in the market.

In 1539, however, he published, but did not print, Taverner's edition of the Bible, and in the following year an edition of Cranmer's Bible. That of 1539 came from the press of John Byddell, and that of 1540 was printed for him by Robert Redman and Thomas Petit.

Among the Patent Rolls for the year 1543 (P. R. 36 Hen. 8. m. 12) is a grant to Berthelet of certain crown lands in London and other parts of[Pg 67] the country, in payment of a debt of £220. His office as royal printer ceased upon the accession of Edward VI., and though many books are found with the imprint, 'in aedibus Thomas Berthelet,' down to the time of his death in 1556, he probably took very little active part in business affairs after that time.

Meanwhile Pynson's premises were taken by Robert Redman, who, from about the year 1523, had been living just outside Temple Bar. No new facts have come to light about Redman, and the reasons why he moved into Pynson's house and continued to use his devices are as puzzling as ever. He began as a printer of law books, and printed little else. In conjunction with Petit he printed an edition of the Bible for Berthelet, and among his other theological books was A treatise concernynge the division betwene the Spirytualtie and Temporaltie, the date of which is fixed by a note in the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII. (vol. vi., p. 215), from which it appears that, in 1553, Redman entered into a bond of 500 marks not to sell this book or any other licensed by the King. Redman was also the printer of Leonard Coxe's Arte and Crafte of Rhethoryke, one of the earliest treatises on this subject published in English. It has recently been republished by Professor Carpenter of Chicago, with copious notes.

Redman's work fell very much below that of[Pg 68] his predecessor. Much of his type had been in use in Pynson's office for some years, and was badly worn. He had, however, a good fount of Roman, seen in the De Judiciis et Praecognitionibus of Edward Edguardus. The title of this book is enclosed in a border, having at the top a dove, and at the bottom the initials J. N.

Redman's will was proved on the 4th November 1540. His widow, Elizabeth, married again, but several books were printed with her name in the interval. His son-in-law, Henry Smith, lived in St. Clement's parish without Temple Bar, and printed law books in the years 1545 and 1546.

Redman's successor at the George was William Middleton, who continued the printing of law books, and brought out a folio edition of Froissart's Chronicles, with Pynson's colophon and the date 1525, which has led some to assume that this edition was printed by Pynson.

Upon Middleton's death in 1547, his widow married William Powell, who thereupon succeeded to the business.

Among those for whom Wynkyn de Worde worked shortly before his death was John Byddell, a stationer living at the sign of 'Our Lady of Pity,' next Fleet Bridge, who for some reason spoke of himself under the name of Salisbury. He used as his device a figure of Virtue, copied from one of those in use by Jacques Sacon,[Pg 69] printer at Lyons between 1498 and 1522 (see Silvestre, Nos. 548 and 912). The same design, only in a larger form, was also in use in Italy at this time. In the collection of title-pages in the British Museum (618, ll. 18, 19) is one enclosed within a border found in books printed at Venice, on which the figure of Virtue occurs. The only difference between it and the mark of Byddell being that the two shields show the lion of St. Mark, and the whole thing is much larger.

Byddell had probably been established as a stationer some years before the appearance of Erasmus's Enchiridion Militis Christiani from the press of De Worde in 1533, with his name in the colophon. Another book printed for him by De Worde, in the same year, was a quarto edition of the Life of Hyldebrand. Both these works De Worde reprinted in 1534, in addition to printing for him John Roberts' A Mustre of scismatyke Bysshoppes. Byddell was appointed one of the executors to De Worde's will, and very shortly after his death, i.e. in 1535, moved to De Worde's premises, the 'Sun,' in Fleet Street.

Most of Byddell's books were of a theological character. He printed a quarto Horae ad usum Sarum in 1535, a small Primer in English in 1536, and a folio edition of Taverner's Bible in 1539 for Thomas Berthelet.

Among the miscellaneous books that came through his press, one or two are especially[Pg 70] interesting. In 1538 we find him printing in quarto Lindsay's Complaynte and Testament of a Popinjay, a work that had first appeared in Scotland eight years before, and created considerable stir. A quarto edition of William Turner's Libellus de Re Herbaria bears the same date; while among the books of the year 1540 are editions, in octavo, of Tully's Offices and De Senectute.

The latest date found in any book of Byddell's printing is 1544, after which Edward Whitchurch is found at the 'Sun,' in Fleet Street, whither he moved after dissolving partnership with Richard Grafton.

The early history of these two men has a powerful interest, not only for students of early English printing, but for all English-speaking people. To their enterprise and perseverance the nation was indebted for the second English Bible.

Some very interesting and highly valuable evidence respecting the history of these men has been brought to light of recent years, perhaps the most valuable being Mr. J. A. Kingdon's Incidents in the Lives of Thomas Poyntz and Richard Grafton, privately printed in 1895.

From the affidavit of Emmanuel Demetrius [i.e. Van Meteren], discovered in 1884 at the Dutch Church in Austin Friars,[3] it seems clear[Pg 72] that in 1535 Edward Whitchurch was working with Jacob van Metern at Antwerp in printing Coverdale's translation of the Bible.

Richard Grafton was the son of Nicholas Grafton of Shrewsbury. The first record we have of him is his apprenticeship to John Blage, a grocer of London, in 1526. He was admitted a freeman of the Company in 1534, and at that time seems to have employed himself chiefly in furthering the project of an English translation of the whole Bible. On the 13th August 1537, Grafton sent to Archbishop Cranmer a copy of the Bible printed abroad. The text was a modification of Coverdale's translation ostensibly by Thomas Mathew, but in reality by John Rogers the editor. In 1538, Coverdale, Grafton, and Whitchurch were together in Paris, busy upon a third edition of the Bible. In June of that year they sent two specimens of the text to Cromwell, with a letter stating that they followed the Hebrew text with Chaldee or Greek interpretations. The printing was done at the press of Francis Regnault, but before many sheets had been struck off, the University of Paris seized the press and 2000 copies of the printed sheets, while the promoters had to make a hasty escape to this country. The presses and types were afterwards bought by Cromwell, and the work was subsequently finished and published in 1539. The work had an engraved title-page,[Pg 73] ascribed to Holbein, and the price was fixed at ten shillings per copy unbound, and twelve shillings bound.

Before leaving Paris, Grafton and Whitchurch had issued an edition of Coverdale's translation of the New Testament, giving as their reason that James Nicholson of Southwark had printed a very imperfect version of it.

In 1540 Grafton and Whitchurch printed in 'the house late the graye freers,' The Prymer both in Englysshe and Latin, to be sold at the sign of the Bible in St. Paul's Churchyard. In the same year they printed with a prologue by Cranmer, a second edition of the Great Bible, half of which bore the name of Grafton and half of Whitchurch, and in all probability the subsequent editions were published in the same way. Two very good initial letters were used in the New Testament, and seem to have been cut especially for Whitchurch. On the 28th January 1543-44 Grafton and Whitchurch received an exclusive patent for printing church service books (Rymer, Fœdera, xiv. 766), and a few years later they are found with an exclusive right for printing primers in Latin and English. Upon the accession of Edward VI. Grafton became the royal printer, but upon the king's death he printed the proclamation of Lady Jane Grey, and was for that reason deprived of his office by Queen Mary. The remainder of his life he spent in the com[Pg 74]pilation of English Chronicles in keen rivalry with John Stow.

Richard Grafton died in 1573. He was twice married. By his first wife, Anne, daughter of —— Crome of Salisbury, he had four sons and one daughter, Joan, who married Richard Tottell, the law printer. By his second wife, Alice, he left one son, Nicholas.

Among the noted booksellers and printers in St. Paul's Churchyard at this time must be mentioned William Bonham. As yet it is not clear whether he belonged to the Essex family of that name, or to another branch that is found in Kent.

From a series of documents discovered at the Record Office relating to John Rastell and his house called the Mermaid in Cheapside, it appears that in the year 1520 William Bonham was working in London as a bookseller, and on two different occasions was a sub-tenant of Rastell's at the Mermaid. Yet not a single dated book with his name is found before 1542, at which time he was living at the sign of the Red Lion in St. Paul's Churchyard, and issued a folio edition of Fabyan's Chronicles, besides having a share with his neighbour, Robert Toye, in a folio edition of Chaucer. Even at this time William Bonham held some sort of office in the Guild or Society of Stationers, for from a curious letter[Pg 75] written by Abbot Stevenage to Cromwell in 1539, about a certain book printed in St. Albans Abbey, he says he has sent the printer to London with Harry Pepwell, Toy, and 'Bonere' (Letters and Papers, H. 8, vol. xiv. p. 2, No. 315), so that it would look as if they were commissioned to hunt down popish heretical and seditious books. By the marriage of his daughter, Joan, to William Norton, the bookseller, who in turn named his son Bonham Norton, the history of the descendants of William Bonham can be followed up for quite a century later.

At the Long Shop in the Poultry we can see the press at work almost without a break from the early years of the sixteenth century till the close of the first quarter of the seventeenth. Upon the removal of Richard Bankes into Fleet Street its next occupant seems to have been one John Mychell, of whose work a solitary fragment, fortunately that bearing the colophon, of an undated quarto edition of the Life of St. Margaret, is now in the hands of Mr. F. Jenkinson of the University Library, Cambridge. Whether this John Mychell is the same person as the John Mychell found a few years later printing at Canterbury there is no evidence to show. Nor do we know how long he occupied the Long Shop. In 1542 Richard Kele's name is found in a Primer in Englysh, which was issued from this house. He may have been some relation[Pg 76] to the Thomas Kele who, in 1526, had occupied John Rastell's house, the Mermaid, as stated by Bonham in his evidence. During 1543, in company with Byddell, Grafton, Middleton, Mayler, Petit, and Lant, Richard Kele was imprisoned in the Poultry Compter for printing unlawful books (Acts of Privy Council, New Series, vol. i. pp. 107, 117, 125). Most of the books that bear his name came from the presses of William Seres, Robert Wyer, and William Copland. Perhaps the most interesting of his publications next to the edition of Chaucer, which he shared with Toye and Bonham, are the series of poems by John Skelton, called Why Come ye not to Courte? Colin Clout, and The Boke of Phyllip Sparowe. They were issued in octavo form, and were evidently very hastily turned out from the press, type, woodcuts, and workmanship being of the worst description. At the end of Colin Clout is a woodcut of a figure at a desk, supposed to represent the author, but it is doubtful whether it is anything more than an old block with his name cut upon it.

Looking back over the work done at this time, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the art of printing in England had much deteriorated since the days of Pynson, while the best of it, even that of Berthelet, could not be compared with that of the continental presses of the same period. There was an entire absence of origin[Pg 77]ality among the English printers. Types, woodcuts, initial letters, ornaments, and devices, were obtained by the printers from abroad, and had seen some service before their arrival in this country. But just at this time a printer came to the front in this country, who for a few years placed the art on a higher footing than any of his predecessors.

CHAPTER IV

JOHN DAY

ohn Day, one of the best and most enterprising of printers, was born in the year 1522 at Dunwich, in Suffolk, a once flourishing town, now buried beneath the sea.

From the fact that Day was in possession of a device found in the books of Thomas Gibson, the printer whom Latimer unsuccessfully recommended to Cromwell, it has been supposed that it was from Gibson he learnt the art. He may have done so; but whatever he learnt there or elsewhere, in his 'prentice days, he later on threw aside, and by his own enterprise and the excellence of his workmanship raised himself to the proud position of the finest printer England had ever seen.

In John Day's first books there was no sign of the skill he afterwards manifested. These were published in conjunction with William Seres, of whom we know little or nothing, outside his connection with Day. These partners began work in the year 1546 at the sign of the[Pg 80] Resurrection on Snow Hill, a little above Holborn Conduit, that is somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present viaduct. They had also another shop in Cheapside. Their first book, so far as we know, was Sir David Lindsay's poem, 'The Tragical death, of David Beaton, Bishop of St. Andrews in Scotland; Wherunto is joyned the martyrdom of maister G. Wyseharte ... for whose sake the aforesayd bishoppe was not long after slayne' (1546, 8vo).

In the following year (1547) Day and Seres printed several other books of a religious character, nearly all of them in octavo, including Cope's Godly Meditacion upon the psalms, and Tyndale's Parable of the Wicked Mammon.

Their work in 1548 included a second edition of the Consultation of Hermann, the bishop of Cologne, Robert Crowley's Confutation of Myles Hoggarde, a sermon of Latimer's, a metrical dialogue aimed at the priesthood and entitled John Bon and Mast Person, and, as a relief to so much theological literature, the Herbal of William Turner.

The types used in printing these books were not a whit better than anybody else's, in fact if anything they were a shade worse. There was the usual fount of large black letter, not by any means new, another much smaller letter of the same character, and a fount of Roman capitals, very bad indeed. Whether these types belonged[Pg 81] to Day or to Seres it is impossible to say, but I think the smaller of the two belonged to Day, as it is sometimes found in his later books.

The workmanship was no better than the types. There was no pagination in these books, and no devices, and the setting of the letterpress was very uneven.

In 1548 Seres seems to have joined partnership with another London printer, Anthony Scoloker, and to have moved to a house in St. Paul's Churchyard, called Peter College; but his name still continued to appear with Day's down to the year 1551, when the partnership was dissolved, Day moving to Aldersgate, but retaining his shop in Cheapside.

The most important undertaking of the partnership was a folio edition of the Bible in 1549. This was printed in the smaller of the two founts of black letter in double columns, with some good initials and a great[Pg 82] many woodcuts that had evidently been used before, as they extend beyond the letterpress. Another edition printed by Day alone appeared in 1551, in which a good initial E, showing Edward VI. on his throne, is found.

On the accession of Queen Mary, Day went abroad and his press was silent for several years; meanwhile the ancient brotherhood of Stationers was incorporated by Royal Charter as the 'Worshipful Company of Stationers.' The existence of the brotherhood has been traced to very early times, and it is frequently mentioned in the wills of printers and booksellers in the first half of the sixteenth century. By the Charter of 1556 it now received the Royal authority to make its own laws for the regulation of the trade, although, as Mr. Arber has pointed out, the charter 'rather confirmed existing customs than erected fresh powers.' There is abundant evidence that the Queen's main reason for granting the charter was the wish to keep the printing trade under closer control.

The newly incorporated company included nearly all the men connected with the book trade, not only printers, but booksellers, bookbinders, and typefounders. There were some who, for some unexplained reason, were not enrolled. On the other hand, two of those whose names appeared in the charter died the year of its incorporation. These were Thomas Berthelet, who was dead[Pg 83] before the 26th January 1556, and Robert Toy, who died in February.

In the registers of the Company were recorded the names of the wardens and masters, the names of all apprentices, with the masters to whom they were bound, and the names of those who took up their freedom. The titles of all books were supposed to be entered by the printer or publisher, a small fee being paid in each case. As a matter of fact many books were not so entered. Entries of gifts to the Corporation, and of fines levied on the members, also form part of the annual statements.

Literary men of the eighteenth century were the first to discover and make use of the wealth of information contained in the Registers of the Stationers' Company; but it fell to the lot of Mr. Arber to give English scholars a full transcript of the earlier registers. In order to make it complete, he has supplemented the work with numerous valuable papers in the Record Office and other archives, and a bibliographical list down to the year 1603, which is of such immense value that it is impossible to be content until it has been continued to the year 1640.

The first master of the Company was Thomas Dockwray, Proctor of the Court of Arches; and the wardens were John Cawood, the Queen's Printer, and Henry Cooke.

It does not follow that because Day's name[Pg 84] occurs in the charter that he was in England in 1556, but he certainly was so in the following year, for there is a Sarum Missal of that date with his imprint, besides several other books, including Thomas Tusser's Hundred Points of Good Husserye (i.e. Housewifery); William Bullein's Government of Health, and sundry proclamations. But it was not until 1559 that his books began to show that excellence of workmanship that laid the foundation of his fame. In that year he issued in folio The Cosmographicall Glasse of William Cunningham, a physician of Norwich. As a specimen of the printer's art this was far in advance of any of Day's previous work, and, moreover, was in advance of anything seen in England before that time. The text was printed in a large, flowing italic letter of great beauty, further enhanced by several well-executed woodcut initials. Amongst these was a letter 'D,' containing the arms of the Earl of Leicester, to[Pg 85] whom the work was dedicated. There were also scattered through the book several diagrams and maps, a fine portrait of the author, and a plan of the city of Norwich. Some of these illustrations and initials were signed J. B., others J. D. The title-page was also engraved with allegorical figures of the arts and sciences. There can be very little doubt that Day had spent his time abroad in studying the best models in the typographical art.

Students and lovers of good books may well pay a tribute to the memory of that scholarly churchman, who rescued so many of the books that were scattered at the dissolution of the monasteries, and enriched Cambridge University and some of its colleges by his gifts of books and manuscripts. But Matthew Parker did not stop short at book-collecting. He believed that good books should be well printed, and on his accession to power under Elizabeth, he encouraged John Day and others, both with his authority and his purse, to cut new founts of type and to print books in a worthy form.

In 1560 Day began to print the collected works of Thomas Becon, the reformer. The whole impression occupied three large folio volumes, and was not completed until 1564. The founts chiefly used in this were black letter of two sizes, supplemented with italic and Roman. The initials used in the Cosmographicall Glasse[Pg 86] appeared again in this, and the title-page to each part was enclosed in an elaborate architectural border, having in the bottom panel Day's small device, a block showing a sleeper awakened, and the words, 'Arise, for it is Day.' At the end was a fine portrait of the printer.

Another important undertaking of the year 1560 was a folio edition of the Commentaries of Joannes Philippson, otherwise Sleidanus. This Day printed for Nicholas England, the fount of large italic being used in conjunction with black letter.

Sermons of Calvin, Bullinger, and Latimer are all that we have to illustrate his work during the next two years. But in 1563 appeared a handsome folio, the editio princeps of Acts and Monumentes of these latter and perillous Dayes, touching matters of the Church, better known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

During Mary's reign Foxe had found a home on the Continent, and may there have met with Day. In 1554, while at Strasburg, he had published, through the press of Wendelin Richel, a Latin treatise on the persecutions of the reformers, under the title of Commentarii rerum in Ecclesia gestarum maximarumque persecutionem a Vuiclevi temporibus descriptio. From Strasburg he removed to Basle, and from the press of Oporinus, in 1559, appeared the Latin edition of the Book of Martyrs. He did not[Pg 87] return to England until October of that year, when he settled in Aldgate, and made weekly visits to the printing-house of John Day, who was then busy on the English edition.

Foxe's Actes and Monumentes is a work of 2008 folio pages, printed in double columns, the[Pg 88] type used being a small English black letter, the same which had been used in Becon's Works, supplemented with various sizes of italic and Roman. It was illustrated throughout with woodcuts, representing the tortures and deaths of the martyrs. A very handsome initial letter E, showing Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers, is also found in it. A Royal proclamation ordered that a copy of it should be set up in every parish church. From this time Foxe appears to have worked as translator and editor for John Day, and was for a while living in the printer's house.

Archbishop Parker meanwhile had induced Day to cast a fount of Saxon types in metal. The first book in which these were used was Aelfric's 'Saxon Homily,' i.e. the Sermon of the Paschal Lamb, appointed by the Saxon bishop to be read at Easter before the Sacrament, an Epistle of Aelfric to Wulfsine, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, all of which were included in the general title of A Testimonye of Antiquity, 'shewing the auncient fayth in the Church of England touching the Sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publykely preached and also receaved in the Saxons tyme, above 600 yeares agoe.'

Speaking of Day's Saxon fount, the late Mr. Talbot Reed, in his Old English Letter Foundries (p. 96), says:[Pg 89]—

Although this book (an octavo) bore no date, the names of the subscribing bishops fix it as 1566 or 1567. In the latter year appeared the Archbishop's metrical version of the Psalter, which he had compiled during his enforced exile under Mary. In connection with this it may be well to point out that Day printed many editions of the Psalter with musical notes. In 1568 he used the Saxon types again to print William Lambard's Archaionomia, a book of Saxon laws. Amongst his other productions of that year must be mentioned the folio edition of Peter Martyr's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans; Gildas the historian's De excidio et conquestu Britanniæ, 1568, 8vo; and a French version of Vandernoot's Theatre for Worldlings, 'Le Theatre auquel sont exposés et monstrés les inconveniens et misères qui suivent les mondains et vicieux, ensemble les plaisirs et contentements dont les fidèles jouissent.' There is a copy of this very rare book in the Grenville collection. The Theatre for Worldlings was translated into English the following year, and contained verses from the pen of Edmund Spenser, then a[Pg 90] boy of sixteen. But Day's press played little part in the spread of the romantic literature with which the name of Spenser is so closely linked. Day's work was with the Reformation and the religious questions of the time. Nevertheless, that he felt the influence of the coming change is shown from a publication that issued from his press in 1570. This was the authorised version of a play which had been acted nine years before by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple before Her Majesty. It had shortly afterwards been published by William Griffith of Fleet Street as:—

'The Tragedy of Gorboduc, whereof Three Actes were wrytten by Thomas Norton and the two last by Thomas Sackvyle. Set forth as the same was shewed before the Queenes most excellent Maiestie in her highnes Court of Whitehall, the xviii day of January Anno Domini 1561, By the gentlemen of Thynner Temple in London.' Day's edition was entitled:—

'The Tragidie of Ferrex and Porrex, set forth without addition or alteration, but altogether as the same was showed on stage before the Queens Maiestie about nine yeares past, viz. the xviii day of Januarie 1561, by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple.'

Another important work of this year (1570) was Roger Ascham's Scholemaster, in quarto. In 1571 Day was busy with Church matters. There was just then much talk of Church disci[Pg 91]pline, and it shows itself in the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, a quarto of some 300 pages, published by him this year. In this book we find a new device used by Day. It represents two hands holding a slab upon which is a crucible with a heart in it, surrounded by flames, the word 'Christus' being on the slab. From the wrists hangs a chain, and in the centre of this is suspended a globe, and beneath that again is a representation of the sun. Round the chain is a ribbon with the words 'Horum Charitas.' This device was placed on the title-page, which was surrounded by a neat border of printers' ornaments.

The Booke of certaine Canons, 4to, was another publication of this year for the due ordering of the Church. This, like most public documents, was in a large black letter. There were also 'Articles of the London Synod of 1562.' As a specimen of the religious sermons or discourses of the time, we have a very good example in another of Day's publications in 1571, a reprint of The Poore Mans Librarie, a discourse by George Alley, Bishop of Exeter, upon the First Epistle of St. Peter, which made up a very respectable folio, printed in Day's best manner, and with a great number of founts.

But Day's prosperity roused the envy of his fellow-stationers, and they tried their best to hinder the sale of his books and cause him[Pg 92] annoyance. This opposition took a violent form in 1572, when Day, whose premises at Aldersgate had become too small to carry on his growing business, his stock being valued at that time between £2000 and £3000, obtained the leave of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's to set up a little shop in St. Paul's Churchyard for the sale of his books. The booksellers appealed to the Lord Mayor, who was prevailed upon to stop Day's proceedings, and it required all the power and influence of Archbishop Parker, backed by an order of the Privy Council, to enable the printer to carry out his project.[4]

The Archbishop meanwhile had been busy furnishing replies to Nicholas Sanders' book De Visibili Monarchia, and amongst those whom he selected for the work was Dr. Clerke of Cambridge, who accordingly wrote a Latin treatise entitled Fidelis Servi subdito infideli Responsio. From a letter written by the Archbishop to Lord Burleigh at this time, we learn that John Day had cast a special fount of Italian letter for this book at a cost of forty marks.[5]

By Italian letter is here meant Roman, and not Italic, as Mr. Reed supposes, for the Responsio was printed in a new fount of that type, clear, even, and free from abbreviations.

In the same year (1572) Day printed at the[Pg 93] Archbishop's private press at Lambeth his great work De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae in folio, in a new fount of Italic, with preface in Roman, and the titles and sub-titles in the larger Italic of the Cosmographicall Glasse. It was a special feature of Day's letter-founding that he cut the Roman and Italic letters to the same size. Before his time there was no uniformity; the separate founts mixed badly, and spoilt the appearance of many books that would otherwise have been well printed.

The De Antiquitate is believed to have been the first book printed at a private press in England. The issue was limited to fifty copies, and the majority of them were in the Archbishop's possession at the time of his death.

But while he encouraged printing in one direction, Matthew Parker rigorously persecuted it in another. Just at this time there was much division among Protestants on matters of doctrine and ceremonial, and one Thomas Cartwright published, in 1572, a book entitled A Second Admonition to the Parliament, in which he defended those who had been imprisoned for airing their opinions in the first Admonition. This book, like many others of the time, was printed secretly, and strenuous search was made by the Wardens of the Stationers' Company, Day being one, to discover the hidden press. The search was successful, but unpleasant conse[Pg 94]quences followed for John Day. One of the printers of the prohibited book turned out to be an apprentice of his own, named Asplyn. He was released after examination, and again taken into service by his late master. But the following year the Archbishop reported to the Council that this man Asplyn had tried to kill both Day and his wife.

Day's work in 1573 included a folio edition of the whole works of William Tyndale, John Frith, and Doctor Barnes, in two volumes. This was printed in two columns, with type of the same size and character as that used in the 'Works' of Becon, some of the initial letters closely resembling those found in books printed by Reginald Wolfe. In the same year Day issued a life of Bishop Jewel, for which he cut in wood a number of Hebrew words.

In 1574 we reach the summit of excellence in Day's work. It was in that year that he printed for Archbishop Parker Asser's Life of Alfred the Great (Aelfredi Regis Res Gestæ) in folio. In this the Saxon type cast for the Saxon Homily in 1567 was again used in conjunction with the magnificent founts of double pica Roman and Italic. With it is usually bound Walsingham's Ypodigme Neustria and Historia Brevis, the first printed by Day, and the second by Bynneman, who unquestionably used the same types, so that it may be inferred that the fount was at the[Pg 95] disposal of the Archbishop, at whose expense all three books were issued.

Another series of publications that came from the press of John Day, in 1574, were the writings of John Caius on the history and antiquities of the two Universities. They are generally found bound together in the following order:—

4. Johannis Caii Angli De Pronunciatione Græcæ et Latinæ linguæ cum scriptione noua libellus.

The 'Antiquities' and 'History' of Cambridge were both books of considerable size, the first having 268 pages, without counting prefatory matter and indexes. The other two were little better than tracts, the one having only 27 and the other 23 pages. Some editions of the De Antiquitate are found with a map of Cambridge, while the 'History' contained plates showing the arms of the various colleges. All four were printed in quarto. The type used for the text was in each case an Italic of English size, with a small Roman for indexes. The title-page was enclosed in a border of printers' ornaments, and the printer's device of the Heart was on the last leaf of two out of the four.[Pg 96]

Matthew Parker died in 1575, and the art of printing, as well as every other art and science, lost a generous patron. But Day's work was not yet done, though he printed few large books after this date. A very curious folio, written by John Dee, the famous astronomer, entitled General and Rare Memorials concerning Navigation, came from his press in 1577. This work had an elaborate allegorical title-page, by no means a bad specimen of wood-engraving. It was a history in itself, the central object being a ship with the Queen seated in the after part.

In 1578 Day printed a book in Greek and Latin for the use of scholars, Christianæ pietatis prima institutio, the Greek type being a great improvement on any that had previously appeared. Indeed, it has been considered equal to those in use by the Estiennes of Paris.

The year 1580 saw Day Master of the Stationers' Company. Two years later he was engaged in a series of law-suits about his A B C and litell Catechism, a book for which he had obtained a patent in the days of Edward VI.

As we have already noted, the aim of the Corporation of the Stationers' Company was not primarily the promotion of good printing or literature. Printers were looked upon by the authorities as dangerous persons whom it was necessary to watch closely. Only six years after coming to the throne, Elizabeth signed a decree[Pg 97] passed by the Star Chamber, requiring every printer to enter into substantial recognisances for his good behaviour. No books were to be printed or imported without the sanction of a Special Commission of Ecclesiastical Authorities, under a penalty of three months' imprisonment and the forfeiture of all right to carry on business as a master printer or bookseller in future, while the officers of the Company were instructed to carry out strict search for all prohibited books.

On the other hand, while thus retaining a tight rein on the printing trade, the Queen, no doubt for monetary considerations, granted special patents for the sole printing of certain classes of books to individual master printers, and threatened pains and penalties upon any other member of the craft who should print any such books. In this way all the best-paying work in the trade became the property of some dozen or so of printers. Master Tottell was allowed the sole printing of Law Books, Master Jugge the sole printing of Bibles, James Roberts and Richard Watkins the sole printing of Almanacs; Thomas Vautrollier, a stranger, was allowed to print all Latin books except the Grammars, which were given to Thomas Marsh, and John Day had received the right of printing and selling the A B C and Litell Catechism, a book largely bought for schools, and which Christopher Barker, in his Complaint, declared was once[Pg 98] 'the onelye reliefe of the porest sort of that Company.' On every side the best work was seized and monopolised. Nor did the evil cease there. These patents were invariably granted for life with reversion to a successor, and they were bought and sold freely. Hence the poorer members of the Company daily found it harder to live. There was very little light literature, and what there was had few readers. Their appeals for redress of grievances, whether addressed to the State or to the Company, which pretended to look after their welfare, were alike in vain, and at length they rose in open revolt. Half a dozen of them, headed by Roger Ward and John Wolf, boldly printed the books owned by the patentees. Roger Ward seized upon this A B C of Day's, and at a secret press, with type supplied to him by a workman of Thomas Purfoot, printed many thousand copies of the work with Day's mark. Hence the proceedings in the Star Chamber. They did very little good. Ward defied imprisonment; and the agitators would undoubtedly have gained more than they did, and might even have saved the art of printing from falling into the hopeless state it afterwards reached, had it not been for the desertion of John Wolf, who, after declaring that he would work a reformation in the printing trade similar to that which Luther had worked in religion, quietly allowed himself to be bought over, and died in eminent respec[Pg 99]tability as Printer to the City of London, leaving Ward and others to carry on the war. This they did with such effect, that, forced to find a remedy, the patentees of the Company at length agreed to relax their grasp of some of the books that they[Pg 100] had laid their hands upon. Day is said to have been most generous, relinquishing no less than fifty-three, and this number is in itself a commentary on the magnitude of the monopolies.

John Day died at Walden, in Essex, on the 23rd July 1584, at the age of sixty-two, and was buried at Bradley Parva, where there is a fair tomb and a lengthy poetical epitaph on his virtues and abilities. He was twice married, and is said to have had twenty-six children, of whom one son, Richard, was for a short time a printer, and another, John, took Orders, and became rector of Little Thurlow, in Suffolk.

John Day had three devices. His earliest, and perhaps his best, was a large block of a skeleton lying on an elaborately chased bier, with a tree at the back, and two figures, an old man and a young, standing beside it. This may have been typical of the Resurrection, the sign of the house in which he began business. Then we find the device of the Heart in his later books, and finally there is the block of the Sleeper Awakened, but this almost always formed part of the title-page.

APPENDIX

LIST OF PRINTERS AND STATIONERS ENROLLED IN THE CHARTER

CHAPTER V

JOHN DAY'S CONTEMPORARIES

ost notable of all the men who lived and worked with Day, was Reginald or Reyner Wolfe, of the Brazen Serpent in St. Paul's Churchyard. Much as we have to regret the scantiness of all material for a study of the lives of the early English printers, it is doubly felt in the case of Reginald Wolfe. The little that is made known to us is just sufficient to whet the appetite and kindle the curiosity. It reveals to us an active business man, evidently with large capital behind him, setting up as a bookseller, under the shadow of the great Cathedral, and rapidly becoming known to the learned and the rich. We see him passing backwards and forwards between this country and the book-fair at Frankfort, executing commissions for great nobles, and at the same time acting as the King's courier. Later on we find him adding the trade of printer to that of bookseller, and I have very little doubt that it was partly to the advice and influence of Reginald[Pg 104] Wolfe that we owe the improvement that took place in John Day's printing after his return from abroad. As a printer he stands beside Day in the excellence of his workmanship, and he was the first in England who possessed any large stock of Greek type.

Reyner Wolfe was a native of Dretunhe(?), in Gelderland, as shown by the letters of denization which he took out on the 2nd January 1533-4. (State Papers, Hen. 8. vol. 6. No. 105.) He had been established in Saint Paul's Churchyard some years before this, however, as in a letter from Thomas Tebold to the Earl of Wiltshire, dated the 4th April 1530, he says he has arrived at Frankfort, and hopes to hear from his lordship through 'Reygnard Wolf, bookseller, of St. Pauls Churchyard, London, who will be here in two days.'

Again, in 1539, in the same series of Letters and Papers (vol. xiv. pt. 2. No. 781), is an entry of the payment of 100s. to 'Rayner Wolf' for conveying the King's letters to Christopher Mounte, his Grace's agent in 'High Almayne'. But it was not until 1542 that he began to print. The British Museum fortunately possesses copies of all his early works as a printer, which began with several of the writings of John Leland the antiquary. The first was Naeniae in mortem T. Viati, Equitis incomparabilis, Joanne Lelando, antiquario, authore, a quarto, printed in a well-[Pg 105]cut fount of Roman. This was followed in the same year by Genethliacon, a work specially written by Leland for Prince Edward, with a dedication to Prince Henry, the first part being printed in Italic and the second in Roman type. On the verso of the last leaf is the printer's very beautiful device of children throwing at an apple-tree, certainly one of the most artistic devices in use amongst the printers of that time.

To this work succeeded, in 1543, the Homilies of Saint Chrysostom, of which John Cheke, Pro[Pg 106]fessor in Greek at Cambridge University, was editor. The whole of the first part of the work, with the exception of the dedication, was in Greek letter, making thirty lines to the quarto page. The second part, which had a separate title-page, was printed with the Italic, and the supplementary parts with the Roman types. Some very fine pictorial initial letters were used throughout the work, and the larger form of the apple-tree device occurs on the last leaf, with a Greek and Latin motto.

A very rare specimen of Wolfe's work in 1543 is Robert Recorde's The groūd of artes teachyng the worke and practise of Arithmetike moch necessary for all states of men, a small octavo printed in black letter, but of no particular merit. In the same type and form he issued in the following year a tract entitled The late expedicion in Scotlande, etc. Chrysostom's De Providentia Dei and Laudatio Pacis were printed in the Roman and Italic founts during 1545 and 1546, and are the only record we have left of Wolfe's work as a printer during those years. In 1547 he was appointed the king's printer in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and was granted an annuity of twenty-six shillings and eightpence during his life (Pat. Rol. 19 April 1547).

In 1553 trouble arose between Wolfe and Day as to their respective rights of printing Edward the Sixth's catechism. The matter was[Pg 107] settled by Wolfe having the privilege for printing the Latin version, and Day that in English, but neither party reaped much benefit, as upon the king's death the book was called in, having only been in circulation a few months. During Mary's reign the only important work that seems to have come from Wolfe's press was Recorde's Castle of Knowledge, a folio, with an elaborately designed title-page, and a dedication to Cardinal Pole. In 1560 Wolfe became Master of the Company of Stationers, a position to which he was elected on three subsequent occasions, in 1564, 1567, and 1572. His patents were renewed to him under Elizabeth, and he came in for his share of the patronage of Matthew Parker, whose edition of Jewel's Apologia he printed in quarto form in 1562. In 1563 appeared from his press the Commonplaces of Scripture, by Wolfgang Musculus, a folio, chiefly notable for a very fine pictorial initial 'I,' measuring nearly 3-1/2 inches square, and representing the Creation, which had obviously formed part of the opening chapter of Genesis in some early edition of the Bible. It was certainly used again in the 1577 edition of Holinshed's Chronicle.

Almost his last work was Matthew Paris's Historia Major, edited by Matthew Parker, a handsome folio with an engraved title-page, several good pictorial initials, and his large device of the apple-tree, printed in 1571. Without doubt[Pg 108] the printer was greatly interested in this work. He had himself collected materials for a chronicle of his adopted country, which he amused himself with in his spare time. But he did not live to print it, his death taking place late in the year 1573. His will was short, and mentioned none of his children by name. His property in St. Paul's Churchyard, which included the Chapel or Charnel House on the north side, which he had purchased of King Henry VIII., he left to his wife, and the witnesses to his will were George Bishop, Raphael Holinshed, John Hunn, and John Shepparde.[6] His wife, Joan Wolfe, only survived him a few months, her will, which is also preserved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury,[7] being proved on the 20th July 1574. In it occurs the following passage:

She further mentioned in her will a son Robert, a son Henry, and a daughter Mary, the wife of John Harrison, citizen and stationer, as well as Luke Harrison, a citizen and stationer, while among the witnesses to it was Gabriel[Pg 109] Cawood, the son of John Cawood, who lived hard by at the sign of the Holy Ghost, next to 'Powles Gate.'

From a document in the Heralds' College (W. Grafton, vi., A. B. C., Lond.), it appears that John Cawood, who began to print about the same time as Day, came from a Yorkshire family of good standing. He was apprenticed to John Reynes, a bookseller and bookbinder, who at that time, about 1542, worked at the George Inn in this locality. Cawood greatly respected his master, and in aftertimes, when he had become a prosperous man, placed a window in Stationers' Hall to the memory of John Reynes. Reynes died in 1543, but there is no mention of Cawood in his will, perhaps because Cawood was no longer in his service; but in that of his widow, Lucy Reynes, there was a legacy to John Cawood's daughter.

Cawood began to print in the year 1546, the first specimen of his press work being a little octavo, entitled The Decree for Tythes to be payed in the Citye of London.

With few exceptions the printers of this period easily enough conformed to the religious factions of the day. Thus Cawood prints Protestant books under Edward VI., Catholic books under Mary, and again Protestant books under Elizabeth. Upon the accession of Mary he was appointed royal printer in the place of Grafton,[Pg 110] who had dared to print the proclamation of Lady Jane Grey (Rymer's Fœdera, vol. xv., p. 125). He also received the reversion of Wolfe's patent for printing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew books, as well as all statute books, acts, proclamations, and other official documents, with a salary of £6, 13s. 4d. The British Museum possesses a volume (505. g. 14) containing the statutes of the reign of Queen Mary, printed in small folio by Cawood. From these it will be seen that he used some very artistic woodcut borders for his title-pages, notably one with bacchanalian figures in the lower panel signed 'A. S.' in monogram, evidently the same artist that cut the woodcut initials seen in these and other books printed by this printer, and who is believed to have been Anton Sylvius, an Antwerp engraver. Cawood was one of the first wardens of the Stationers' Company in 1554, and again served from 1555-7, and continued to take great interest in its welfare throughout his life. In 1557, Cawood, in company with John Waley and Richard Tottell, published the Works of Sir Thomas More in a large and handsome folio. The editor was William Rastell, Chief Justice of the Queen's Bench, son of John Rastell the printer, and nephew of the great chancellor.

The book was printed at the Hand and Star in Fleet Street by Tottell, but the woodcut initials were certainly supplied by Cawood, and perhaps[Pg 111] some of the type. On the accession of Elizabeth, he again received a patent as royal printer, but jointly with Richard Jugge, whose name is always found first. Nevertheless, Cawood printed at least two editions of the Bible in quarto, with his name alone on the title-page. They were very poor productions, the text being printed in the diminutive semi-gothic type that had done duty since the days of Caxton, and the woodcut borders being made up of odds and ends that happened to be handy. His rapidly increasing business had already compelled him to lease from the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's a vault under the churchyard, and two sheds adjoining the church, and in addition to this he now took a room at Stationers' Hall at a rental of 20s. per year.

In conjunction with Jugge he printed many editions of the Book of Common Prayer in all sizes. He also reprinted in 1570 Barclay's Ship of Fools with the original illustrations. Cawood was three times Master of the Company of Stationers, in 1561, 1562, and 1566. In 1564 he was appointed by Elizabeth Toye, the widow of Robert Toye, one of the overseers to her will, and his partner Jugge was one of the witnesses to the document (P. C. C, 25 Morrison). His death took place in 1572, and from his epitaph it appeared that he was three times married, and by his first wife, Joan, had three sons and four daughters. His eldest son, John, was bachelor of[Pg 112] laws and fellow of New College, Oxford, and died in 1570; Gabriel, the second son, succeeded to his father's business, and the third son died young. His eldest daughter, Mary, married George Bishop, one of the deputies to Christopher Barker; a second, Isabel, married Thomas Woodcock, a stationer; Susannah was the wife of Robert Bullock, and Barbara married Mark Norton.

Richard Jugge was another of those who owed much to the patronage and encouragement of Archbishop Parker. He is believed to have been born at Waterbeach in Cambridgeshire, and was educated, first at Eton, and afterwards at Cambridge. He set up at the sign of The Bible in 1548, and used as his device a pelican plucking at her breast to feed her young who are clamouring around her. In 1550 he obtained a licence to print the New Testament, and in 1556 books of Common Law. Under Elizabeth in 1560 he was made senior Queen's Printer. When the new edition of the Bible was about to be issued in 1569, Archbishop Parker wrote to Cecil, asking that Jugge might be entrusted with the printing, as there were few men who could do it better. In this way he became the printer of the first edition of the 'Bishops' Bible,' a second edition coming from his press the year following. In this work he used several large decorative initial letters, with the arms of the several patrons of the work, as well as a finely designed[Pg 113] engraved title-page, with a portrait of the Queen, and other portraits of Burleigh and Leicester. In his edition of the New Testament were numerous large cuts, evidently of foreign workmanship, some of them signed with the initials 'E. B.' Richard Jugge died in 1577.

Another of Day's contemporaries, whose name is remembered by all students of English literature, was Richard Tottell, who lived at the Hand and Star in Fleet Street, and printed there the collection of poetry known as Tottell's Miscellany.

There is reason to believe that Richard Tottell was the third son of Henry Tottell, a famous citizen of Exeter. The name was spelt in a great variety of ways, such as Tothill, Tuthill, Tottle, Tathyll, and Tottell. Richard Tottell at the time of his death held lands in Devon, and some of the same lands that belonged to the Tothill family of Exeter. Moreover, his coat of arms was the same as theirs. But before 1552 he was in London, for in that year he received a patent for the printing of law books, and was generally known as Richard Tottell of London, gentleman. He appears to have married Joan, a sister of Richard Grafton, and in this way became possessed of considerable land in the county of Bucks. From this we may assume that he had business relations with Richard Grafton, and it becomes only natural that he should have printed[Pg 114] various editions of Grafton's Chronicle, and come into possession of some of his finest woodcut borders.

It was in June 1557 that he printed his 'Miscellany,' an unpretentious quarto, with the title: Songes and Sonnettes, written by the Ryght Honorable Lorde Henry Hawarde, late Earl of[Pg 115] Surrey and other. Before the 31st July a second edition became necessary, and several new poems were added. The third edition appeared in 1559, the fourth in 1565, and before the end of the sixteenth century, four more editions were called for. Another of Tottell's works was Gerard Legh's Accedens of Armory, an octavo, printed throughout in italic type, with a curiously engraved title-page, besides numerous illustrations of coats of arms, and several full-page illustrations. It was printed in 1562, and again in 1576 and 1591.

The best of Tottell's work as a printer is to be found in the law-books, for which he was a patentee. In these he used several handsome borders to title-pages, one of an architectural character with his initials R. T. at the two lower corners, another, evidently Grafton's, with a view of the King and Parliament in the top panel, and Grafton's punning device in the centre of the bottom panel.

In 1573 Richard Tottell tried to establish a paper mill in England. He wrote to Cecil, pointing out that nearly all paper came from France, and undertaking to establish a mill in England if the Government would give him the necessary land and the sole privilege of making paper for thirty years (Arber, i. 242). But as nothing was ever done in the matter, the Government evidently did not entertain the proposal.[Pg 116] Tottell was Master of the Company of Stationers in 1579 and 1584. During the latter part of his life he withdrew from business, and lived at Wiston, in Pembrokeshire, where he died in 1593. He left several children, of whom the eldest, William Tottell, succeeded to his estates.

In the precincts of the Blackfriars, Thomas Vautrollier, a foreigner, was at work as a printer in 1566, having been admitted a 'brother' of the Company of Stationers on the 2nd October 1564. He soon afterwards received a patent for the printing of certain Latin books, and Christopher Barker, in a report to Lord Burghley in 1582, says:—

In 1580, on the invitation of the General Assembly, Vautrollier visited Scotland, taking with him a stock of books, but no press, and in 1584 he again went north, and set up a press at Edinburgh, still keeping on his business in London. The venture does not seem to have turned out a success, for Vautrollier returned to London in 1586, taking with him a MS. of John Knox's History of the Reformation, but the work was seized while it was in the press (Works of John Knox, vol. i. p. 32).[Pg 117]

As a printer Vautrollier ranks far above most of the men around him, both for the beauty of his types and the excellence of his presswork. The bulk of his books were printed in Roman and Italic, of which he had several well-cut founts. He had also some good initials, ornaments, and borders. In the folio edition of Plutarch's Lives, which he printed in 1579, each life is preceded by a medallion portrait, enclosed in a frame of geometrical pattern; some of these, notably the first, and also those shown on a white background, are very effective. His device was an anchor held by a hand issuing from clouds, with two sprigs of laurel, and the motto 'Anchora Spei,' the whole enclosed in an oval frame.

Vautrollier was succeeded in business by his son-in-law, Richard Field, another case of the apprentice marrying his master's daughter. Field was a native of Stratford-on-Avon, and therefore a fellow-townsman of Shakespeare's, whose first poem, Venus and Adonis, he printed for Harrison in 1593. But we have no knowledge of any intercourse between them.

Field succeeded to the stock of his predecessor, and his work is free from the haste and slovenly appearance so general at that time. Another work from his press was Puttenham's Arte of English Poesy, 1589, 4to. The first edition, of which there is a copy in the British Museum, had no author's name, but was dedicated by the printer[Pg 118] to Lord Burghley. In the second book, four pages were suppressed. They are inserted in the copy under notice, but are not paged. This edition also contained as a frontispiece a portrait of the Queen. Another notable work of Field's was Sir John Harington's translation of Orlando Furioso (1591, fol.). This book had an elaborate frontispiece, with a portrait of the translator, and thirty-six engraved illustrations, that make up in vigour of treatment, and breadth of imagination, for shortcomings in the matter of draughtsmanship. The text was printed in double columns, and each verse of the Argument was enclosed in a border of printers' ornaments. A second edition, alike in almost every respect, passed through the same press in 1607. In 1594 Field printed a second edition of Venus and Adonis, and the first edition of Lucrece. His later work included David Hume's Daphne-Amaryllis, 1605, 4to; Chapman's translation of the Odyssey (1614, folio); and an edition of Virgil in quarto in 1620.

Foremost among the later men of this century stands Christopher Barker, the Queen's printer, who was born about 1529, and is said to have been grand-nephew to Sir Christopher Barker, Garter King-at-Arms. Originally a member of the Drapers' Company, he began to publish books in 1569 (Arber, i. p. 398), and to print in 1576, and purchased from Sir Thomas[Pg 119] Wilkes his patent to print the Old and New Testament in English. Barker issued in 1578 a circular offering his large Bible to the London Companies at the rate of 24s. each bound, and 20s. unbound, the clerks of the various Companies to receive 4d. apiece for every Bible sold, and the hall of each Company that took £40 worth to receive a presentation copy (Lemon's Catal. of Broadsides).

[Pg 120]In 1582 Barker sent to Lord Burghley an account of the various printing monopolies granted since the beginning of the reign, and expresses himself freely on them. He also attempted to suppress the printers in Cambridge University. In and after 1588 he carried on his business by deputies, George Bishop and Ralph Newbery, and in the following year, on the disgrace of Sir Thomas Wilkes, he obtained an exclusive patent for himself and his son to print all official documents, as well as Bibles and Testaments. At one time Barker had no fewer than five presses, and between 1575 and 1585 he printed as many as thirty-eight editions of the Scriptures, an almost equal number being printed by his deputies before 1600. Christopher Barker died in 1599, and was succeeded in his post of royal printer by Robert Barker, his eldest son.

On the 23rd June 1586 was issued The Newe Decrees of the Starre Chamber for orders in Printing, which is reprinted in full in the second volume of Arber's Transcripts, pp. 807-812. It was the most important enactment concerning printing of Queen Elizabeth's reign, and formed the model upon which all subsequent 'whips and scorpions' for the printers were manufactured. Its chief clauses were these: It restricted all printing to London and the two Universities. The number of presses then in London was to be reduced to such proportions as the Archbishop of[Pg 121] Canterbury and the Bishop of London should think sufficient. No books were to be printed without being licensed, and the wardens were given the right to search all premises on suspicion. The penalties were imprisonment and defacement of stock.

CHAPTER VI

PROVINCIAL PRESSES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY [8]

n the first half of the sixteenth century, before the incorporation of the Stationers' Company and the subsequent restriction of printing to London and the Universities, there were ten places in England where the art was carried on. Taking them chronologically, the earliest was the city of York. Mr. Davies, in his Memoirs of the York Press, claims that Frederick Freez, a book-printer, was at work there in 1497; but Mr. Allnutt has clearly shown that there is no evidence in support of this, no specimen of his printing being in existence. The first printer in the city of York who can be traced with certainty was Hugo Goez, said to have been the son of Matthias van der Goez, an Antwerp printer. Two school-books, a Donatus Minor and an Accidence, as well as[Pg 123] the Directorium Sacerdotum, dated in the colophon February 18th, 1509, were printed by him, and it is believed that he was for a time in partnership in London with a bookseller named Henry Watson (E. G. Duff, Early Printed Books). Ames, in his Typographical Antiquities, mentions a broadside 'containing a wooden cut of a man on horseback with a spear in his right hand, and a shield of the arms of France in his left. "Emprynted at Beverley in the Hyegate by me Hewe Goes," with his mark, or rebus, of a great H and a goose.' But this cannot now be traced.

Another printer in York, of whom it is possible to speak with certainty, was Ursyn Milner, who printed a Festum visitationis Beate Marie Virginis, without date, and a Latin syntax by Robert Whitinton, entitled Editio de concinnitate grammatices et constructione noviter impressa, with the date December 20th, 1516, and a woodcut that had belonged to Wynkyn de Worde.

The second Oxford press began about 1517. In that year there appeared, Tractatus expositorius super libros posteriorum Aristotelis, by Walter Burley, bearing the date December 4th, 1517, without printer's name, but ascribed from the appearance of the types to the press of John Scolar, whose name is found in some of the similar tracts that appeared the following year. These included Questiones moralissime super[Pg 124] libros ethicorum, by John Dedicus, dated May 15, 1518. On June 5th was issued Compendium questionum de luce et lumine, on June 7th Walter Burley's Tractatus perbrevis de materia et forma, on June 27th Whitinton's De Heteroclitis nominibus. The latest book, dated 5th February 1519, Compotus manualis ad usum Oxoniensium, bore the name of Charles Kyrfoth, but nothing further is known of any such printer.

No more is heard of a press at Oxford until nearly the close of the sixteenth century, a gap of nearly seventy years, and a strange and unaccountable interval. At any rate, the next Oxford printed book, so far as is at present known, was John Case's Speculum Moralium quaestionum in universam ethicen Aristotelis, with the colophon, 'Oxoniæ ex officina typographica Josephi Barnesii Celeberrimae Academiae Oxoniensis Typographi. Anno 1585.'

Joseph Barnes, the printer, had been admitted a bookseller in 1573, and on August 15th, 1584, the University lent him £100 with which to start a press. During the time that he remained printer to the University, his press was actively employed, no less than three hundred books, many of them in Greek and Latin, being traced to it. In 1595 appeared the first Welsh book printed at the University, a translation into Welsh by Hugh Lewis of O. Wermueller's Spiritual and Most Precious Pearl, and in 1596 two founts of[Pg 125] Hebrew letter were used by Barnes, but the stock of this letter was small.

In 1528, John Scolar, no doubt the same with the Oxford printer, is found at Abingdon, where he printed a Breviary for the use of the abbey there; only one copy has survived, and is now at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

The first Cambridge printer was John Siberch, whose history, like that of so many other early[Pg 126] printers, is totally unknown. Nine specimens of his printing during the years 1521-22 are extant. The first is the Oratio of Henry Bullock, a tract of eight quarto leaves, with a dedication dated February 13, 1521, and the date of the imprint February 1521, so that it probably appeared between the 13th and 28th of that month. The type used was a new fount of Roman. The book had no ornamentation of any kind, neither device nor initial letters. A facsimile of this book, with an introduction and bibliographical study of Siberch's productions, was issued by the late Henry Bradshaw in 1886. The title-page of the second book, Cuiusdam fidelis Christiani epistola ad Christianos omnes, by Augustine, shows the title between two upright woodcuts, each containing scenes from the Last Judgment. The third book, an edition of Lucian, has a very ugly architectural border. The fifth book from Siberch's press, the Libellus de Conscribendis epistolis, autore D. Erasmo, printed between the 22nd and 31st of October 1521, contains the privilege which, it is believed, he obtained from Bishop Fisher.

In the far west of England a press was established in the monastery of Tavistock, in Devon, of which two curious examples are preserved. The first is The Boke of Comfort, called in laten Boetius de Consolatione philosophie. Translated into English tonge ... Enprented in the exempt[Pg 127] monastery of Tauestock in Den̅shyre, By me Dan Thomas Rycharde, monke of the sayde monastery, To the instant desyre of the ryght worshypful esquyer Mayster Robert Langdon. Anno d.' M.Dxxv., 4to. The Bodleian Library at Oxford has two imperfect copies of this book, and a third, also imperfect, is in the library of Exeter College, Oxford. The latter college is also fortunate in possessing the only known copy of the second book, which has this title:—

Here foloweth the confirmation of the Charter perteynynge to all the tynners wythyn the Coūty of devonshyre, with there Statutes also made at Crockeryntorre.

Imprented at Tavystoke ye xx day of August the yere of the reygne off our souerayne Lord Kyng Henry ye viii the xxvi yere, i.e. 1534.

To this same year, 1534, belongs the first dated book of John Herford, the St. Albans printer. It seems probable that he was established there some years earlier, but this is the first certain date we have. In that year appeared a small quarto, with the title, Here begynnethe ye glorious lyfe and passion of Seint Albon prothomartyr of Englande, and also the lyfe and passion of Saint Amphabel, whiche conuerted saint Albon to the fayth of Christe, of which John Lydgate was the author. It was printed at the request of Robert Catton, abbot of the monastery, and it would seem as if Herford's press was situated within[Pg 128] the abbey precincts. The next book, The confutacyon of the first parte of Frythes boke ... put forth by John Gwynneth clerk, 1536, 8vo, was the work of one of the monks of the abbey, who in the previous year had signed a petition to Sir Francis Brian on the state of the monastery (Letters and Papers, Henry VIII., vol. ix. p. 394). Another of the signatories to that petition was Richard Stevenage, who was at that time chamberer of the abbey, and was created abbot on the deprivation of Robert Catton in 1538. Of the three books which Herford printed in that year, two were expressly printed for Richard Stevenage. These were A Godly disputation betweene Justus and Peccator and Senex and Juvenis, and An Epistle agaynste the enemies of poore people, both octavos, of which no copies are now known. In some of Herford's books is a curious device with the letters R. S. intertwined on it, which undoubtedly stand for Richard Stevenage. His reign as abbot was a short one, for on 5th December 1539 he delivered the abbey over to Henry VIII's commissioners. Just before that event, on the 12th October, he wrote a letter to Cromwell in which the following passage occurs:—

The 'John Pryntare' can be none other than John Herford. 'Bonere' was a misreading for Bonham, and these three, Pepwell, Tab, and Bonham, all of them printers or booksellers in St. Paul's Churchyard, were evidently sent down especially to inquire into the matter.

We next hear of John Herford as in London in 1542, but meanwhile a modification of Stevenage's device was used by a London printer named Bourman. From the Letters and Papers of Henry VIII., vol. xv. pp. 115, etc., it appears that after his retirement from the abbey, Richard Stevenage went by the name of Boreman. He is invariably spoken of as 'Stevenage alias Boreman,' so that the Nicholas Bourman, the London printer, was perhaps a relative.

The Rev. S. Sayers in his Memoirs of Bristol, 1823, vol. ii. p. 228, states, on the authority of documents in the city archives, that a press was at work in the castle in the year 1546. Of this press, if it ever existed, not so much as a leaf remains.

In 1547 Anthony Scoloker was established as a printer at Ipswich. In that year he printed The just reckenyng or accompt of the whole nomber of yeares, from the beginnynge of the world, vnto this present yeare of 1547. Translated out of Germaine tonge by Anthony Scoloker the 6 daye of July 1547. He was chiefly concerned with the movements of the Reformation, and his publica[Pg 130]tions were mostly small octavos, the writings of Luther, Zwingli, and Ochino, printed in type of a German character and of no great merit. In 1548 he moved to London, where for a time he was in partnership with William Seres. The adjoining cut, the earliest English representation of a printing press, is taken from the Ordinarye of Christians, printed by Scoloker after he had settled in London.

A second printer in Ipswich is believed to have been John Overton, who in 1548 printed there two sheets of Bale's Illustrium maioris Britanniæ scriptorum summarium, the remainder of which was printed at Wesel. Nothing else of his appears to be known.[Pg 131]

The third printer at Ipswich was John Oswen, who was also established there in 1548. Nine books can be traced to his press there. The first was The Mynde of the Godly and excellent lerned man M. Jhon Caluyne what a Faithful man, whiche is instructe in the Worde of God ought to do, dwellinge amongest the Papistes. Imprinted at Ippyswiche by me John Oswen. 8vo. This was followed by Calvin's Brief declaration of the fained sacrament commonly called the extreame unction. The remainder of his books were of a theological character. He left Ipswich about Christmas 1548, and is next found at Worcester, where, on the 30th January 1549, he printed A Consultarie for all Christians most godly and ernestly warnying al people to beware least they beare the name of Christians in vayne. Now first imprinted the xxx day of Januarie Anno M. D. xlix. At Worceter by John Oswen. Cum priuilegio Regali ad imprimendum solum. Per septennium. The privilege, which was dated January 6th, 1548-9, authorised Oswen to print all sorts of service or prayer-books and other works relating to the scriptures 'within our Principalitie of Wales and Marches of the same.'[9]

Oswen followed this by another edition of the Domestycal or Household Sermons of Christopher[Pg 132] Hegendorff, which was printed on the last day of February 1549.

Then came his first important undertaking, a quarto edition of The boke of common praier. Imprinted the xxiv day of May Anno MDXLIX. The folio edition appeared in July of the same year. Two months later he printed an edition of the Psalter or Psalmes of David, 4to. On January 12, 1550, appeared a quarto edition of the New Testament, of which there is a copy in Balliol College Library, and this was followed in the same year by Zwingli's Short Pathwaye, translated by John Veron; by a translation by Edward Aglionby of Mathew Gribalde's Notable and marveilous epistle, and the Godly sayings of the old auncient fathers, compiled by John Veron. Two or three books of the same kind were issued in 1551, and in 1552 he issued another edition of the Book of Common Prayer. The last we hear of him is in 1553, when he printed an edition of the Statutes of 6th Edward VI., and An Homelye to read in the tyme of pestylence. What became of Oswen is not known. He very likely went abroad on the accession of Queen Mary.

In Kent there was a press at Canterbury, from which eleven books are known to have been printed between 1549 and 1556.

John Mychell, the printer of these, began work in London at the Long Shop in the Poultry,[Pg 133] some time between the departure of Richard Banckes in 1539 and the tenancy of Richard Kele in 1542. In 1549 he appears to have moved to Canterbury, where he printed a quarto edition of the Psalms, with the colophon, 'Printed at Canterbury in Saynt Paules paryshe by John Mychell.' In 1552 he issued A Breuiat Cronicle contayninge all the Kynges from Brute to this daye, and in 1556, the Articles of Cardinal Pole's Visitation. He also issued several minor theological tracts without dates.

The Norwich press began about 1566, when Anthony de Solemne, or Solempne, set up a press among the refugees who had fled from the Netherlands and taken refuge in that city. Most of his books were printed in Dutch, and all of them are excessively rare. The earliest was:—

Der Siecken Troost, Onderwijsinghe on gewillichlick te steruen. Troostinghe | on den siecken totte rechten gheloue ende betrouwen in Christo te onderwijsen. Ghemeyn bekenisse der sonden | met | scoon gebeden. Ghedruct in Jaer ons Heeren. Anno 1566. The only known copy of the book is in Trinity College Library, Dublin.

The Psalms of David in Dutch appeared in 1568, and the New Testament in the same year.

He was also the printer of certain Tables concerning God's word, by Antonius Corranus, pastor of the Spanish Protestant congregation at[Pg 134] Antwerp. It was printed in four languages, Latin, French, Dutch, and English.

The only known specimen of Solempne's printing in the English language is a broadside now in the Bodleian:—

In this year Solempne also printed Eenen Calendier Historiael | eewelick gheduerende, 8vo, a tract of eight leaves printed in black and red, of which there are copies in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, and the Bodleian.

There is then a gap of eight years in his work, the next book found being a sermon, printed in 1578, Het tweede boeck vande sermoenen des wel vermaerden Predicant B. Cornelis Adriaensen van Dordrecht minrebroeder tot Brugges. Of this there are two copies known, one in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.

The last book traced to Solempne's press is Chronyc. Historie der Nederlandtscher Oorlogen. Gedruct tot Norrtwitz na de copie van Basel, Anno 1579, 8vo, of which there remain copies in the Bodleian, University Library, Cambridge, and in the private collection of Lord Amherst.[Pg 135]

In 1583, after an interval similar to that at Oxford, another press was started at Cambridge, when, on May 3rd of that year, Thomas Thomas was appointed University printer. His career was marked by many difficulties. The Company of Stationers at once seized his press as an infringement of their privileges, and this in the face of the fact that for many years the University had possessed the royal licence, though hitherto it had not been used. The Bishop of London, writing to Burghley, declared on hearsay evidence that Thomas was a man 'vtterlie ignoraunte in printinge.' The University protested, and as it was clearly shown that they held the royal privilege, the Company were obliged to submit, but they did the Cambridge printer all the injury they could by freely printing books that were his sole copyright (Arber's Transcripts, vol. ii. pp. 782, 813, 819-20). He printed for the use of scholars small editions of classical works. In 1585 he issued in octavo the Latin Grammar of Peter Ramus, and in 1587 the Latin Grammar of James Carmichael in quarto (Hazlitt, Collections and Notes, 3rd series, p. 17). He was also the compiler of a Dictionary, first printed about 1588, of which five editions were called for before the end of the century.

Thomas died in August 1588, and the University, on the 2nd November, appointed John Legate his successor, as 'he is reported to be[Pg 136] skilful in the art of printing books.' On the 26th April 1589 he received as an apprentice Cantrell Legge, who afterwards succeeded him. From 1590 to 1609 he appears in the parish books of St. Mary the Great, Cambridge, as paying 5s. a year for the rent of a shop. He had the exclusive right of printing Thomas's Dictionary, and he printed most of the books of William Perkins. He subsequently left Cambridge and settled in London.

The books printed by these two Cambridge printers show that they had a good variety of Roman and Italic, very regularly cast, besides some neat ornaments and initials. Whether[Pg 137] these founts belonged to the University, or to Thomas in the first place, is not clear. Nor do these books bear out the Bishop of London's statement as to Thomas being ignorant of printing; on the contrary, the presswork was such as could only have been done by a skilled workman.

In addition to the foregoing, there were several secret presses at work in various parts of the country during the second half of the century. The Cartwright controversy, which began in 1572 with the publication of a tract entitled An Admonition to the Parliament, was carried out by means of a secret press at which John Stroud is believed to have worked, and had as assistants two men named Lacy and Asplyn. The Stationers' Company employed Toy and Day to hunt it out, with the result that it was seized at Hempstead, probably Hemel Hempstead, Herts, or Hempstead near Saffron Walden, Essex. The type was handed over to Bynneman, who used it in printing an answer to Cartwright's book. It was in consequence of his action in this matter that John Day was in danger of being killed by Asplyn.

A few years later books by Jesuit authors were printed from a secret press which, from some notes written by F. Parsons in 1598, and now preserved in the library of Stonyhurst College, we know began work at Greenstreet House, East Ham, but[Pg 138] was afterwards removed to Stonor Park. The overseer of this press was Stephen Brinckley, who had several men under him, and the most noted book issued from it was Campion's Rationes Decem, with the colophon, 'Cosmopoli 1581.'

Finally, there was the Marprelate press, of which Robert Waldegrave was the chief printer. He was the son of a Worcestershire yeoman, and put himself apprentice to William Griffith, from the 24th June 1568, for eight years. He was therefore out of his time in 1576, and in 1578 there is entered to him a book entitled A Castell for the Soul. His subsequent publications were of the same character, including, in 1581, The Confession and Declaration of John Knox, The Confession of the Protestants of Scotland, and a sermon of Luther's. It was not, however, until the 7th April 1588 that he got into trouble. In that year he printed a tract of John Udall's, entitled The State of the Church of England. His press was seized and his type defaced, but he succeeded in carrying off some of it to the house of a Mrs. Crane at East Molesey, where he printed another of Udall's tracts, and the first of the Marprelate series: O read over D. John Bridges for it is a worthye work. Printed oversea in Europe within two furlongs of a Bounsing Priest, at the cost and charges of M. Marprelate, gentleman.

From East Molesey the press was afterwards[Pg 139] removed to Fawsley, near Daventry, and from thence to Coventry. But the hue and cry after the hidden press was so keen that another shift was made to Wolston Priory, the seat of Sir R. Knightley, and finally Waldegrave fled over sea, taking with him his black-letter type. He went first to Rochelle, and thence to Edinburgh, where in 1590 he was appointed King's printer.

The Marprelate press was afterwards carried on by Samuel Hoskins or Hodgkys, who had as his workmen Valentine Symmes and Arthur Thomlyn. The last of the Marprelate tracts, The Protestacyon of Martin Marprelate, was printed at Haseley, near Warwick, about September 1589.

PRINTING IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY [10]

On the 15th September 1507, King James IV. of Scotland granted to his faithful subjects, Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, burgesses of Edinburgh, leave to import a printing-press and letter, and gave them licence to print law books, breviaries, and so forth, more particularly the Breviary of William, Bishop of Aberdeen. Walter Chepman was a general merchant, and probably his[Pg 140] chief part in the undertaking at the outset was of a financial character. Andrew Myllar had for some years carried on the business of a bookseller in Edinburgh, and books were printed for him in Rouen by Pierre Violette. There is, moreover, evidence that Myllar himself learnt the art of printing in that city.

The printing-house of the firm in Edinburgh was in the Southgait (now the Cowgate), and they lost no time in setting to work, devoting themselves chiefly to printing some of the popular metrical tales of England and Scotland. A volume containing eleven such pieces, most of them printed in 1508, is preserved in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.

Among the pieces found in it are—Sir Eglamoure of Artoys, Maying or desport of Chaucer, Buke of Gude Counsale to the Kyng, Flytting of Dunbar & Kennedy, and Twa Marrit Wemen and the wedo.

Three founts of black letter, somewhat resembling in size and shape those of Wynkyn de Worde, were used in printing these books, and the devices of both men are found in them. That of Chepman was a copy of the device of the Paris printer, Pigouchet, while Myllar adopted the punning device of a windmill with a miller bearing sacks into the mill, with a small shield charged with three fleur-de-lys in each of the upper corners.[Pg 141]

After printing the above-mentioned works, Myllar disappears, and the famous Breviarium Aberdonense, the work for which the King had mainly granted the license, was finished in 1509-10 by Chepman alone. It is an unpre[Pg 142]tentious little octavo, printed in double columns, in red and black, as became a breviary, but with no special marks of typographical beauty. Four copies of it are known to exist, but none of these are perfect. Chepman then disappears as mysteriously as his partner. In the Glamis copy of the Bremarium, Dr. David Laing discovered a single sheet of eight leaves of a book with the imprint: Impressū Edinburgi per Johane Story nomine & mandato Karoli Stule. Nothing more, however, is known of this John Story.

In 1541-2 another printer, Thomas Davidson, is found printing The New Actis and Constitutionis of Parliament maid Be the Rycht Excellent Prince James the Fift King of Scottis, 1540. Davidson's press, which was situated 'above the nether bow, on the north syde of the gait,' was also very short-lived, and very few examples of it are now in existence; one of these, a quarto of four leaves, with the title Ad Serenissimum Scotorum Regem Jacobum Quintum de suscepto Regni Regimine a diis feliciter ominato Strena, is the earliest instance of the use of Roman type in Scotland. His most important undertaking, besides the Acts of Parliament, was a Scottish history, printed about 1542.

The next printer we hear of is John Scot or Skot. There was a printer of this name in London between 1521 and 1537, but whether he is to be identified with this slightly later Scottish[Pg 143] printer is not known. Between 1552 and 1571 Scot printed a great many books, most of them of a theological character. Among them was Ninian Winziet's Certane tractatis for Reformatioune of Doctryne and Maneris, a quarto, printed on the 21st May 1562, and the same author's Last Blast of the Trumpet. For these he was arrested and thrown into prison, and his printing materials were handed over to Thomas Bassandyne. In 1568 he was at liberty again and printed for Henry Charteris, The Warkes of the famous & vorthie Knicht Schir David Lyndesay; while among his numerous undated books is found Lyndsay's Ane Dialog betwix Experience and Ane Courtier, of which he printed two editions, the second containing several other poems by the same author.

Scot was succeeded by Robert Lekpreuik, who began to print, in 1561, his first dated book, a small black-letter octavo of twenty-four pages, called The Confessione of the fayght and doctrin beleued and professed by the Protestantes of the Realme of Scotland. Imprinted at Edinburgh be Robert Lekpreuik, Cum privilegio, 1561.

In the following year the Kirk lent him £200 with which to print the Psalms. The copy now in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh, bound with the Book of Common Order printed by Lekpreuik in the same year, probably belongs to this edition.[Pg 144]

Two years later, in 1564-5, he obtained a license under the Privy Seal to print the Acts of Parliament of Queen Mary and the Psalms of David in Scottish metre. Of this edition of the Psalms there is a perfect copy in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Again, in 1567, Lekpreuik obtained the royal license as king's printer for twenty years, during which time he was to have the monopoly of printing Donatus pro pueris, Rudimentis of Pelisso, Acts of Parliament, Chronicles of the Realm, the book called Regia Majestas, the Psalms, the Homelies, and Rudimenta Artis Grammaticae.

Among his other work of that year may be noticed a ballad entitled The testament and tragedie of vmquhile King Henry Stewart of gude memory, a broadside of sixteen twelve-line stanzas, from the pen of Robert Sempil. A copy of this is in the British Museum (Cott. Caligula, C. i. fol. 17). In 1568 there was danger of plague in Edinburgh, and Lekpreuik printed a small octavo of twenty-four leaves, in Roman type, with the title, Ane breve description of the Pest, Quhair in the Cavsis signes and sum speciall preservatiovn and cvre thairof ar contenit. Set furth be Maister Gilbert Skeyne, Doctoure in Medicine.

In 1570 he printed for Henry Charteris a quarto edition of the Actis and Deides of Sir William Wallace, and in 1571 The Actis and Lyfe of Robert[Pg 145] Bruce. This was printed early in the year, as on the 14th April Secretary Maitland made a raid upon Lekpreuik's premises, under the belief that he was the printer of Buchanan's Chameleon. The printer, however, had received timely warning and retired to Stirling, where, before the 6th of August, he printed Buchanan's Admonition, and also a letter from John Knox 'To his loving Brethren.' His sojourn there was very short, as on the 4th September Stirling was attacked and Lekpreuik thereupon withdrew to St. Andrews, where his press was active throughout the year 1572 and part of 1573. In the month of April 1573 Lekpreuik returned to Edinburgh and printed Sir William Drury's Regulations for the army under his command. But in January 1573-74 he was thrown into prison and his press and property confiscated. How long he remained a prisoner is not clear, but in all probability until after the execution of the Regent Morton in 1581. In that year he printed the following books—Patrick Adamson's Catechismus Latino Carmine Redditus et in libros quatuor digestus, a small octavo of forty leaves, printed in Roman type; Fowler's Answer to John Hamilton, a quarto of twenty-eight leaves; and a Declaration without place or printer's name, but attributed to his press: after this nothing more is heard of him.

Contemporary with Lekpreuik was Thomas[Pg 146] Bassandyne, who is believed to have worked both in Paris and Leyden before setting up as a printer in Edinburgh.

His first appearance, in 1568, was not a very creditable one. An order of the General Assembly, on the 1st July of that year, directs Bassandyne to call in a book entitled The Fall of the Roman Kirk, in which the king was called 'supreme head of the Primitive Church,' and also orders him to delete an obscene song called Welcome Fortune which he had printed at the end of a psalm-book. The Assembly appointed Mr. Alexander Arbuthnot to revise these things.

In 1574 Bassandyne printed a quarto edition of Sir David Lindsay's Works, of which he had 510 copies in stock at the time of his death.

On the 7th March 1574-75, in partnership with Alexander Arbuthnot (who was not the same as the Alexander Arbuthnot who had been appointed to exercise a supervision of Bassandyne's books in 1568), Bassandyne laid proposals before the General Assembly for printing an edition of the Bible, the first ever printed in Scotland. The General Assembly gave him hearty support, and required every parish to provide itself with one of the new Bibles as soon as they were printed. On the other hand, the printers were to deliver a certain number of copies before the last of March 1576, and the cost of it was to be £5. The terms of this agreement were not carried out by the[Pg 147] printers. The New Testament only was completed and issued in 1576, with the name of Thomas Bassandyne as the printer. The whole Bible was not finished until the close of the[Pg 148] year 1579, and Bassandyne did not live to see its completion, his death taking place on the 18th October 1577.

Like most of his predecessors, Bassandyne was a bookseller; and on pp. 292-304 of their work Annals of Scottish Printing, Messrs. Dickson and Edmond have printed the Inventory of the goods he possessed, including the whole of his stock of books, which is of the greatest interest and value. Unfortunately such inventories are not to be met with in the case of English printers.

Bassandyne used as his device a modification of the serpent and anchor mark of John Crespin of Geneva.

Arbuthnot was now left to carry on the business alone, and was made King's printer in 1579. But he was a slow, slovenly, and ignorant workman, and the General Assembly were so disgusted with the delivery of the Bible and the wretched appearance of his work, that, on the 13th February 1579-80, they decided to accept the offer of Thomas Vautrollier, a London printer, to establish a press in Edinburgh.

Arbuthnot died on September 1st, 1585. His device was a copy of that of Richard Jugge of London, and is believed to have been the work of a Flemish artist, Assuerus vol Londersel.

Another printer in Edinburgh between 1574-80 was John Ross. He worked chiefly for Henry[Pg 149] Charteris, for whom he printed the Catechisme in 1574, and a metrical version of the Psalms in 1578. For the same bookseller he also printed a poem, The seuin Seages, Translatit out of prois in Scottis meter be Johne Rolland in Dalkeith, a quarto, now so rare that only one copy is now known, that in the Britwell Library.

In 1579 Ross printed Ad virulentum Archbaldi Hamiltonii Apostatæ dialogum, de confusione Calvinianæ Sectæ apud Scotos, impie conscriptum, orthodoxa responsio, Thoma Smetonio Scoto anctore, a quarto, printed in Roman letter, and followed it up with two editions of Buchanan's De Jure Regni apud Scotos dialogus.

Ross used a device showing Truth with an open book in her right hand, a lighted candle in her left, surrounded with the motto 'Vincet tandem veritas.' This device was afterwards used by both Charteris and Waldegrave. Ross died in 1580, when his stock passed into the hands of Henry Charteris, who began printing in the following year. As we have seen, he employed Scot, Lekpreuik, and Ross to print for him. Up to 1581 he confined himself to bookselling. His printing was confined to various editions of Sir David Lindsay's Works and theological tracts. He used two devices, that of Ross, and another emblematical of Justice and Religion, with his initials. He died on the 9th August 1599.[Pg 150]

In 1580, at the express invitation of the General Assembly, Thomas Vautrollier visited Edinburgh, and set up as a bookseller, no doubt with the view of seeing what scope there was likely to be for a printer with a good stock of type. The Treasurer's accounts for this period show that he received royal patronage.

On his second visit, a year or two later, he went armed with a letter to George Buchanan from Daniel Rodgers, and set up a press in Edinburgh. But in spite of the support of the Assembly and the patronage that an introduction to Buchanan must have brought him, he evidently soon found there was not enough business in Edinburgh to support a printer, for he remained there little more than a year, when he again returned to London. During his short career as a printer in Edinburgh he printed at least eight books, of which the most important were Henry Balnave's Confession of Faith, 1584, 8vo, and King James's Essayes of a Prentice in the Divine Art of Poesie, 4to.

Scotland's next important printer was Robert Waldegrave, who, after his adventures as a secret printer in England, set up a press in Edinburgh in 1590, and continued printing there till the close of the century.

One of his first works was a quarto in Roman type entitled The Confession of Faith, Subscribed by the Kingis Maiestie and his householde: Togither[Pg 151] with the Copie of the Bande, maid touching the maintenaunce of the true Religion. Among his other work, which was chiefly theological, may be mentioned King James's Demonologie, 1597, 4to, and the first edition of the Basilikon Doron, in quarto, of which it is said only seven copies were printed.

Contemporary with him was a Robert Smyth, who married the widow of Thomas Bassandyne, and who in 1599 received license to print the following books:—'The double and single catechism, the plane Donet, the haill four pairtes of grammar according to Sebastian, the Dialauges of Corderius, the celect and familiar Epistles of Cicero, the buik callit Sevin Seages, the Ballat buik, the Secund rudimentis of Dunbar, the Psalmes of Buchanan and Psalme buik.'

The only known copy of Smyth's edition of Holland's Seven Sages is that in the British Museum.

The last of the Scottish printers of the sixteenth century was Robert Charteris, the son and successor of Henry Charteris, but he did not succeed to the business until 1599, and his work lies chiefly in the succeeding century.

It may safely be said that the earliest press in Ireland of which there is any authentic notice was that of Humphrey Powell, of which there is the following note in the Act Books of the Privy[Pg 152] Council (New Series, vol. iii. p. 84), under date 18th July 1550:—

Nothing is known of Humphrey Powell's work in England beyond several small theological works issued between 1548 and 1549 from a shop in Holborn above the Conduit.

On his arrival in Ireland he set up his press in Dublin, and printed there the Prayer Book of Edward VI. with the colophon:—

Timperley, in his Encyclopædia (p. 314), says that Powell continued printing in Dublin for fifteen years, and removed to the southern side of the river to St. Nicholas Street.

In 1571 the first fount of Irish type was presented by Queen Elizabeth to John O'Kearney, treasurer of St. Patrick's, to print the Catechism which appeared in that year from the press of John Franckton. (Reed, Old English Letter Foundries, pp. 75, 186-7.) It was not a Pure Irish character, but a hybrid fount consisting for the most part of Roman and Italic letters, with the seven distinctly Irish sorts added. A[Pg 153] copy of the Catechism is exhibited in the King's Library, British Museum, and in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, is a copy of a broadside Poem on the last Judgement, sent over to the Archbishop of Canterbury as a specimen.

This type was afterwards used to print William O'Donnell's, or Daniel's, Irish Testament in 1602.

CHAPTER VII

THE STUART PERIOD

1603-1640

ne of the first acts of King James on his accession to the English throne was to strengthen the hands of the already powerful Company of Stationers. Hitherto all Primers and Psalters had been the exclusive privilege of the successors of Day and Seres, while Almanacs and Prognostications, another large and profitable source of revenue, had been the property of James Roberts and Richard Watkins. But now, by the royal authority, these two valuable patents were turned over to the Stationers to form part of their English stock. At the same time, the privileges of Robert Barker, son and successor to Christopher Barker, and king's printer by reversion, were increased by grants for printing all statutes, hitherto the monopoly of other printers. On the other hand, Robert Barker did not retain the sole possession of the royal business as men like Berthelet and[Pg 155] Pynson had been wont to do, but had joined with him in the patent John Norton, who had a special grant for printing all books in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and John Bill, who probably obtained his share by purchase. These three men were thus the chief printers during the early part of this reign.

Robert Barker had been made free of the Stationers' Company in 1589, when he joined his father's assigns, George Bishop and Ralph Newbery, in the management of the business. He was admitted to the livery of the Company in 1592, and upon his father's death succeeded to the office of King's printer by reversion. In 1601-2 he was warden of the Company, and filled the office of Master in 1605. Some time before 1618 he sold his moiety of the business to Bonham Norton and John Bill, and this arrangement was confirmed by Royal Charter in 1627.

Upon the death of Bonham Norton, Barker's name again appears in the imprint of the firm, and he continued printing until about 1645. It is said by Ames (vol. ii. p. 1091), and has been repeated by all writers since his day, that Robert Barker was committed to the King's Bench Prison in 1635, and that he remained a prisoner there until his death in 1645. No confirmation of this can be found in the State Papers; indeed the fact that he accompanied Charles I. to Newcastle in 1636, and was printing in other parts of[Pg 156] England until 1640, proves that he could not have been in prison the whole of the time from 1635 to 1645.

Robert Barker's work was almost entirely of an official character, the printing of the Scriptures, Book of Common Prayer, Statutes and Proclamations.

His work was very unequal, and his type, mostly of black letter, was not of the best.

His most important undertaking was the so-called 'authorised version' of the Bible in 1611. As a matter of fact it never was authorised in any official sense. The undertaking was proposed at a conference of divines, held at Hampton Court in 1604. The King manifested great interest in the scheme, but did not put his hand in his pocket towards the expenses, and the divines who undertook the translation obtained little except fame for their labours, while the whole cost of printing was borne by Robert Barker. Like all previous editions of the Scriptures in folio, this Bible of 1611 was printed in great primer black letter. It was preceded by an elaborately engraved title-page, the work of C. Boel of Richmond, and had also an engraved map of Canaan, partly the work of John Speed.

The type and ornaments were the same as had been used to print the first edition of the 'Bishops' Bible,' the initial letter to the Psalms containing the arms of Whittingham and Cecil.[Pg 157]

[Pg 158]Barker also possessed the handsome pictorial initial letters which had been used by John Day, and many of the ornaments and initials previously in the office of Henry Bynneman.

John Norton was the son of Richard Norton, a yeoman of Billingsley, county Shropshire; he was nephew of William Norton, and cousin of Bonham Norton, and was thus connected by marriage with the sixteenth century bookseller, William Bonham. He was three times Master of the Stationers' Company, in 1607, 1610, and 1612. On his death, in 1612, he left £1000 to the Company of Stationers, not as is generally stated as a legacy of his own, but rather as trustee of the bequest of his uncle, William Norton. The bulk of his property he left to his cousin, Bonham Norton (P. C. C. 5 Capell).

His press will always be remembered for the magnificent edition of the Works of St. Chrysostom, in eight folio volumes, printed at Eton in 1610, at the charge of Sir Henry Savile, the editor. The late T. B. Reed, in his History of the Old English Letter Foundries (p. 140), speaks of this edition as 'one of the most splendid examples of Greek printing in this country,' and further describes the types with which it was printed as 'a great primer body, very elegantly and regularly cast, with the usual numerous ligatures and abbreviations which characterised the Greek typography of that period' (p. 141).[Pg 159]

The title-page to the first volume was handsomely engraved, and a highly ornamental series of initial letters were used in it.

Another Greek work that Norton completed at Eton in the same year was the Sancti Gregorii Nazianzeni in Julianum Invectivae duae, in quarto.

In addition to his patent for printing Greek and Latin books, Norton also acquired from Francis Rea his patent for printing grammars, and by his will he directed a sum of money to be paid out of the profits of this patent to his wife Joyce.

John Bill was the son of Walter Bill, husbandman, of Wenlock, county Salop, and on the 25th July 1592 he apprenticed himself to John Norton. In 1601 he was admitted a freeman of the Company.

He appears to have been a man of shrewd business ability and some scholarship, as we find him writing in Latin to Dr. Wideman of Augsburg on the subject of books. He was also looked upon by the Government as an authority on matters concerning his business. Under his partnership with Bonham Norton, he secured a large share in the Royal business. John Norton bequeathed him a legacy of £10, and a similar sum to his wife.[Pg 161]

John Bill died in 1632, and on the 26th August of that year the whole of his stock was assigned to Mistress Joyce Norton, the widow of John Norton, and Master Whittaker. The list fills upwards of two pages of Arber's Transcripts (vol. iv. pp. 283-285), and includes the following notable works:—

Beza's Testament in Latin, Camden's Britannia, Comines' History, Cornelius Tacitus, Du Moulin's Defence of the Catholique Faith, Gerard's Herball, Goodwin's History of Henry VIII., Plutarch's Works, Rider's Dictionary, Spalato's Sermons, Usher's Gravissimæ questiones, Verstegan's Restitution of Decayed Intelligence.

The reversion of John Norton's patent for Greek and Latin books had been granted in 1604 to Robert Barker (Dom. S. P. 1604), but the year following Norton's death it was granted to Bonham Norton for thirty years (Dom. S. P. I., vol. 72, No. 5), and he also seems to have acquired the patent for printing grammars.

Bonham Norton was the only son of William Norton, stationer of London, who died in 1593, by his wife Joan, the daughter of William Bonham. He took up his freedom on the 4th February 1594, and was Master of the Stationers' Company in the years 1613, 1626, and 1629, and must have been one of the richest men in the trade. He was joined with Thomas Wight in a patent for printing Abridgements of the Statutes[Pg 162] in 1599, and later with John Bill in a share of the Royal printing-house. He is frequently mentioned in wills and other documents of this period. At the time of John Norton's death Bonham had a family of five sons and four daughters. He died intestate on the 5th April 1635, and administration of his estate was granted to his son John on the 28th May 1636 (Admon, Act Book 1636).

On the 9th May 1615 an order was made by the Court of the Stationers' Company, upon complaint made by the master printers of the number of presses then at work, that only nineteen printers, exclusive of the patentees, i.e. Robert Barker, John Bill, and Bonham Norton, should exercise the craft of printing in the city of London. There is nothing in the work of these men, judged as specimens of the printer's art, to interest us, but there were some whose work was of very much better character than others.

Richard Field, the successor of Thomas Vautrollier, and a fellow-townsman of Shakespeare, has already been spoken of in an earlier chapter. He printed many important books between 1601-1624, had two presses at work in 1615, and was Master of the Company in 1620. He maintained the high character that Vautrollier had given to the productions of his press.

Felix Kingston was the son of John Kingston of Paternoster Row, and was admitted a freeman of the Stationers' Company on the[Pg 163] 25th of June 1597, being translated from the Company of Grocers. Throughout the first half of the seventeenth century his press was never idle. He was Master of the Company in 1637.

Edward Aide was the son of John Aide of the Long Shop in the Poultry. He had two presses, and printed very largely for other men, but his type and workmanship were poor.

William and Isaac Jaggard are best known as the printers of the works of Shakespeare. They were associated in the production of the first folio in 1623, which came from the press of Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, at the charges of William Jaggard, Edward Blount, J. Smethwicke, and William Aspley; the editors being the poet's friends, J. Heminge and H. Condell.

In addition to being the first collected edition of Shakespeare's works, this was in many respects a remarkable volume. The best copies measure 13-1/2 x 8-1/2''. The title-page bears the portrait of the poet by Droeshout. The dedicatory epistle is in large italic type, and is followed by a second epistle, 'To the Readers,' in Roman. The verses in praise of the author, by Ben Jonson and others, are printed in a second fount of italic, and the Contents in a still smaller fount of the same letter. The text, printed in double columns, is in Roman and Italic, each page being enclosed within printer's rules. Of these various types,[Pg 164] the best is the large italic, which somewhat resembles Day's fount of the same letter. That of the text is exceedingly poor, while the setting of the type and rules leaves much to be desired. The arrangement and pagination are erratic. The book, like many other folios, was made up in sixes, and the first alphabet of signatures is correct and complete, while the second runs on regularly to the completion of the Comedies on cc.2. The Histories follow with a fresh alphabet, which the printer began as 'aa,' and continued as 'a' until he got to 'g,' when he inserted a 'gg' of eight leaves, and then continued from 'i' to 'x' in sixes to the end of the Histories. The Tragedies begin with Troilus and Cresside, the insertion of which was evidently an afterthought, as there is no mention of it in the 'Contents' of the volume, and the signatures of the sheets are ¶ followed by ¶¶ six leaves each. Then they start afresh with 'aa' and proceed regularly to 'hh,' the end of the Macbeth, the following signature being 'kk,' thus omitting the remainder of signature 'hh' and the whole of 'ii.' In a series of interesting letters communicated to Notes and Queries (8 S. vol. viii. pp. 306, 353, 429), the make up of this volume is explained very plausibly. The copyright of Troilus and Cresside belonged to R. Bonian and H. Walley, who apparently refused at first to give their sanction to its publication. But by that time it had been printed,[Pg 165] and the sheets signed for it to follow Macbeth, so that it had to be taken out. Arrangements having at last been made for its insertion in the work, it was reprinted and inserted where it is now found. It is also surmised that the original intention was to publish the work in three parts, and to this theory the repetition of the signatures lends colour.

One of the most interesting presses of the early Stuart period, both for the excellence of its work and the nature of the books that came from it, was that of William Stansby. This printer took up his freedom on the 7th January 1597, after serving a seven years' apprenticeship with John Windet. The following April he registered a book entitled The Polycie of the Turkishe Empire. This little quarto was, however, printed for him by his old master, John Windet, and there is no further entry in the registers until 1611, or fourteen years after the date at which he took up his freedom.

It would appear that Stansby began to print in 1609 with an edition of Greene's Pandosto, which was not registered. In 1611 he purchased the copyright in the books of John Windet for 13s. 40d., but three of them the Company added to its stock, with the undertaking that Stansby should always have the printing of them. One of these books was The Assize of Bread. On the 23rd February 1625 the whole of William[Pg 166] East's copies, including music, was assigned over to him. This list of books is the longest to be found in the registers, and covers every branch of literature.

About this time Stansby got into trouble with the Company for printing a seditious book, and his premises were nailed up, but eventually they were restored to him, and he continued in business until 1639, when his stock was transferred to Richard Bishop, and eventually came into the hands of John Haviland and partners.

Among his more important works may be mentioned the second and subsequent editions of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Politie, in folio; the Works of Ben Jonson, 1616, folio; Eadmer's Historia Novorum,1623, folio; Selden's Mare Clausum, 1635, folio; Blundeville's Exercises, 1622, quarto; Coryate's Crudities,1611, quarto.

He possessed a considerable stock of type, most of it good. Some of the ornamental headbands and initial letters that he used were of an artistic character, and were used with good effect. An instance of this may be seen in his edition of Hooker, 1611, which has an engraved title-page by William Hole, showing a view of St. Paul's. The page of Contents is surrounded on three sides by a border made up of odds and ends of printers' ornaments, yet, in spite of its miscellaneous character, the effect is by no means bad. The border to the title-page of the fifth book[Pg 167] was one of a series that formed part of the stock of the Company, and were lent out to any who required them. Stansby's presswork was uniformly good, and in this respect alone he may be ranked among the best printers of his time.

Another of the printers referred to in the list was somewhat of a refractory character, a printer of popular books at the risk of imprisonment, a class of men who were to figure largely in the events of the next few years. Nicholas Okes is known best, perhaps, as the printer of some of the writings of Dekker, Greene, and Heywood; but in 1621 he printed, without license, Wither's Motto, a tract from the pen of George Wither, which had been published by John Marriot a short time before. This satire aroused the ire of the Government, and all connected with it at once made the acquaintance of the nearest jail. In the State Papers for that year are preserved the examination of the author, the booksellers, and the printer, Nicholas Okes. One of the witnesses declared that Okes told him that he had printed the book with the consent of the Company, and that the Master (Humphrey Lownes) had declared that if he was committed they would get him discharged. Another declared that Okes had printed two impressions of 3000 each, using the same title-page as that to the first edition, and that one of the wardens of the Company (Matthew Lownes) continued to[Pg 168] sell the book, and called for more copies. The only defence Okes made was that he believed the book to be duly licensed, and when challenged as to why he printed Marriot's name on the title-page, declared he simply printed the book as he found it. (S. P. Dom. James I., vol. cxxii. Nos. 12 et seq.)

On the 10th December 1623 an end was put for the time to the disputes that had for so long a period been raised by the Stationers' Company to the rights of the printers of the University of Cambridge.

The Company's last attempt to suppress Cantrell Legg, and prevent him from printing grammars and prayer-books, led to an appeal to the King, who made short work of the matter by ordering the two parties to come to an agreement. The terms of the settlement were:—

2. That the University should be allowed to print, conjointly with the London stationers, all books except the Bible, Book of Common Prayer, grammar, psalms, psalters, primers, etc., but they were only to employ one press upon privileged books.

3. That the University should print no almanacs then belonging to the Stationers, but they might print prognostications brought to them first.[Pg 169]

5. That the University printer should be at liberty to sell all grammars and psalms that he had already printed, and such as had been seized by the Company were to be restored.

To the last clause a note was added to the effect that Bonham Norton was prepared to buy them at reasonable prices.

On the accession of Charles I. plague paralysed trade and made gaps in the ranks of the Stationers' Company. During the autumn of 1624 and the following year several noted printers died, probably from this cause. Chief among these were George Eld, Edward Aide, and Thomas Snodham. Eld was succeeded by his partner, Miles Flessher or Fletcher, and Aide by his widow, Elizabeth. Thomas Snodham had inherited the business of Thomas East. The copyright in these passed to William Stansby, one of his executors; but the materials of the office, that is the types, woodcut letters, and ornaments, and the presses, were sold to William Lee for £165, and shortly afterwards passed into the possession of Thomas Harper. They included a fount of black letter, and several founts of Roman and Italic of all sizes, and one of Greek letter, all of which had belonged to Thomas East, and were by this time the worse for wear.

But the plague was at the worst only a tem[Pg 170]porary hindrance; the censorship of the press the printers had always with them, and this, which had been comparatively mildly used during the late reign, was now in the hands of men who wielded it with severity. During the next fifteen years the printers, publishers, and booksellers of London were subjected to a persecution hitherto unknown. During that time there were few printers who did not know the inside of the Gatehouse or the Compter, or who were not subjected to heavy fines. For the literature of that age was chiefly of a religious character, and its tone mainly antagonistic to Laud and his party. All other subjects, whether philosophical, scientific, or dramatic, were sorely neglected. The later works of Bacon, the plays of Shirley and Shakerley Marmion, and a few classics, most of which came from the University presses, are sparsely scattered amongst the flood of theological discussion. The history of the best work in the trade in London is practically the history of three men—John Haviland, Miles Fletcher, and Robert Young, who joined partnership and, in addition to a share in the Royal printing-house, obtained by purchase the right of printing the Abridgements to the Statutes, and bought up several large and old-established printing-houses, such as those of George Purslowe, Edward Griffin, and William Stansby. Bernard Alsop and Thomas Fawcett were also among the large capitalists of this time,[Pg 171] while Nathaniel Butter, Nicholas Bourne, and Thomas Archer were also interested in several businesses beside their own. From the press of Haviland came editions of Bacon's Essays, in quarto, in 1625, 1629, 1632; of his Apophthegmes, in octavo, in 1625; of his Miscellanies, an edition in quarto, in 1629, and his Opera Moralia in 1638. From the press of Fletcher came the Divine Poems of Francis Quarles, in 1633, 1634, and 1638, and the Hieroglyphikes of the life of Man, by the same author, in 1638; while amongst Young's publications, editions of Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet appeared in 1637. Bernard Alsop and his partner printed the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Decker, Greene, Lodge, and Shirley, the poems of Brathwait, Breton, and Crashaw, and the writings of Fuller and More.

But the most notable books of this period were not those enumerated above, but rather those which brought their authors, printers, and publishers within the clutches of the law, and the story of the struggle for freedom of speech is one of the most interesting in the history of English printing. Three men—Henry Burton, rector of St. Matthews, Friday Street; William Prynne, barrister of Lincoln's Inn; and John Bastwick, surgeon, are generally looked upon as the chief of the opposition to Laud and his party; but there were a number of other writers on the[Pg 172] same subject, whose works brought them into the Court of High Commission. Thus, on the 15th February 1626, Benjamin Fisher, bookseller, John Okes, Bernard Alsop, and Thomas Fawcett, printers, were examined concerning a book which they had caused to be printed and sold, called A Short View of the Long Life and reign of Henry the Third, of which Sir Robert Cotton was the author. Fisher stated in his evidence that five sheets of this book were printed by John Okes, and one other by Alsop and Fawcett, which in itself is an indication of the immense difficulty that must have attended the discovery of the printers of forbidden books. The manuscript Fisher declared he had bought from Alsop, who, in his turn, said that he bought it of one Ferdinando Ely, 'a broker in books,' for the sum of twelvepence, and printed what was equivalent to a thousand copies of the one sheet delivered to him, 'besides waste.' Nicholas Okes declared that his son John had printed the book without his knowledge and while he (Nicholas) was a prisoner in the Compter. Ferdinando Ely was a second-hand bookseller in Little Britain.

No very serious consequences seem to have followed in this instance; but in the following year (1628), Henry Burton was charged by the same authorities with being the author of certain unlicensed books, The Baiting of the Pope's Bull, Israel's Fast, Trial of Private Devotions, Con[Pg 173]flicts and Comforts of Conscience, A Plea to an Appeal, and Seven Vials. The first of these was licensed, but the remainder were not. They were said to have been printed by Michael Sparke and William Jones; Sparke was a bookseller, carrying on business at the sign of the Blue Bible, in Green Arbour, in little Old Bayley, and he employed William Jones to print for him. The parties were then warned to be careful, but on 2nd April 1629 Sparke was arrested and thrown into the Fleet, and with him, at the same time, were charged William Jones, Augustine Mathewes, printers, and Nathaniel Butter, printer and publisher. Butter's offence was the issuing of a newspaper or pamphlet called The Reconciler; Sparke was charged with causing to be printed another of Burton's works, entitled Babel no Bethel, and Spencer's Musquil Unmasked; while Augustine Mathewes was accused of printing, for Sparke, William Prynne's Antithesis of the Church of England. Each party put in an answer, and of these, Michael Sparke's is the most interesting. He declared that the decree of 1586 was contrary to Magna Charta, and an infringement of the liberties of the subject, and he refused to say who, beside Mathewes, had printed Prynne's book; it afterwards turned out to be William Turner of Oxford, who confessed to printing several other unlicensed books. A short term of imprisonment appears to have[Pg 174] been the punishment inflicted on the parties in this instance.

Both in 1630 and 1631 several other printers suffered imprisonment from the same cause, and Michael Sparke, who appears to have given out the work in most cases, was declared to be more refractory and offensive than ever.

In 1632 appeared William Prynne's noted book, The Histrio-Mastix, The Player's Scourge or Actor's Tragedie, a thick quarto of over one thousand closely printed pages, which bore on the title-page the imprint, 'printed by E. A. and W. J. for Michael Sparke.' This book, as its title implies, was an attack on stage-plays and acting. There was nothing in it to alarm the most sensitive Government, and even the licenser, though he afterwards declared that the book was altered after it left his hands, could find nothing in it to condemn. But, as it happened, there was a passage concerning the presence of ladies at stage-plays, and as the Queen had shortly before attended a masque, the passage in question was held to allude to her, and accordingly Prynne, Sparke, and the printers—one of whom was William Jones—were thrown into prison, and in 1633 were brought to trial before the Star Chamber. The printers appear to have escaped punishment; but Prynne was condemned to pay a fine of £1000, to be degraded from his degree, to have both his ears cropped in the pillory, and[Pg 175] to spend the rest of his days in prison; while Sparke was fined £500, and condemned to stand in the pillory, but without other degradation.

During this year John Bastwick also issued two books directed against Episcopacy, both of which are now scarce. One was entitled Elenchus Religionis Papisticæ, and the other Flagellum Pontificis. They were printed abroad, and as a punishment their author was condemned to undergo a sentence little less severe than that passed upon Prynne, who, in spite of his captivity, continued to write and publish a great number of pamphlets. Amongst these was one entitled Instructions to Church Wardens, printed in 1635. In the course of the evidence concerning this book, mention was made of a special initial letter C, which was said to represent a pope's head when turned one way, and an army of soldiers when turned the other, and to be unlike any other letter in use by London printers at that time.

For printing this and other books, Thomas Purslowe, Gregory Dexter, and William Taylor of Christchurch were struck from the list of master printers.[11]

In 1637 appeared Prynne's other notorious tract, Newes from Ipswich, a quarto of six leaves, for which he was fined by the Star Chamber a further sum of £5000, and condemned to lose the rest of his ears, and to be branded on the cheek with[Pg 176] the letters S. L. (i.e. scurrilous libeller), a sentence that was carried out on the 30th June of this year with great barbarity. The imprint to this tract ran 'Printed at Ipswich,' but its real place of printing was London, and perhaps the name of Robert Raworth, which occurs in the indictment, may stand for Richard Raworth, the printer whom Sir John Lambe declared to be 'an arrant knave.' Or the printer may have been William Jones,[12] who about this time was fined £1000 for printing seditious books.

In 1634 the King wrote to Archbishop Laud to the effect that Doctor Patrick Young, keeper of the King's library, who had lately published the Clementis ad Corinthios Epistola prior in Greek and Latin, and in conjunction with Bishop Lindsell of Peterborough, now proposed to make ready for the press one or more Greek copies every year, if Greek types, matrices, and money were forthcoming. The King expressed his desire to encourage the work, and therefore commanded the Archbishop that the fine of £300, which had been inflicted upon Robert Barker and Martin Lucas in the preceding year, for what was described as a base and corrupt printing of the Bible in 1631 (the omission of the word 'not' from the seventh commandment, which has earned for the edition the name of the Wicked Bible), should be converted to the buying of Greek letters. The King[Pg 177] further ordered that Barker and Lucas should print one work every year at their own cost of ink, paper, and workmanship, and as many copies as the Archbishop should think fit to authorise. The Archbishop thereupon wrote to the printers, who expressed their willingness to fall in with the scheme, and a press, furnished with a very good fount of Greek letter, was established at Blackfriars. But the result was not what might have been expected. Partly owing to the political troubles that followed its foundation, and partly perhaps to delay on the part of the printers, the only important works that came from this press were Dr. Patrick Young's translation of the book of Job, from the Codex Alexandrinus, a folio printed in 1637, and an edition in Greek of the Epistles of St. Paul, with a commentary by the Bishop of Peterborough, also a folio, which came from the same press in 1636. The Greek letter used in this office cannot be compared for beauty or delicacy of outline with that which Norton had used in the Chrysostom of 1610.

On the 11th July 1637 was published another Star Chamber Decree concerning printers. Professor Arber, in his fourth volume (p. 528), states that the appearance of a tract entitled The Holy Table, Name and Thing must ever be associated with this decree; but it may be doubted whether it was not rather to general causes, such as the growing power of the press, the long-continued attack[Pg 178] upon the Prelacy by pamphleteers, which no fear of mutilation or imprisonment could stop, than any one particular tract, which led to that severe and crushing edict.

This act, which was published on the 11th July 1637, consisted of thirty-three clauses, and after reciting former ordinances, and the number of 'libellous, seditious, and mutinous' books that were then daily published, decreed that all books were to be licensed: law books by the Lord Chief Justices and the Lord Chief Baron; books dealing with history, by the principal Secretaries of State; books on heraldry, by the Earl Marshal; and on all other subjects, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, or the Chancellors or Vice-Chancellors of the two Universities. Two copies of every book submitted for publication were to be handed to the licensee, one of which he was to keep for future reference. Catalogues of books imported into the country were to be sent to the Archbishop of Canterbury or Bishop of London, and no consignments were to be opened until the representatives of one of these dignitaries and of the Stationers' Company were present. The name of the printer, the author, and the publisher was to be placed in every book, and, with a view to encouraging English printing, it was decreed further that no merchant or bookseller should import any English book printed abroad. No person was to erect a printing-press, or to let any[Pg 179] premises for the purpose of carrying on printing, without first giving notice to the Company, and no joiner or carpenter was to make a press without similar notice.

The number of master printers was limited by this decree to twenty, and those chosen were:—

Each of these was to be bound in sureties of £300 to good behaviour. No printer was allowed to have more than two presses unless he were a Master or Warden of the Company, when he might have three. A Master or Warden might keep three apprentices but no more, a master printer on the livery might have two, and the rest one only; but every printer was expected to give work to journeyman printers when required to do so, because it was stated that it was they who were mainly responsible for the publication of the libellous, seditious, and mutinous books referred to. All reprints of books were to be licensed in[Pg 180] the same way as first editions. The Company were to have the right of search, and four typefounders, John Grismand, Thomas Wright, Arthur Nichols, and Alexander Fifield were considered sufficient for the whole trade. Finally, a copy of every book printed was to be sent to the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The penalties for breaking this decree included imprisonment, destruction of stock, and a whipping at the cart's tail.

The twenty printers appointed by this decree were the subject of much investigation by Sir John Lamb, whose numerous notes and lists concerning them, as reprinted in the third volume of Professor Arber's transcripts from documents at the Record Office, are an invaluable acquisition to the history of the English press. It will be seen that four of the chief offenders of the previous ten or eleven years, namely William Jones, Nicholas Okes, Augustine Mathewes, and Robert or Richard Raworth, were absolutely excluded, their places being taken by Marmaduke Parsons, Thomas Paine, and a new man, Thomas Purslowe, probably the son of Widow Purslowe. Conscious perhaps that their positions were in jeopardy, all four petitioned the Archbishop to be placed among the number, but in vain, and another man who was excluded at the same time was John Norton, a descendant of a long family of printers of that name, and who had served his apprenticeship in the King's printing-house. Only one of those[Pg 181] who had at times come before the High Commission Court was pardoned, and allowed to retain his place. This was Bernard Alsop.

The clause requiring all reprints to be licensed caused a good deal of murmuring, as did also that which forbade haberdashers, and others who were not legitimate booksellers, to sell books.

The small number of type-founders allowed to the trade has also been a subject of much comment by writers on this subject; but judging from the evidence of Arthur Nicholls, one of the four appointed, the number was quite sufficient. Nicholls was the founder of the Greek type used in the new office of Blackfriars, and his experience was certainly not likely to encourage other men to set up in the same trade. At the time when he was appointed one of the four founders under the decree, he could not make a living by his trade, and though he does not expressly state the fact, his evidence seems to imply that English printers at that time obtained most of their type from abroad, and it is beyond question that they had long since ceased to cast their own letter.

Drastic as this decree was, it practically remained a dead letter, for the reason that in the troublous times that followed within the next five years, the Government had their hands full in other directions, and were obliged to let the printers alone.[Pg 182]

Between this date and the year 1640, there was very little either of interest or value that came from the English press. The memory of rare Ben Jonson induced Henry Seile, of the Tiger's Head in Fleet Street, to publish in 1638 a quarto with the title Jonsonus Virbius: or the Memory of Ben Jonson. Revived by the friends of the Muses, and among the contributors were Lord Falkland, Sir John Beaumont the younger, Sir Thomas Hawkins, Henry King, Edmund Waller, Shackerley Marmion, and several others. The printer's initials are given as E. P., but these do not suit any of those who were authorised under the decree of the year before, and they may refer to Elizabeth Purslowe. That there was a considerable number of persons who, in spite of the Puritan tendencies of the age, loved a good play, is clearly seen from the number turned out during the years 1638, 1639, and 1640 by Thomas Nabbes, Henry Glapthorne, James Shirley, and Richard Brome. These of course were mostly quartos, very poorly printed, and chiefly from the presses of Richard Oulton, John Okes, and Thomas Cotes. Of collected works, there came out in small octavo form the Poems of Thomas Carew from the press of John Dawson in 1640, and a collection of Shakespeare's Poems from the press of Thomas Cotes in the same year. There were also published in 1640 from the press of Richard Bishop, who had succeeded to the business of William[Pg 183] Stansby, Selden's De Jure Naturali et Gentium juxta disciplinam Ebræorum, in folio, and William Somner's Antiquities of Canterbury, one of the earliest and best of the contributions to county bibliography.

Having now brought the record of the London press down to the time when it became engulphed in the chaos of civil war, it is time to turn to the University presses of Oxford and Cambridge.

Since the year 1585, these were the only provincial presses allowed by law, and removed as they were from the turmoil of conflicting parties, and the severity of trade competition, in which the London printers lived, their work showed more uniformity of excellence, and on the whole surpassed that of the London printers.

Down to the year 1617 Oxford appears to have had but one printer, John Barnes; but in that year we find two at work, John Lichfield and William Wrench, the latter giving place the following year to James Short. In 1624 the two Oxford printers were John Lichfield and William Turner—the second, as we have seen, being notorious as the printer of unlicensed pamphlets for Michael Sparke the London publisher; but in spite of this we find him holding his position until 1640, though in the meantime John Lichfield had been succeeded in business[Pg 184] by his son, Leonard. In the introduction to his bibliography of the Oxford Press, Mr. Falconer Madan has given a list of the most important books printed at Oxford between 1585 and 1640, which we venture to reprint here with a few additions:—

As we have noted, the University of Cambridge had after a long struggle established its claim to print editions of the Scriptures and other works, and like its sister University turned out some of the best work of that period.

A notable book from this press was Phineas Fletcher's Purple Island, a quarto published in 1633. The title-page was printed in red and black, in well-cut Roman of four founts, with the lozenge-shaped device of the University in the[Pg 185] centre, the whole being surrounded by a neat border of printers' ornaments. Each page of the book was enclosed within rules, which seems to have been the universal fashion of the trade at this period, and at the end of each canto the device seen on the title-page was repeated. The Eclogues and Poems had each a separate title-page, and two well-executed copper-plate engravings occur in the volumes.

We must not close this chapter without noting that in 1639 printing began in the New England across the sea. The records of Harvard College tell us that the Rev. Joseph Glover 'gave to the College a font of printing letters, and some gentlemen of Amsterdam gave towards furnishing of a printing-press with letters forty-nine pounds, and something more.' Glover himself died on the voyage out from England, but Stephen Day, the printer whom he was bringing with him, arrived in safety and was installed at Harvard College. The first production of his press was the Freeman's Oath, the second an Almanac, the third, published in 1640, The Psalms in Metre, Faithfully translated for the Use, Edification, and Comfort of the Saints in Publick and Private, especially in New England. This, the first book printed in North America, was an octavo of three hundred pages, of passably good workmanship, and is commonly known as the Bay Psalter—Cambridge, the home of Harvard College, lying[Pg 186] near Massachusetts Bay. Stephen Day continued to print at Cambridge till 1648 or 1649, when he was succeeded in the charge of the press by Samuel Green, whose work will be mentioned at the end of our next chapter.

CHAPTER VIII

FROM 1640 TO 1700

aving at length reached what is without doubt the darkest and the most wretched period in the history of English printing, it may be well before passing a severe condemnation on those who represented the trade at that time, to remind ourselves of the difficulties against which they had to contend.

The art of printing in England had never at any time reached such a point of excellence as in Paris under the Estiennes, in Antwerp under Plantin, or in Venice under the Aldi. So great was the competition between the printers, and so heavy the restrictions placed upon them, that profit rather than beauty or workmanship was their first consideration; and when to these drawbacks was added the general disorganisation of trade consequent upon the outbreak of civil war, it is not surprising that English work failed to maintain its already low standard of excellence. Literature, other than that which chronicled[Pg 188] the fortunes of the opposing factions, was almost totally neglected. Writers, even had they found printers willing to support them, would have found no readers. On the other hand, such was the feverish anxiety manifested in the struggle, that it was scarcely possible to publish the Diurnals and Mercuries which contained the latest news fast enough, and the press was unequal to the strain, although the number of printers in London during this period was three times larger than that allowed by the decree of 1637. Professor Arber, in his Transcript, says that this increase in the number of printers was due to the removal of the gag by the Long Parliament. There is no proof that the Long Parliament ever intended to remove the gag; but having its hands full with other and weightier matters it could find no time to deal with the printers, and doubtless, in the heat of the fight, it was only too thankful to avail itself of the pens of those who replied to the attacks of the Royalist press. The best evidence of this is, that as soon as opportunity offered, and in spite of the warning of the greatest literary man of that day, who was on their own side, the Long Parliament reimposed the gag with as much severity as the hierarchy which it had deposed.

For the publication of the news of the day, each party had its own organs. On the side of the Parliament the principal journals were[Pg 189] The Kingdoms Weekly Intelligencer, printed and published by Nathaniel Butter, and Mercurius Britannicus, edited by Marchmont Nedham; while Mercurius Aulicus, edited by clever John Birkenhead, represented the Royalists, and was ably seconded by the Perfect Occurrences, printed by John Clowes and Robert Ibbitson.

These sheets, which usually consisted of from four to eight quarto pages, contained news of the movements and actions of the opposing armies, and the proceedings of the Parliament at Westminster, or of the King's Council at Oxford or wherever he happened to be. They were published sometimes twice and even three times a week. The political pamphlets were bitter and scurrilous attacks by each party against the other, or the hare-brained prophecies of so-called astrologers, such as William Lilly, George Wharton, and John Gadbury. These two classes formed more than half the printed literature of those unhappy times, and the remainder of the output of the press was pretty well filled up with sermons, exhortations, and other religious writings. The rapidity with which the literature was turned out accounts for the wretched and slipshod appearance it presents. Any old types or blocks were brought into use, and there is evidence of blocks and initial letters which had formed part of the stock of the printers of a century earlier being brought to light again at this time. Unfortunately the[Pg 190] evil did not stop here, for careless workmanship, indifference, and want of enterprise, are the leading characteristics of the printing trade during the latter half of the seventeenth century. But as, even in this darkest hour of the nation's fortunes, the soul of literature was not crushed, and the voice of the poet could still make itself heard, so it is a great mistake to suppose that there were no good printers during the period covered by the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth.

Take as an example the little duodecimo entitled Instructions for Forreine Travell, which came from the pen of James Howell, and was printed by T. B., no doubt Thomas Brudnell, for Humphrey Moseley. Some of the founts, especially the larger Roman, are very unevenly and badly cast, but on the whole the presswork was carefully done. The same may also be said of the folio edition of Sir R. Baker's Chronicle, published in 1643. In this case we do not know who was the printer; but the ornaments and initials lead us to suppose that it was the work of William Stansby's successor. The prose tracts again that Milton wrote between 1641-45 are certainly far better printed than many of their contemporaries, and prove that Matthew Simmons, who printed most of them, and who was one of the Commonwealth men, deserved the position he afterwards obtained. The first collected edition of Milton's poems was published[Pg 191] by Humphrey Moseley in 1645. This was a small octavo, in two parts, with separate title-pages, and a portrait of the author by William Marshall, and came from the press of Ruth Raworth. In 1646 there appeared A Collection of all the Incomparable Peeces written by Sir John Suckling and published by a freend to perpetuate his memory. This came from the press of Thomas Walkley, who had issued the first edition of Aglaura and the later plays of the same writer. Walkley also printed in small octavo, for Moseley, the Poems of Edmond Waller, but his work was none of the best.

A printer of considerable note at this time was William Dugard, who in 1644 was chosen headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School, and set up a printing-press there. In January 1649 he printed the first edition of the famous book Eikon Basilike, and followed it up by a translation of Salmasius' Defensio Regia, for which the Council of State immediately ordered his arrest, seized his presses, and wrote to the Governors of the school, ordering them to elect a new schoolmaster, 'Mr. Dugard having shewn himself an enemy to the state by printing seditious and scandalous pamphlets, and therefore unfit to have charge of the education of youths' (Dom. S. P. Interregnum, pp. 578-583). Sir James Harrington, member of the Council of State, and author of Oceana, who seems to have known some[Pg 192]thing about Dugard, interceded with the Council on his behalf, and at the same time persuaded him to give up the Royalist cause. So his presses were restored to him, and henceforward he appears to have devoted himself with equal zeal to his new masters.

He was the printer of Milton's answer to Salmasius, published by the Council's command, of a book entitled Mare Clausum, also published by authority, of the Catechesis Ecclesiarum, a book which the Council found to contain dangerous opinions and ordered to be burnt, and of a tract written by Milton's nephew, John Phillips, entitled Responsio ad apologiam. His initials are also met with in many other books of that time.

His press was furnished with a good assortment of type, and his press-work was much above the average of that period.

Among other books that came from the London press during this troubled time, we may single out three which have found a lasting place in English literature. The first is Robert Herrick's Hesperides, printed in the years 1647-48; the second a volume of verse, by Richard Lovelace, entitled Lucasta, Epodes, Odes, Sonnets, Songs, etc., printed in 1649 by Thomas Harper; the last Izaak Walton's Complete Angler, which came from the press of John Maxey in 1653. All were small octavos, indifferently printed with[Pg 193] poor type, and no pretensions to artistic workmanship.

In 1649, the year of Charles I.'s execution, the Council of State, in consequence of the number of 'scandalous and seditious pamphlets' which were constantly appearing, in spite of all decrees and acts to the contrary, ordered certain printers to enter into recognizances in two sureties of £300, and their own bond for a similar amount, not to print any such books, or allow their presses to be used for that purpose. Accordingly, in the Calendar of State Papers for the year 1649-50 (pp. 522, 523), we find a list of no less than sixty printers in London and the two Universities who entered into such sureties. In almost every case the address is given in full, in itself a gain, at a time when the printer's name rarely appeared in the imprint of a book. This list has already been printed in Bibliographica (vol. ii. pp. 225-26), but as it is of the greatest interest for the history of printing during the remainder of the century, it is inserted here (see Appendix No. 1.).

While it does not include all the printers having presses at that time, yet, if we remember that under the Star Chamber decree of 1637 the number in London was strictly limited to twenty, it shows how rapid the growth of the trade was in those twelve years. Of the original twenty, only three seem to have survived the troubles and dangers of the Civil Wars—Bernard[Pg 194] Alsop, Richard Bishop, and Thomas Harper, though the places of three more were filled by their survivors—Elizabeth Purslowe standing in the place of her husband, Thomas Purslowe; Gertrude Dawson succeeding her husband, John Dawson; and James Flesher or Fletcher in the room of his father, Miles Flesher. John Gresmond and James Moxon were type-founders, Henry Hills and John Field were appointed printers to the State under Cromwell, and Thomas Newcomb was also largely employed, and shared with the other two the privilege of Bible printing. Roger Norton was the direct descendant of old John Norton, who died in 1590. Of Roycroft and Simmons we shall hear a good deal later on, as indeed we shall of many others in this list. The only names that hardly seem to warrant insertion in the list as printers are those of John and Richard Royston. Although they were for many years stationers to King Charles II., we cannot hear of any printing-presses in their possession.

With the quieter time of the Commonwealth, several notable works were produced, though the annual output of books was much below the average of the seven years preceding. Foremost among the publications of that time must be placed Sir William Dugdale's Monasticon Anglicanum, the first volume of which appeared in 1655.

As a monument of study and research this[Pg 195] book will always remain a standard work of English topography; and it was not unworthily printed. The preparation of the numerous plates for the illustrations, and the setting up of so much intricate letterpress, must have been a very onerous work. This first volume, a large and handsome folio, came from the press of Richard Hodgkinson, and was printed in pica Roman in double columns, with a great deal of italic and black letter intermixed. The types were as good as any to be found in England at that time, and the press-work was carefully done. The engravings were chiefly the work of Hollar, aided by Edward Mascall and Daniel King, and are excellently reproduced. The whole work occupied eighteen years in publication, the second volume being printed by Alice Warren, the widow of Thomas Warren, in 1661, and the third and last by Thomas Newcomb in 1673; but these later volumes differed very little in appearance from the first, the same method of setting and the same mixture of founts being adhered to.

Sir William Dugdale followed this up in 1656 by publishing, through the press of Thomas Warren, his Antiquities of Warwickshire, a folio of 826 pages. On the title-page is seen the device of old John Wolfe, the City printer. The dedication of this book was printed in great primer; but the look of the text was marred by a bad fount of black letter which did not print[Pg 196] well. Like the Monasticon, this work was illustrated with maps and portraits by Hollar and Vaughan.

Another considerable undertaking was the Historical Collections of John Rushworth, in eight folio volumes, of which the first was printed by Newcomb in 1659, the others between 1680 and 1701.

But the great typographical achievement of the century was the Polyglott Bible, edited by Brian Walton. It was the fourth great Bible of the kind which had been published. The earliest was the Complutensian, printed at Alcala in 1517, with Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Chaldean texts. Next came the Antwerp Polyglott, printed at the Plantin Press in 1572, which, in addition to the texts above mentioned, gave the Syriac version. This was followed in 1645 by the Paris Polyglott, which added Arabic and Samaritan, was in ten folio volumes, and took seventeen years to complete.

The London Polyglott of 1657, which exceeded all these in the number of texts, was mainly due to the enterprise and industry of Brian Walton, Bishop of Chester. This famous scholar and divine was born at Cleveland, in Yorkshire, in 1600. He was educated at Cambridge, and after serving as curate in All Hallows, in Bread Street, became rector of St. Martin's Orgar and of St. Giles in the Fields. He was sequestered from[Pg 197] his living at St. Martin's during the troubles of the Revolution, and fled to Oxford, and it was while there that he is said to have formed the idea of the Polyglott Bible.

The first announcement of the great undertaking was made in 1652, when a type specimen sheet, believed to be still in existence, was printed by James Flesher or Fletcher of Little Britain, and issued with the prospectus, which was printed by Roger Norton of Blackfriars for Timothy Garthwaite. Walton's Polyglott was the second book printed by subscription in England, Minsheu's Dictionary in Eleven Languages having been published in this manner in 1617. The terms were £10 per copy, or £50 for six copies. The estimated cost of the first volume was £1500, and of succeeding volumes £1200, and such was the spirit with which the work was taken up that £9000 was subscribed before the first volume was put to press.

To the texts which had appeared in previous Polyglotts, Persian and Ethiopic were added, so that in all nine languages were included in the work—that is, Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Chaldean, Syriac, Arabic, Samaritan, Persian, and Ethiopic—besides much additional matter in the form of tables, lexicons, and grammars. No single book was printed in all of these, only the Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic running throughout the work, while the Hebrew appears in the Old Testament,[Pg 198] the Psalms in Ethiopic, and the New Testament has, in addition to the four principal texts, the Ethiopic and Persian.

The whole work occupied six folio volumes, measuring 16 x 10-3/4, and was printed by Thomas Roycroft from types supplied by the four recognised typefounders. At the commencement of the first volume is a portrait of Walton by Bombert, followed by an elaborately engraved title-page, the work of Wenceslaus Hollar, an architectural design adorned with scenes from Scripture history. The second title-page was printed in red ink, and the text was so arranged that each double page, when open, showed all the versions of the same passage. The types used in this work have been described in detail by Rowe Mores in his Dissertations upon English Founders, and by Talbot Baines Reed in his work upon the Old English Letter Foundries (Chap. vii. pp. 164, et seqq.). Speaking of the English founts, the last-named writer points out that the double pica, Roman and italic, seen in the Dedication, is the same fount that was cut by the sixteenth-century printer, John Day, and used by him to print the Life of Alfred the Great. Mr. Reed adds that, in spite of a certain want of uniformity in the bodies, the Ethiopic and Samaritan were especially good, and the Syriac and Arabic boldly cut.

But it was not only for its typographic ex[Pg 199]cellence that the book was remarkable. The rapidity with which this great undertaking passed through the press is no less astonishing. All six volumes were printed within four years, the first appearing in September 1654, the second in 1655, the third in 1656, and the last three in 1657. Looking at the labour involved by such an undertaking, it has been rightly described by Mr. T. B. Reed as a lasting glory to the typography of the seventeenth century.

Oliver Cromwell, under whose government this noble work was accomplished, had assisted, as far as lay in his power, by permitting the importation of the paper free of duty; and in the first editions this assistance was gracefully acknowledged by the editor, but on the Restoration those passages were altered or omitted to make room for compliments to Charles II.

Amongst those who ably assisted Walton in his labours was Dr. Edmund Castell, who prepared a Heptaglott Lexicon for the better study of the various languages used in the Polyglott. This work received the support of all the learned men of the time, but the undertaking was the ruin of its author, and a great part of the impression perished in the destruction of Roycroft's premises in the Great Fire of 1666.

The Restoration brought with it little change in the conditions under which printing was carried on in England, or in the lot of the printers them[Pg 200]selves. There is still preserved in the Public Record Office a document which throws considerable light on this matter, and is believed to have been drawn up either in 1660 or in 1661. This is a petition signed by eleven of the leading London printers, for the incorporation of the printers into a body distinct from the Company of Stationers, and appended to it are the 'reasons' for the proposed change, which occupy four or five closely written folio sheets. The men who put forward this petition were:—

and it was undoubtedly this band of men, some of them the biggest men in the trade, who formed the 'Companie of Printers,' for whom in 1663 a pamphlet was issued, entitled A Brief Discourse concerning Printers and Printing. For the printed pamphlet embodies the same views put forward in the petition, only backed up with fresh evidence and terse arguments. The claim[Pg 201] of the printers amounted to this, that the Company of Stationers had become mainly a Company of Booksellers, that in order to cheapen printing they had admitted a great many more printers than were necessary, and from this cause arose the great quantity of 'scandalous and seditious' books that were constantly being published. They go on to say that the condition of the great body of printers was deplorable, 'they can hardly subsist in credit to maintain their families ... When an ancient printer died, and his copies were exposed to sale, few or none of the young ones were of ability to deal for them, nor indeed for any other, so that the Booksellers have engross'd almost all.' The petitioners show also that the Company of Stationers was grown so large that none could be Master or Warden until he was well advanced in life, and therefore unable to keep a vigilant eye on the trade, while a printer did not become Master once in ten or twenty years. They argue that the best expedient for checking these disorders and ensuring lawful printing, would be to incorporate the printers into a distinct body, and they advocate the registration of presses, the right of search, and the enforcement of sureties. Finally, they claim that this plan would also do much to improve printing as an art, as under the existing conditions there was no encouragement to the printers to produce good work.[Pg 202]

This petition, though it does not seem to have received any official reply, was noticed by Sir Roger L'Estrange in the Proposals which he laid before the House of Parliament, and which undoubtedly formed the basis of the Act of 1662. Sir Roger L'Estrange had been an active adherent of the Royal cause, and soon after the Restoration, on the 22nd February 1661-2, he was granted a warrant to search for and seize unlicensed presses and seditious books (State Papers, Charles II. Vol. li. No. 6). A list is still extant of books which he had seized at the office of John Hayes, one of the signatories of the above petition. So that although the office of Surveyor of the Press was not officially created until 1663, it is clear from the issue of the warrant, and also from the fact of L'Estrange having been directed to draw up proposals for the regulation of the Press, that he was acting in that capacity more than a twelvemonth earlier. His proposals were, in 1663, printed in pamphlet form with the title, Considerations and Proposals in order to the Regulation of the Press, and were dedicated to the King, and also to the House of Lords; and they contain much that is interesting. He states that hundreds of thousands of seditious papers had been allowed to go abroad since the King's return, and that there had been printed ten or twelve impressions of Farewell Sermons, to the number of thirty thousand, since the Act of[Pg 203] Uniformity, adding that the very persons who had the care of the Press (i.e. the Company of Stationers) had connived at its abuse. In support of this statement he pointed out that Presbyterian pamphlets were rarely suppressed, that rich offenders were passed over, and scarcely any of those who were caught were ever brought to justice. He gives the number of printers then at work in London as sixty, the number of apprentices about a hundred and sixty, besides a large number of journeymen; and he proposed at once to reduce the number of printers to twenty, with a corresponding reduction of apprentices and journeymen. As this would throw a large number of men out of work, he further proposed a scheme for the relief of necessitous and supernumerary printers. He calculated that the twelve impressions of the Farewell Sermons, allowing a thousand copies to each impression, had yielded a profit, 'beside the charge of paper and printing,' of £3300, and he advised that this sum should be levied as a fine upon those booksellers who had sold the book, and be placed to a fund for the benefit of the suppressed printers, the balance of the sum required to be levied on other seditious publications!

In this pamphlet L'Estrange gave the titles of most of the pamphlets to which he objected, with brief extracts from them, and the names of[Pg 204] the printers and publishers, amongst whom were Thomas Brewster, Giles Calvert, Simon Dover, and one other, whose name is not mentioned, but who is referred to as holding a highly profitable office. The reference may be to Thomas Newcomb.

At pages 26 and 27 L'Estrange notices the petition of certain of the printers to be incorporated as a separate body. He says 'that it were a hard matter to pick out twenty master printers, who are both free of the trade, of ability to manage it, and of integrity to be entrusted with it, most of the honester sort being impoverished by the late times, and the great business of the press being engross'd by Oliver's creatures.' He admits that the Company of Stationers and Booksellers are largely responsible for the great increase of presses, being anxious to have their books printed as cheaply as possible, but thinks that there would be as much abuse of power among incorporated printers as among the Company of Stationers.

The Act of 1662, which was mainly based on L'Estrange's report, was in a large measure a re-enactment of the Star Chamber decree of 1637. The number of printers in London was limited to twenty, the type-founders to four, and the other clauses of the earlier decree were reinforced, but with one notable concession. Hitherto printing outside London had been restricted to[Pg 205] the two Universities, but in the new Act the city of York was expressly mentioned as a place where printing might be carried on.

This new Act was enforced for a time with greater severity than the old one, and under it, for the first time in English history, a printer suffered the penalty of death for the liberty of the press.

The story of the trial and condemnation of John Twyn is told in vol. 6 of Cobbett's State Trials, and was also published in pamphlet form with the title, An exact narrative of the Tryal and condemnation of John Twyn, for Printing and Dispersing of a Treasonable Book, With the Tryals of Thomas Brewster, bookseller, Simon Dover, printer, Nathan Brooks, bookseller ... in the Old Bayly, London, the 20th and 22nd February 166-3/4.

John Twyn was a small printer in Cloth Fair, and his crime was that of printing a pamphlet entitled A Treatise of the Execution of Justice, in which, as it was alleged, there were several passages aimed at the King's life and the overthrow of the Government. It was further stated by the prosecution that the pamphlet was part of a plot for a general rebellion that was to have taken effect on the 12th October 1662. The chief witnesses against Twyn were Joseph Walker, his apprentice, Sir Roger L'Estrange, and Thomas Mabb, a printer. Their evidence[Pg 206] went to show that Twyn had two presses; that he composed part of the book, printed some of the sheets, and corrected the proofs, the work being done secretly at night-time. On entering the premises it was found that the forme of type had been broken up, only one corner of it remaining standing, and that the printed sheets had been hurriedly thrown down some stairs. In defence Twyn declared that he had received the copy from Widow Calvert's maid, and had received 40s. on account, with more to follow on completion, and he stoutly asserted that he did not know the nature of the work. The jury, amongst whom were Richard Royston and Simon Waterson, booksellers, and James Fletcher and Thomas Roycroft, printers, returned a verdict of Guilty, and Twyn was condemned to death and executed at Tyburn.

The charge against Simon Dover was of printing the pamphlet entitled The Speeches of some of the late King's Justices, which we have already seen that Roger L'Estrange had seized in John Hayes' premises, while Thomas Brewster was accused of causing this and another pamphlet, entitled The Phœnix of the Solemn League and Covenant, to be printed. In defence, Thomas Brewster declared that booksellers did not read the books they sold; so long as they could earn a penny they were satisfied—an argument that had been used more than a century before by old[Pg 207] Robert Copland as an excuse for indifferent printing. Both Dover and Brewster were condemned to pay a fine of 100 marks, to stand in the pillory, and to remain prisoners during the King's pleasure. Sir Roger L'Estrange, as a reward for his services, was appointed Surveyor of the Press, with permission to publish a news-sheet of his own, and liberty to harass the printers as much as possible.

But far greater calamities than the malice of Sir Roger L'Estrange could devise fell upon the printing trade by the outbreak of the Plague in 1665, and the subsequent Fire of London. In a letter written by L'Estrange to Lord Arlington, and dated 16th October 1665, he stated that eighty of the printers had died of the Plague (Cal. of S. P. 1665-6, p. 20), in which total he evidently included workmen as well as masters. The loss occasioned by the stoppage of trade and flight of the citizens must have been enormous, and yet it may have been slight in comparison to that occasioned by the Great Fire. Curiously enough, however, there are very few records showing the effect of this second disaster upon the printing trade. We find a petition by Christopher Barker, the King's printer, to be allowed to import paper free of charge in consequence of his loss by the Fire, and the same indulgence is granted to the Stationers' Company as a body and the Universities; but there are no notes of individual[Pg 208] losses, and only one or two references to MSS. that were destroyed in it. There is, however, one very eloquent testimony to the ruin it caused in this, as in other trades. The coercive Act of 1662, which had been renewed with unfailing regularity from session to session down to the year 1665, was not renewed during the remainder of the reign of Charles II. On the 24th of July 1668 a return was made of all the printing-houses in London, which shows at a glance who had survived and who had suffered by that terrible calamity (see Appendix II.).

Comparing this list with that of 1649, we find that no inconsiderable number of the printers there mentioned had survived the thinning-out process, as well as imprisonment, death, and fire. In fact, only eight London printers were actually ruined by the Fire, and among them we find both John Hayes and John Brudenell, and also Alice Warren.

But another paper, written in the same year, and preserved in the same volume of State Papers,[13] is even more interesting, for it shows the position of every man in the trade. This is headed—

A Survey of the Printing Presses with the names and numbers of Apprentices, Officers, and Workemen belonging to every particular press. Taken 29 July 1668. (See Appendix III.).[Pg 209]

From this we learn that the largest employer in the trade at that time was James Fletcher, who kept five presses, and employed thirteen workmen and two apprentices. Next to him came Thomas Newcomb, with three presses and a proof press, twelve workmen and one apprentice; John Maycocke, with three presses, ten workmen and three apprentices; and then Roycroft, with four presses, ten workmen and two apprentices; while at the other end of the scale was Thomas Leach, with one press, not his own, and one workman.

Whether L'Estrange carried out his threat of prosecuting the three men who had set up since the Act, we do not know, but this is certain, that one of their number, John Darby, continued to work for many years after this, and was the printer of Andrew Marvell's Rehearsal Transposed, and a good deal else that galled the Government very much. In fact, the Act of 1662 was openly ignored, and new men set up presses every year.

But of all this work it is almost impossible to trace what was done by individual printers. The bulk of the publications of the time bore the bookseller's name only, and it is very rarely indeed that the printer is revealed. Newcomb had the printing of the Gazette, and also printed most of Dryden's works that were published by Herringman; while Roycroft, we know, was employed[Pg 210] by all those who wanted the best possible work, such men as John Ogilby, for instance, for whom he printed several works. Milton's Paradise Lost came from the press of Peter Parker; but the printer of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress is unknown to us.

As it happens, there is not much lost by remaining in ignorance on this point. For no change whatever took place in the character of printing as a trade during the second half of the seventeenth century. There were only three foundries of note in London during that time, and none of them is considered to have produced anything particularly good. Indeed, one has only to glance at even the best work of that time to see how wretchedly the majority of the type was cast. The first of the three was the celebrated Joseph Moxon, who, in 1659, added type-founding to his other callings of mathematician and hydrographer. Having spent some years in Holland, he was very much enamoured of the Dutch types, and in 1676 he wrote a book entitled Regulæ Trium Ordinum Literarum Typographicarum, in which he endeavoured to prove that each letter should be cast in exact mathematical proportion, and illustrated his theory by several letters cast in that manner. Similar theories had been propounded in earlier days by Albert Durer and the French printer, Geoffrey Tory, but no improvement in printing ever resulted from them.[Pg 211]

Moxon's foundry was fitted with a large assortment of letter, but his work, judging from the examples left to us, was certainly not up to the theory which he put forward, and he is best remembered for his useful work on printing, which formed the second part of his Mechanick Exercises, and was published in 1683. In this he showed an intimate knowledge of every branch of printing and type-founding, and his book is still a standard work on both these subjects. Moxon retired from business some years before his death, and was succeeded in 1683 by Joseph and Robert Andrews, who, in addition to Moxon's founts, had a large assortment of others. Their foundry was particularly rich in Roman and Italic, and the learned founts, and they also had matrices of Anglo-Saxon and Irish. But their work was not by any means good.

The third of these letter foundries was that of James and Thomas Grover in Angel Alley, Aldersgate Street, who after Moxon's retirement shared with Andrews the whole of the English trade. The most notable founts in their possession were, a pica and longprimer Roman, from the Royal Press at Blackfriars, Day's double pica Roman and Italic, and two good founts of black letter, reputed to have formed part of the stock of Wynkyn de Worde. They also had the English Samaritan matrices from which the type for Walton's Polyglott in 1657 had been cast.[Pg 212]

Among the types belonging to this foundry was one which, in the inventory, was returned as New Coptic, but which was in reality a Greek uncial fount, cut for the specimen of the Codex Alexandrinus which Patrick Young proposed to print, but did not live to accomplish. The specimen was printed in 1643 and consisted of the first chapter of Genesis. It is supposed that this fount remained unknown, under the title of New Coptic, until 1758, when the Grover foundry passed into the hands of John James. On the death of Thomas Grover, the foundry remained in possession of his daughters, who endeavoured to sell it, but without success, and it remained locked up for many years in the premises of Richard Nutt, a printer, until 1758 (Reed, Old English Letter Foundries, p. 205).

After a lapse of twenty years, the Act of 1662 was renewed by the first parliament of James II. (1685) for a period of seven years, and at the expiration of that time, i.e. in 1692, it was renewed for another twelvemonth, after which we hear no more of it. There is no evidence that it had been very strictly enforced during its short revival; in fact it is clear, from the number of presses found in various parts of the country during the last five and twenty years of the century, that it had remained practically a dead letter from the time of the Great Fire.

The troubles of the Civil War had suspended[Pg 214] for a time all progress in printing at Oxford. But on the Restoration it made even greater advances than it had done at an earlier period of its history. Archbishop Laud had a worthy successor in Dr. John Fell, who in 1667 enriched the University by a gift of a complete type-foundry, consisting of punches, matrices, and founts of Roman, Italic, Orientals, 'Saxons,' and black letter, besides moulds and other necessary appliances for the production of type. Dr. Fell also introduced a skilled letter-founder from Holland. For a couple of years the foundry and printing office were carried on in private premises hired by Fell, but upon the completion of the Sheldonian Theatre the printing office was removed to the basement of that building, the first book bearing the Theatre imprint being An Ode in praise of the Theatre and its Founder, printed in 1669.

Another scholarly benefactor, Francis Junius, presented the University in 1677 with a splendid collection of type, consisting of Runic, Gothic, 'Saxon,' 'Islandic,' Danish, and 'Swedish,' as well as founts of Roman, Italic, and other sorts. By the kindness of Mr. Horace Hart, the Controller of the Clarendon Press, we are able to give here examples of several of the founts, both of Fell and Junius, in most cases from surviving specimens of the types themselves.

Very little use seems to have been made of these gifts before the commencement of the[Pg 216] succeeding century. The first Bible printed at Oxford was that of 1674, and no important editions of the classics issued from the University press of this period.

It was left to Cambridge to issue the best works of this class, for which that University borrowed the Oxford types, having no type-foundry of its own. These editions, chiefly in quarto, came from the press of Thomas Buck, who had succeeded Roger Daniel as printer to the University. Buck was in turn succeeded by John Field, who turned out some very creditable work, notably the folio Bible of 1660. John Hayes, the next of the Cambridge printers, issued some notable books, such as Robertson's Thesaurus,1676, 4to, and Barnes's History of Edward III., 1688, 4to, but the bulk of the work that came from the Cambridge press at this date was of a theological character, and was none too well printed.

The history of other provincial presses of this period is very meagre. Mr. Allnutt, to whose valuable papers in the second volume of Bibliographica I am indebted for the following notes, expresses the belief that in several cases local knowledge would show that presses were at work some years earlier than the dates he has given.

At the time of the Civil War, Robert Barker, the King's printer, had in 1639 been commanded[Pg 218] to attend His Majesty in his march against the Scots, and printed several proclamations, news-sheets, etc., at Newcastle-on-Tyne in that year. He is next found at York, where some thirty-nine different sheets, etc., have been traced from his press, and in 1642 a second press was at work in the same city, that of Stephen Bulkeley. When York fell into the hands of the Parliament, Bulkeley's press was silent for a while, and his place was taken by Thomas Broad, who printed there from 1644 to 1660, and was succeeded by his widow, Alice, who disappears in 1667. After the Restoration, Bulkeley again set up his press at York, where he continued down to 1680. Barker in 1642 had been summoned to attend the King at Nottingham, but no specimen of his work bearing that imprint is known, and the next heard of him is at Bristol, some time in 1643, Mr. Allnutt mentioning ten pieces from his press at this place.

In 1645 Thomas Fuller issued in small duodecimo, a collection of pious thoughts, which he aptly termed Good Thoughts in Bad Times, and in the Dedication to it expressly stated that it was 'the first fruits of the Exeter presse.' There was no printer's name in the volume, and no other work printed in Exeter at that time is known. In 1688, however, another press was started there, and printed several political broadsides relative to the Prince of Orange. A new[Pg 219] start was made in 1698, when a small pamphlet was printed in this city.

Stephen Bulkeley, the York printer, appears to have gone from that city to Newcastle in 1646, and continued printing there until 1652. He then removed to Gateshead, where he remained until after the Restoration, subsequently returning to Newcastle, and so back to York. No more is heard of printing in Newcastle until the opening of the eighteenth century.

A press was established in Bristol in the year 1695 and in Plymouth and Shrewsbury in the year 1696.

In America the progress of printing was very slow throughout the seventeenth century. Until 1660, Samuel Green, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, remained the only printer in the colony. But in that year the Corporation for the propagation of the Gospel in New England among the Indians sent over from London another press, a large supply of good letter, and a printer named Marmaduke Johnson, for the purpose of printing an edition of the Bible in the Indian tongue. This press was set up in the same building as that in which Green was already at work, and the two printers seem to have worked together at the production of the Bible, which appeared in quarto form in 1663, the New Testament having been published two years earlier. Johnson died in the year 1675, but Samuel Green continued to print[Pg 220] until 1702. After his death the press at Cambridge was silent for some years.

In 1675 a press was established at Boston by John Foster, a graduate of Harvard College, under a licence from the College. Besides the official work of the colony and theological literature, he printed several pamphlets on the war between the English and the Indians. He died in 1681, when he was succeeded by Samuel Green, junior, who continued printing there until 1690. In the following year three printers' names are found in the imprints of books: R. Pierce, Benjamin Harris, and John Allen. Benjamin Harris is afterwards called 'Printer to his Excellency, the Governor and Council,' but in 1693 Harris removed from 'over against the Old Meeting House,' to 'the Bible over against the Blew Anchor,' and another printer, Bartholomew Green, seems to have shared with him the official work.

Pennsylvania was the next of the colonies to establish a press; its first printer, William Bradford, setting up there in 1685, in which year he printed Kalendarium Pennsilvaniense, or, America's Messinger, Being an Almanack for the Year of Grace 1686.

In 1688 Bradford issued proposals for printing a large Bible (Hildeburn, Issues of the Pennsylvania Press, vol. i. p. 9), but they came to nothing. In 1692 he printed several pamphlets for George Keith, the leader of the schism among[Pg 221] the Quakers, and for this he was imprisoned. On his release he removed to New York. A press was also set up in Virginia in 1682, but was suppressed, and no printing allowed there until 1729. The name of the printer is not known, but is believed to have been William Nuthead, who set up a press in Maryland in 1689 with a similar result.

The first printer in New York was William Bradford, who began work there on the 10th April 1693. Among his most famous publications before the close of the seventeenth century was Keith's Truth Advanced, a quarto of 224 pages, printed on paper manufactured at his own mill and issued in 1694; in the same year he also printed The Laws and Acts of the General Assembly.

APPENDIX No. I

LIST OF ENGLISH PRINTERS 1649-50

NAME OF PRINTER		ADDRESS
Alsop, Bernard,		Grub Street.
Austin, Robert,		Addlehill.
Bell, Jane,		Christchurch.
Bentley, William,		Finsbury.
Bishop, Richard,		St. Peter Paul's Wharf.
Broad, Thomas,		City of York.
[Pg 222]Brudenell, Thomas,		Newgate Market.
Buck, John,		Cambridge.
Buck, or Bucks, Thomas,		Cambridge.
Clowes, John,		Grub Street.
Coe, Andrew,		...
Cole, Peter,		...
Coles, Amos,		Ivy Lane.
Constable, Richard,		Smithfield.
Cotes, or Coates, Richard,		Aldersgate Street.
Cottrell, James,		...
Crouch, Edward,		...
Crouch, John,		...
Dawson, Gertrude,		Aldersgate Street.
Dugard, William,		Merchant Taylors' School.
Ellis, William,		Thames Street.
Field, John,		...
Fletcher, or Flesher, James,		Little Britain.
Griffith, or Griffin, Edward,		Old Bailey.
Grismond, John,		Ivy Lane.
Hall, Henry,		Oxford.
Hare, Adam,		Red Cross Street.
Harper, Thomas,		Little Britain.
Harrison, Martha,		...
Heldersham, Francis,		...
Hills, Henry,		Southwark.
Hunscott, Joseph,		Stationers' Hall.
Hunt, William,		Pie Corner.
Husbands, Edward,		Golden Dragon, Fleet Street.
Ibbitson, Robert,		Smithfield.
Lee, William,		Fleet Street.
Leyborne, Robert,		Mugwell Street.
[Pg 223]Litchfield, Leonard,		Oxford.
Mabb, Thomas,		Ivy Lane.
Maxey, Thomas,		Bennett Paul's Wharf.
Maycock, John,		Addlehill.
Meredith, Christopher,		St. Paul's Churchyard.
Miller, Abraham,		Blackfriars.
Mottershead, Edward,		Doctors' Commons.
Moxon, James,		Houndsditch.
Neale, Francis,		Aldersgate Street.
Newcombe, Thomas,		Bennett Paul's Wharf, near Baynards Castle.
Norton, Roger,		Blackfriars.
Partridge, John,		Blackfriars.
Payne, or Paine, Thomas,		...
Playford, John,		...
Purslowe, Elizabeth,		Little Old Bailey.
Ratcliffe, Thomas,		Doctors' Commons.
Raworth, Ruth,		...
Ross, Thomas,		...
Rothwell, John,		...
Royston, John,	}	...
Royston, Richard,	}	...
Roycroft, Thomas,		...
Simmons, Matthew,		...
Thompson, George,		...
Tyton, Francis,		...
Walkeley, Thomas		...
Warren, Thomas,		...
Wilson, William,		...
Wright, John,		...
Wright, William,		...

APPENDIX No. II

Collonell John Streater by an especial provisoe in y^e Act. [The same who in 1653 had been committed to the Gatehouse for printing seditious pamphlets.]

[Pg 225]Printers y^t were Masters at y^e passeing of y^e Act w^ch are disabled by y^e fire:—

APPENDIX No. III

NUMBER OF PRESSES AND WORKMEN EMPLOYED IN THE PRINTING-HOUSES OF LONDON IN 1668

At the King's House,		6 Presses.
		8 Compositors.
		10 Pressmen.
At Mr. Tyler's,		3 Presses and a Proofe Press.
		1 Apprentice.
		6 Workmen.
At Mr. White's,		3 Presses.
		3 Apprentices.
		7 Workmen.
At Mr. Flesher's,		5 Presses.
		2 Apprentices.
		13 Workmen.
At Mr. Norton's,		3 Presses.
		1 Apprentice.
		7 Workmen.
[Pg 226]At Mr. Rycroft's [Roycroft's]		4 Presses.
		2 Apprentices.
		10 Workmen [three of whom were not free of the Company.]
At Mr. Ratcliffe's,		2 Presses.
		2 Apprentices.
		7 Workmen.
At Mr. Maycock's,		3 Presses.
		3 Apprentices.
		10 Workmen.
At Mr. Newcombe's,		3 Presses and a Proof Press.
		1 Apprentice.
		7 Compositors.
		5 Pressmen.
At Mr. Godbidd's,		3 Presses.
		2 Apprentices.
		5 Workmen.
At Mr. Streater's,		5 Presses.
		6 Compositors.
		2 Pressmen.
At Mr. Milbourne's,		2 Presses,
		0 Apprentices.
		2 Workmen.
At Mr. Catterell's [Cottrell?],		2 Presses.
		0 Apprentices.
		2 Compositors.
		1 Pressman.
At Mrs. Symond's,		2 Presses.
		1 Apprentice.
		5 Workmen.
At Mrs. Cotes,		3 Presses.
		2 Apprentices.
		9 Pressmen.
[Pg 227]At Mrs. Griffin's,		2 Presses.
		1 Apprentice.
		6 Workmen.
At Mr. Leach's,		1 Press and no more provided by Mr. Graydon.
		1 Workman.
At Mr. Maxwell's,		2 Presses,
		0 Apprentice.
		3 Compositors.
		3 Pressmen.
At Mr. Lillicropp's,		1 Press.
		1 Apprentice,
		1 Compositor.
		1 Pressman.
At Mr. Redman's,		2 Presses.
		1 Apprentice.
		4 Compositors.
		2 Pressmen.
At Mr. Cowes [Coe's?],		1 Press.
At Mr. Lloyd's,		1 Press.
At Mr. Oake's,		2 Presses.
		0 Apprentices.
		2 Workmen.
At Mr. Purslowe's,		1 Press.
		0 Apprentices.
		1 Workman.
At Mr. Johnson's,		2 Presses.
		0 Apprentices.
		3 Workmen.
Mr. Darby,	}	These three printers are to be indicted at y^e next session.
Mr. Winter,
Mr. Rawlyns,
At Mr. Crouch's,		1 Press.
		0 Apprentices.
		1 Workman.

CHAPTER IX

1700-1750

aving to some extent shaken itself free from the cramping influences of monopolies and State interference, the output of the English printing press at the commencement of the eighteenth century had almost doubled that of thirty or forty years before, and presses were now at work in various parts of the kingdom. But the long period of thraldom had resulted in completely destroying all originality amongst the printers, and almost in the destruction of the art of letter-founding. In fact, so far as printing with English types was concerned, the first twenty years of the eighteenth century was the worst period in the history of printing in this country. With the exception of the University of Oxford, which, owing to the generous bequests of Bishop Fell and others, was well supplied with good founts, the printers of this country were compelled to obtain their type[Pg 229] from Holland, and all the best and most important books published in Queen Anne's days were printed with Dutch letter, as it was called. Jacob Tonson is said to have spent some £300 in obtaining this foreign letter, and one important English foundry, that of Thomas James, was almost wholly stocked with these foreign founts. Yet this Dutch letter was by no means easy to get, and the experience of James, who in 1710 went to Holland for the purpose, bore out what Moxon had said in his Mechanick Exercises, that the art of letter-cutting was jealously guarded by those who practised it. Some of the Dutch typefounders refused to sell him types on any terms, and it was only by getting hold of a man who was more fond of his liquor than his trade, that James was able to get matrices, for even this individual refused to sell his punches. Nor was the vendor in any hurry to part with the matrices, and it cost James much money, time, and patience before he was able to secure them. Writing from Rotterdam on the 27th July in that year, he says:—

James returned to England with 3500 matrices[Pg 230] of various founts of Roman and Italics, as well as sets of Greek and some black letter. He set up his foundry in a part of the buildings belonging to the Priory of St. Bartholomew, in Smithfield, and it continued to be the most important in London until the days of Caslon. The proportion of Dutch to English types in the printing offices at that time is well illustrated by the valuable list of the types possessed by John Baskett, the Royal printer at Oxford, in the year 1718. The Royal printing-house was perhaps the largest and most lucrative office in the kingdom. For upwards of a century it had been owned by the descendants of Christopher Barker, the last of whom, Robert Barker, had died in 1645, after assigning his business to Messrs. Newcomb, Hill, Mearne, and others. From these the patent was bought in 1709 by John Baskett, of whose antecedents nothing whatever is known. In addition to the business at Blackfriars, Baskett, in conjunction with John Williams and Samuel Ashurst, obtained a lease from the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of Oxford University of their privilege of printing for twenty-one years. From an indenture in the possession of Mr. J. H. Round, the substance of which he communicated to the Athenæum of September 5th, 1885, it appears that on the 24th December 1718 Baskett gave a bond to James Brooks, stationer of London, for a loan of £4000, and for security mortgaged[Pg 231] his stock, which was set out in a schedule as follows:—

'An Account of the Letter, Presses, and other Stock and Implements of and in the Printing house at Oxford, belonging to John Baskett, citizen and stationer of London.'

1. A large ffount of Perle letter cast by M^r Andrews.

2. A large ffount of Nonp^l Letter new cast by ditto.

3. Another ffount of Nonp^l Letter, old, the which standing and sett up in a Com'on prayer in 24^mo compleat.

4. A large ffount of Minⁿ Letter new cast by M^r Andrews.

5. Another large ffount of Minⁿ Letter, new cast in Holland.

6. The whole Testament standing in Brev^r and Minⁿ Letter, old.

7. A large ffount of Brev^r Letter, new cast in Holland.

8. A very large ffount of Lo: Primer Letter, new cast by M^r Andrew.

9. A large ffount of pica Letter very good, cast by ditto.

10. Another large ffount of ditto, never used, cast in Holland.

11. A small quantity of English, new cast by M^r Andrews.

12. A small quantity of Great Prim^r new cast by ditto.

13. A very large ffount of Double Pica, new, the largest in England.

14. A quantity of two-line English letters.

15. A quantity of French Cannon, two-line letters of all sorts, and a set of silver initial letters. Cases, stands, etc. Five printing presses very good.

John Baskett is chiefly remembered for the magnificent edition of the Bible which he printed in 1716-1717, in two volumes imperial folio, and which from an error in the headline of the 20th chapter of St. Luke, where the parable of the Vineyard was rendered as the 'parable of the Vinegar,' has ever since been known as the[Pg 232] 'Vinegar Bible.' This slip was only one of many faults in the edition, which earned for it the title of 'A Baskett-full of printer's errors.' But apart from these errors, the book was a very splendid specimen of the printer's art, and has been described as the most magnificent of the Oxford Bibles. The type, double pica Roman and Italic, was beautifully cut, and was that which is described in the above list as the 'largest in England.' It was clearly not one of the founts belonging to the University, for, had it been, Baskett would have had no power to mortgage it. It is also noticeable that it was not described as 'cast in Holland,' as many of the others were, so we may infer that it was cast in England, and an interesting question arises, by whom? Clearly it was not cast by Mr. Andrews, or Baskett would have said so.

During a great part of his life, Baskett was engaged in litigation over his monopoly of Bible printing, and in spite of the large profits attached to it, he became bankrupt in 1732. Further trouble fell upon him in 1738 by the destruction of his office by fire. He died on June 22nd, 1742. At one period he had been in danger of losing his patent altogether, for Queen Anne was induced by Lord Bolingbroke and others to constitute Benjamin Tooke and John Barber to be Royal printers in reversion, in anticipation of the ending of Baskett's lease in 1739; but Baskett[Pg 233] purchased this reversion from Barber, and afterwards obtained a renewal of his patent for sixty years, the last thirty of which were subsequently acquired by Charles Eyre for £10,000.

John Barber, who for a time held the reversion of Baskett's patent, was the only printer who has ever held the high office of Lord Mayor of London, and for this reason among others he deserves a brief notice. He was born of poor parents in 1675, and according to one account was greatly helped in early life by Nathaniel Settle, the city poet.

He was apprenticed to Mrs. Clark, a printer in Thames Street, and proving himself a steady and good workman, was able to set up for himself in 1700. His first printing-house was in Queen's Head Alley, whence he soon afterwards moved to Lambeth Hill, near Old Fish Street.

Accounts differ as to his first work. Curll, in his Impartial History of the Life, Character, etc., of Mr. John Barber (London, 1741), says that the alderman himself admitted that the first fifty pounds he could call his own were earned by printing a pamphlet written by Charles D'Avenant; while in the Life and Character, another pamphlet printed in the same year for T. Cooper, it is said that it was Defoe's Diet of Poland which brought him the first money he laid up. It is also said that he was greatly indebted to Dean Swift for his rapid advancement.[Pg 234]

By whatever means it was accomplished, Barber was introduced to Henry St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, and was engaged as printer to the Ministry, his printing-house becoming the meeting-place of the statesmen, poets, and wits of the day. Barber was himself a genial companion and hard drinker, who spent his money freely, and in this way made many friends. He printed for Dean Swift, for Pope, Matthew Prior, and Dr. King, and was also the printer of nearly all the writings of the versatile and unhappy Mrs. Manley. The story of her connection with Barber is sufficiently well known.

At the time of the South Sea scheme Barber took large shares, and, it is said, amassed a considerable fortune before the bubble burst. But he was indebted mainly to the patronage of Lord Bolingbroke for his success as a printer. Through that statesman he obtained the contract for printing the votes of the House of Commons, and by the same influence he became printer of the London Gazette, The Examiner, and Mercator, printer to the City of London, and finally received from the Queen the reversion of the office of Royal Printer, which he soon after relinquished to Baskett for £1500.

Elected as alderman of Baynard Castle ward, Barber filled the office of Sheriff, and in 1733 became Lord Mayor of the City of London. As Lord Mayor, he gained great popularity from his[Pg 235] opposition to the Excise Bill, and by permitting persons tried and acquitted at the Old Bailey to be discharged without any fees. He died on the 22nd January 1740.

Much amusement, not altogether unmixed with uneasiness, was caused in the printing trade between 1727 and 1740 by a futile attempt to introduce stereotyping. A Scotch printer having complained to a goldsmith in Edinburgh of the vexatious delays and inconvenience of having to send to London or Holland for type, it occurred to William Ged, the goldsmith in question, that, to use the words of Timperley (p. 584), the transition from founding single letters to founding whole pages, 'should be no difficult matter.' He made several experiments, and at length satisfied himself that his scheme was practicable. Accordingly, in 1727, he entered into a contract with an Edinburgh printer to carry out the invention, but after two years his partner withdrew, being alarmed at the probable cost. Ged then entered into partnership with William Fenner, a stationer in London, by whom he was introduced to Thomas James, the founder, and a company was formed to work the scheme. But James, perhaps influenced by the representations of his 'compositors,' whom the new invention threatened with the loss of work, instead of helping, did his utmost to ruin the undertaking and its inventor. Instead of supplying the best and[Pg 236] newest type from which the matrices might be made, he furnished the worst, whilst his workmen damaged the formes. Much the same happened at Cambridge, where Ged was for a time installed as printer to the University. He struggled against the opposition so far as to produce two Prayer Books, but such was the animosity shown to the new invention, that the books were suppressed by authority, and the plates broken up. To add further to his troubles, dissension broke out between James and Fenner, neither of whom had any cause to be proud of their action towards Ged, who, disheartened and ruined, returned to Edinburgh. There another attempt was made by the friends of the inventor to produce a book, but no compositor could be found to set up the type, and it was only by Ged's son working at night that the edition of Sallust, and a few theological books, were finished and printed at Newcastle. Ged died in 1749, and his sons subsequently emigrated to the West Indies.

Next to the King's printing-house, the press of which we have the most accurate knowledge at this time was that of William Bowyer, the elder and the younger. The seven volumes of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes give a complete record of the work of this printing-house, and from them the following brief account has been taken. William Bowyer, the elder, had been[Pg 237] apprentice to Miles Flesher, and was admitted to the freedom of the Company of Stationers on October 4th, 1686. He started business on his own account in Little Britain in 1699, with a pamphlet of ninety-six pages on the Eikon Basilike controversy. He afterwards moved into White Friars, where, on the night of January 29th, 1712, his printing office was burnt to the ground; among the works that perished in the flames being almost the whole impression of Atkyn's History of Gloucestershire, Sir Roger L'Estrange's Josephus, 'printed with a fine Elzevir letter never used before'; the fifteenth volume of Rymer's Fœdera; Thoresby's Ducatus Leodiensis, and an old book, of Monarchy, by Sir John Fortescue, in 'Saxon,' with notes upon it, printed on an 'extraordinary paper' (Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, vol. i. p. 56). This short list of notable works proves that Bowyer had a flourishing business at the time of the catastrophe. A subscription was at once raised for his relief, and £1162 subscribed by the booksellers and printers in a very short time. A royal brief was also granted to him for the same purposes, and by this he received £1377, making a grand total of £2539, with which he began business anew. In remembrance of his misfortune, Bowyer had several tail-pieces and devices engraved, representing a phoenix rising from the flames.

In 1715 Bowyer the elder printed Miss[Pg 238] Elstob's Anglo-Saxon Grammar. The types for this were cut by Robert Andrews from drawings made by Humphrey Wanley, and were given to the printer by Lord Chief-Justice Parker. But these types were very indifferently cut. Wanley himself said 'when the alphabet came into the hands of the workman (who was but a blunderer) he could not imitate the fine and regular stroke of the pen; so that the letters are not only clumsy, but unlike those that I drew.'

In 1721 Bowyer printed an edition of Bishop Bull's Latin works in folio, but lost £200 by the impression. The following year his son, William Bowyer the younger, joined him in the business.

The younger Bowyer had received an University education, though he never succeeded in taking a degree. He was, however, a highly cultivated man, and employed his pen in many of the controversies of the time, writing Remarks on Mr. Bowman's Visitation Sermon in 1731, and on Stephen's Thesaurus in 1733, and in 1744 a pamphlet on the Present State of Europe. But at the beginning of his connection with the printing-house, he was mainly concerned in reading the proofs of the learned works entrusted to his father for printing, and though towards the latter end of the elder Bowyer's days the son may have taken a more active part in the practical work, as we read of his appointment as printer of the votes in the House of Commons in 1729, and[Pg 239] as printer to the Society of Antiquaries in 1736, it was not until his father's death, in 1737, that the sole management of the business devolved upon him.

One of the earliest works upon which the younger Bowyer was employed as 'reader' was Dr. Wilkins's edition of Selden's Works, printed by Bowyer the elder in six folio volumes in 1722. The publication of this book marks an era in the history of English printing, for the types with which it was printed were cut by William Caslon.

This famous type-founder, who by his skill raised the art of printing to a higher level than it had reached since the days of John Day, was born at Cradley, near Hales Owen in Shropshire. We are indebted for his biography partly to Bowyer and partly to Nichols, but it must be confessed that the earlier part of it is vague and unconvincing. According to this oft-quoted story, Caslon began life as an engraver of gun-locks, and made blocking tools for binders. This was somewhere about 1716, in which year it is said John Watts, the printer, became his patron, and employed him to cut type punches. Bowyer became acquainted with him from seeing some specimen of his lettering on a book, and took him to the foundry of James, in Bartholomew Close. Bowyer next advanced him some money, as also did Watts, and with these loans he set up for himself, his[Pg 240] first essay in type-founding being a fount of Arabic for the Psalter published by the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. When he had finished the Arabic, i.e. somewhere about 1724 or 1725, he cut his own name in Roman type and placed it at the foot of the specimen. This attracted the notice of Samuel Palmer, the author of a very unreliable History of Printing, and with Palmer, Caslon worked for some time, but at length transferred his services to William Bowyer, for whom he cut the types of the 'Selden.'

It is almost impossible to place any reliance upon so vague and inconclusive a biography as this. There was a belief in the Caslon family that he began letter-cutting before 1720, and the equally vague traditions which point to a later date need not make us treat this as impossible.

Was his the unknown hand that cut the double pica type which Baskett used in printing the 'Vinegar' Bible? A close examination of the types used in that Bible, those used in printing the folio edition of Pope's Iliad, and those of the 'Selden,' reveals a striking resemblance, especially in the form of the italic letter, and at least makes it clear that if the two first-mentioned works were printed with Dutch letter, then it was on the best form of that letter that Caslon modelled his types.

The charm of Caslon's Roman letter lay in[Pg 241] its wonderful regularity as well as in the shape and proportion of the letters. In this respect it was a worthy successor to the best Aldine founts of the sixteenth century. The italic was also noticeable for its beauty and regularity.

Caslon's superiority over all other letter-cutters, English or Dutch, was quickly recognised, and from this time forward until the close of the century all the best and most important books were printed with Caslon's letter; the old letter-founders, such as James and Grover, being entirely neglected, and even such a powerful rival as John Baskerville being unable to compete with him.

In addition to the printers in London already noticed, there were two others who must not be forgotten. Samuel Richardson, author of Pamela, Clarissa Harlowe, and Sir Charles Grandison, was by trade a printer. Born in Derbyshire, of humble parents, in 1689, he was apprenticed to Mr. John Wilde, a printer in London, whom he served for seven years. He took up his freedom in 1706, and started business for himself in Salisbury Court, Fleet Street. Among his earliest patrons were the Duke of Wharton, for whom he printed some six numbers of a paper called the True Briton, and the Right Hon. Arthur Onslow, by whose interest he obtained the printing of the Journals of the House of Commons. But he did some better work than this, as in 1732 he printed[Pg 242] for Andrew Millar a good edition in folio of Churchill's Voyages, and in 1733 the second volume of De Thou's History, a work in seven folio volumes, edited by Samuel Buckley, his share in which reflects credit on Richardson as a printer. Between 1736-37 he printed The Daily Journal, and in 1738 the Daily Gazeteer, and in 1740 the newly-formed Society for the Encouragement of Learning entrusted to him the printing of the first volume of The Negociations of Sir Thomas Roe, in folio. In this the text was printed in the same type as the De Thou, but the dedication was in a fount of double pica Roman. This work, which was intended to have been in six volumes, was never completed.

Richardson's work as an author began in 1741 with the publication of Pamela, in four volumes, duodecimo, printed at his own press. Clarissa Harlowe appeared in 1747-48, and in 1753 his final novel, Sir Charles Grandison. Through the treachery of one of his workmen in the printing office, the Dublin booksellers were enabled to issue an edition of Sir Charles Grandison before the work had left Richardson's press. He vented his aggrieved feelings by printing a pamphlet, The Case of Samuel Richardson of London, Printer.

In 1755 Richardson rebuilt his premises, and in 1760 he bought half the patent of law printing, which he shared with Catherine Lintot. His[Pg 243] death took place on the 4th July 1761, his business being afterwards carried on by his nephew, William Richardson.

The other press to which reference has been made was that of Henry Woodfall. In the first series of Notes and Queries (vol. xi. pp. 377, 418) an anonymous contributor supplied some very interesting and valuable notes drawn from the ledgers of that printer between the years 1734 and 1747. Such a record is the most valuable material for a history of printing, but unfortunately this is the only known instance in which it is available. It supplies us with the most useful information, the numbers of copies that went to make up an edition, the quality and cost of the paper and the number of sheets contained in each volume, with many other interesting particulars, which it is impossible to get from any other source. While recognising the value of these extracts from Woodfall's ledger, the writer hardly seems to have made the most of his opportunity. In many instances he gives only the title of the work and the number of copies printed, omitting all particulars as regards the cost of printing. But even as it stands this series of papers throws much interesting light upon the publication of some of the notable works of that period.

Woodfall's printing was broadly divided into two classes, 'gentlemen's work' and 'booksellers'[Pg 244] work,' and the second is naturally the more interesting.

Among those for whom he printed were Bernard and Henry Lintot, Robert Dodsley, Andrew Millar, and Lawton Gilliver. Against Bernard Lintot is the following entry:—

A few weeks later Woodfall received an order from Lawton Gilliver for 1500 crown octavo copies of Epistles of Horace, and 100 fine or large paper copies. The second edition of Pope's Works was also printed by Woodfall for Henry Lintot, the order being for 2000.[Pg 245]

The Seasons were printed on June 19th, 1744, in octavo. There were 1500 errata in the work, and a special charge of £2, 4s. was made for 'divers and repeated alterations.'

Among the miscellaneous writers whose works were passed through the elder Woodfall's press was the Rev. John Peters, against whom he entered an account, dated July 17th, 1735, for printing Thoughts concerning Religion, 4to, 16 sheets. This gentleman was a literary shark, ready to devour any unprotected morsel that came in his way. The work above mentioned, and another printed by Woodfall in 1732, called A Letter to a Bishop, were afterwards discovered to be from the pen of Duncan Forbes, and were published in an edition of his works printed in Edinburgh and London in 1751. A lawsuit was[Pg 246] at once commenced by George Woodfall and John Peters against the publishers of Forbes' works, the name of Messrs. Rivington being prominently mentioned, and the defendants, in their answer, stated that the two works in question were well known to have been written by Duncan Forbes, and that the MS. was in the possession of his family.[14]

This little incident, taken in conjunction with Henry Woodfall's connection with E. Curll and the letters of Pope, and the story told by Thomas Gent of the printing of The Bishop of Rochester's Effigy, shows that he was a worthy disciple of Iago in the matter of money-getting.[15]

Mention of Thomas Gent leads naturally to a study of the provincial press of this period. This is a much more difficult matter than it has been hitherto, as presses were established not in three or four places only, but in almost every town of any size. The history of provincial printing has never yet been written, and the task of tracing out the various printers and their work would be long and arduous. All that is attempted here is to give a sketch of the earlier and more important presses, adding in an appendix a chronological list of the places in which printing was carried on before 1750.

In the previous chapter it has been shown[Pg 247] how the munificence of Bishop Fell and Francis Junius furnished the University of Oxford with an unusually large stock of excellent letter of all descriptions, so that it was in a position to do better work than any other house in the kingdom. Its productions, during the first twenty years of the eighteenth century, were in every way worthy of its reputation, and some of them deserve special mention.

In 1705 Hickes's Linguarum Vett. Septentrionalium Thesaurus was issued in three large folio volumes of great beauty. The work required many unusual founts, and these were mainly furnished from the bequest of Junius.

In 1707 the University published Mill's Greek Testament, which Wood in his Athenæ Oxonienses (vol. ii. p. 604) says had been begun in 1681 at Bishop Fell's printing-house near the theatre. The double pica italic used in this was a grand letter. Both the foregoing works were ornamented with handsome initial letters, and head and tail pieces engraved by M. Burghers, probably the first engraver of the day in this country. Many classical works were also produced in the same sumptuous manner, notably Hudson's edition of the Works of Dionysius,1704, which it is difficult to praise too highly. The copies measured nearly eighteen inches in height, the paper was thick and good; the Greek and Latin texts were printed side by side, with notes at the foot, yet ample[Pg 248] margins were left. In fact it is one of the finest examples of English printing of this period to be met with.

Cambridge was sadly behind her sister University. Neither Reed in his Old English Letter Foundries, nor Mr. Allnutt in his valuable articles on Provincial Presses, has anything to say of it. Cornelius Crowndale was the University printer at this time, but beyond an edition of Eusebius in three folio volumes, issued in 1720, no notable book came from his press, little in fact beyond reprints in octavo and duodecimo of classical works for the use of the scholars, and repeated editions of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer, full of errors, and so badly printed that the less said about them the better. We may notice, however, an edition of Butler's Hudibras, edited by Zachary Grey, in two octavo volumes, with Hogarth's plates, and two books by Conyers Middleton, Bibliothecæ Cantabrigiensis ordinandæ methodus, 1723, and A Dissertation concerning the Origin of Printing in England, 1735, both in quarto.

Among the earliest provincial presses at work in the beginning of the eighteenth century was that at Norwich, where Francis Burges was established in the year 1701. Thomas Tanner, afterwards Bishop of St. Asaph, sent John Bagford a broadside, printed by that printer, a list of the clergy that were to preach in the cathedral at Norfolk[Pg 249] from November 1st, 1701, until Trinity Sunday following. In a MS. note at the foot Tanner says:—

In this statement, however, Tanner was wrong, unless we suppose this broadside to have been printed nearly five weeks in advance, as there had appeared, on September 27th, 1701, Some Observations on the Use and Original of the Noble Art and Mystery of Printing, by Francis Burges, which is also claimed as the first book printed at Norwich since the sixteenth century. There is also evidence that Burges began to issue a newspaper called The Norwich Post early in September. Among his other work of that year were sermons by John Jeffery and John Graile, and Humphrey Prideaux's Directions to Churchwardens for the Faithfull Discharge of their Offices. For the Use of the Archdeaconry of Suffolk. (Norwich 1701, quarto.) Francis Burges died in January 1706, leaving the business to his widow, who in the following year printed and published a little tract of eight quarto pages, with the title, A true description of the City of Norwich both in its ancient and modern state.

Meanwhile, in November of the preceding[Pg 250] year, a second press was started in the town by Henry Crossgrove, who began to issue a paper called the Norwich Gazette.

Burges's business seems to have been taken by Freeman Collins, who printed from the same address, in 1713, Robert Pate's Complete Syntax. He in his turn was succeeded by Benjamin Lyon, who in 1718 reprinted the True Description, as The History of the City of Norwich ... To which is added Norfolk's Furies: or a view of Kett's Camp. (Norwich. Printed by Benj. Lyon near the Red-well, for Robert Allen and Nich. Lemon. 1718. 8vo. pp. 40.) He added to this some useful lists of bishops, etc., and a 'Chronological Account of Remarkable Accidents and Occurrences, to date,' in which the following entries occur:—

Crossgrove appears to have continued work till 1739, being succeeded by William Chase, who had been printing since 1711, and who established the Norwich Mercury in 1727.

At Bristol the press that William Bonny had established in 1695 continued to flourish until 1713. About November 1702 he began to issue a weekly paper called the Bristol Post-Boy, which[Pg 251] ran until 1712, when it was either replaced or supplanted by Samuel Farley's Bristol Postman.[17]

The Parleys were noted printers in the West of England at this time, and the above-named Samuel must not be confounded with Samuel Farley the Exeter printer.

In Cirencester printing began in 1718, in which year Thomas Hinton brought out the first number of the Cirencester Post, and the Gloucester Journal was printed in that city by R. Raikes and W. Dicey on April 9, 172-1/2. Robert Raikes continued printing there till 1750, and was succeeded by his son Robert, the founder of Sunday Schools.[18]

In the neighbouring county of Devon the Exeter press, finally established after many vicissitudes in 1698 by Samuel Darker, is found busily at work in 1701, Darker having been joined by Samuel Farley, whose relation to the Samuel Farley of Bristol offers an opportunity to some cunning genealogist to reap distinction. In 1701 Farley issued by himself John Prince's Danmonii Orientales Illustres; or The Worthies of Devon, a work of 600 folio pages, with coats of arms. It was certainly one of the largest works printed at that time by any provincial press outside the Universities. In point of workmanship all that can be said for it is that it was no worse than the[Pg 252] bulk of the work turned out by provincial presses; and it furnishes its own criticism in a list of errata on the last page, which closes with the words, 'with many others too tedious to insert.' Thomas Tanner, writing to Browne Willis in 1706, says that he has heard of a bi-weekly paper printing at Exeter. No copy of an Exeter paper of so early a date is known.

In 1705 Farley was joined by Joseph Bliss, and jointly they issued several books; but the partnership lasted a very short time, as by 1708 Joseph Bliss had set up for himself in the Exchange.

On September 24, 1714, Samuel Farley issued the first number of The Exeter Mercury; or Weekly Intelligence of News, which in the next year he transferred to Philip Bishop. In 1715 also Joseph Bliss started a rival sheet called the Protestant Mercury, or The Exeter Post-Boy, from his new printing-house near the London Inn. Meanwhile Farley appears to have left Exeter, for on September 27, 1715, he published the first number of the Salisbury Post-Man. In 1717 Andrew Brice, the most important of Exeter printers, began to print, his address then being 'At the Head of the Serge Market in Southgate Street,' from which he issued, some time in 1718, a paper called the Post-Master, or the Loyal Mercury. The history of this printer is too lengthy to be told here, and has already been[Pg 253] ably written by Dr. T. N. Brushfield (The Life and Bibliography of Andrew Brice). Farley's name occurs again in 1723, when he returned to Exeter and started Farley's Exeter Journal. In November 1727 the burial of Samuel Farley is recorded in the registers at St. Paul's, Exeter. He was succeeded in business by an Edward Farley.

Another provincial press that revived very early in the eighteenth century was that of Worcester. It had been silent for upwards of a century and a half; but in June 1709 a printer from London, named Stephen Bryan, set up a press, and started a newspaper called the Worcester Postman. In 1722 the title was altered to the Worcester Post, or Western Journal. Bryan died in 1748, but just previous to his death he assigned his paper to Mr. H. Berrow, who then gave it the name it has ever since borne, that of Berrow's Worcester Journal.

Hazlitt, in his Collections and Notes (3rd Series, p. 282), mentions a book entitled Tunbridgialia, or ye pleasures of Tunbridge, a poem, as printed 'at Mount Sion at ye end of ye Upper Walk at Tunbridge Wells,' 1705.

At Canterbury printing was revived in 1717, and a very interesting record of it is in the British Museum in the form of a broadside with the following title:—

'A List of the names of the Mayor, Recorder, Aldermen & Common Council of the City of[Pg 254] Canterbury Who (In the year of our Lord 1717) promoted and encouraged the noble Art and Mystery of Printing in this City and County.' Canterbury, Printed by J. Abree for T. James, S. Palmer, and W. Hunter, 1718.' This John Abree died in 1765 at the age of seventy-seven.

At York John White, who had settled in the city in 1680, was actively engaged in business in 1701, and he remained the sole printer there until his death in the year 1715. By his will, dated 31st July 1714, he gave his wife Grace White the use of one full half of his printing tools and presses, etc., for her life; and after her death he gave the same to his grandson, Charles Bourne, to whom he bequeathed the remaining half of his printing implements immediately upon his death. To John White, his son, he devised his real estate.

On the 23rd February 1718-19 Grace White issued the first York newspaper, The York Mercury. Upon her death in 1721 the printing-house was carried on by Charles Bourne until 1724, when he was in turn succeeded by Thomas Gent, who had served under John White in 1714-15, and married the widow of Charles Bourne. Davies in his Memoirs of the York Press (pp. 144 et seq.) gives a detailed and interesting biography of this printer, who, he says, has obtained a wider cele[Pg 255]brity than any other York typographer. Gent was an engraver as well as printer, and was the author of a History of York, and other works. As a printer his work was wretched; there is little to be said for him as an engraver; while as an author he was below mediocrity. Nevertheless, he deserves credit for the interest he took in the history of York. His history of that city was published in small octavo in 1730, and he followed it up in 1735 with Annales Regioduni Hullini, or The History of the Royal and Beautiful town of Kingston upon Hull, also an octavo.

These works were quickly overshadowed by Drake's History, and from this time forward Gent's fortunes began to decline. He made an enemy of John White, the son of his old employer, with the result that White set up a press at York in 1725, and issued the first number of The York Courant, a weekly paper, but sold it and the business to Alexander Staples ten years later. Staples in turn was succeeded by Cæsar Ward and Richard Chandler—the first a bookseller in York, the second in London; but Chandler committed suicide in 1744, and left Ward to carry on the business alone. John Gilfillan was another printer at work in the city during this period. Thomas Gent lived to the age of eighty-seven, his death taking place on the 19th May 1778.[Pg 256]

In Newcastle, John White, the son of the York printer of that name, began printing in 1708. He started the Newcastle Courant, the first number of which appeared in 1711. In 1761 the firm became John White and Co., and in 1763 John White and T. Saint. White died in 1769, when he is said to have been the oldest printer in the kingdom. As has been noted, from 1725 to 1735 he had carried on a press at York in opposition to T. Gent. One or two other printers are found here for short periods, but little is known about them.

Among other towns possessing presses early in this century were—Nottingham, 1711; Chester, 1711; Liverpool, 1712; and Birmingham, 1716.

In America the number of printing presses increased but slowly during the first half of the eighteenth century. William Bradford in New York continued the only printer in that province for thirty years. He died on the 23rd May 1752, at the age of ninety-two. For fifty years he had been printer to the Government, and among the numerous books that came through his press were the Book of Common Prayer in quarto, in 1709, the only issue in America before the Revolution, a venture by which he is said to have lost heavily. He also printed a Mohawk Prayer-book in quarto; this was issued in 1715. On the 16th October 1725 he began to publish a weekly paper called The New York Gazette,[Pg 257] and continued it until his retirement from business.

In 1726 a German named John Peter Zenger set up as a printer in New York. He is chiefly remembered as the printer of the second New York newspaper, the New York Weekly Journal, the first number of which was wrongly dated October 5th, 1733, instead of November 5th. The paper involved the printer in several actions for libel, and led to some lively passages with William Bradford. He is believed to have died about 1746. Bradford was succeeded as printer to the Government by James Parker, one of his apprentices, who is described as a neat workman. He continued the New York Gazette, with the alternative title, or Weekly Post Boy. He also issued in 1767 an edition of the Psalms in metre, one of the earliest books printed from type cast in America.

In 1753 Parker took into partnership William Weyman, but the connection lasted but a short time, Weyman setting up for himself in 1759. Parker also established presses at New Haven and Woodbridge in New Jersey. Among the later printers in New York were Hugh Guine (1750-1800); John Holt (1750-1784), printer to the State during the war; Robert Hodge (1770-1813); and Frederick Shober (1772-1806).

Philadelphia possessed only one printer until 1723—Andrew Bradford, son of William Bradford,[Pg 258] of New York. In 1723 Samuel Keimer set up near the Market House. It was this printer whom Benjamin Franklin worked for in his early days. Bradford started the American Weekly Mercury on Tuesday, November 22nd, 1719; and the Pennsylvania Gazette, afterwards carried on by Franklin and Meredith, was first printed by Keimer. Andrew Bradford died in 1742. Perhaps the most notable of Keimer's books was the folio edition of Sewell's History of the Quakers, which he began in 1725. It was a work of upwards of seven hundred pages and Keimer soon found that he had taken the contract at a ruinous rate. It was only by the help of Franklin and Meredith that he was enabled to finish it in 1728.

Benjamin Franklin's history hardly needs retelling. His career as a printer began in the shop of his brother James at Boston in 1717. Differences arose between them which ended in Franklin's setting out for New York. Work was not to be had there, and by the advice of William Bradford he moved on to Philadelphia. There for some months he worked for Samuel Keimer until, deluded by the promises of Governor Keith, he took ship for England with a view of obtaining materials for a printing office. While in England he worked for James Watts in Bartholomew Close, and James Palmer. On his return to America he once more entered Keimer's office as a journeyman. But after a short time,[Pg 259] in company with Hugh Meredith, he set up in business for himself. He was the proprietor and printer of Poor Richard's Almanack, which became celebrated, and also of the Pennsylvania Gazette. After a long and prosperous career Franklin died, on April 19th, 1790, at the age of eighty-five.

Boston was the home of more printers than any other place in America during the eighteenth century. To give anything like a history of even a few of them would be beyond the limits of this work. Only one or two of the more important can be even noticed.

Thomas Fleet arrived in Boston in 1712, set up as a printer, and for nearly fifty years carried on business there. His issues were principally pamphlets for booksellers, small books for children, and ballads. He was also the proprietor of a newspaper called the Weekly Rehearsal, first begun in September 1731. At his death in July 1758, he left three sons, two of whom succeeded him in business.

In 1718 Samuel Kneeland set up in Prison Lane, and his printing house continued for eighty years. He was one of the printers of the Boston Gazette, and he started besides several other journals. Thomas in his history (vol. i. p. 207) says that Kneeland, in company with Bartholomew Green, printed a small quarto edition of the English Bible with Mark Baskett's[Pg 260] imprint, but this is not confirmed. Kneeland died on December 14th, 1769. Another celebrated printer in the city of Boston was Gamaliel Rogers, who began business about 1729. In 1742 he entered into partnership with Daniel Fowle. In the following year they issued the first numbers of the American Magazine, and in 1748 started the Independent Advertiser. The partnership with Fowle was dissolved in 1750. Rogers subsequently moved to the western part of the town, but suffered from a fire, which destroyed his plant. He died in 1775.

Daniel Fowle, on the dissolution of his partnership with Rogers, set up for himself. He was arrested in 1754 for printing a pamphlet reflecting on some members of the House of Representatives, and was thrown into prison for several days. Upon his release, he at once left the town and set up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he started the New Hampshire Gazette. He was succeeded in his Boston business by his brother Zachariah Fowle, who continued printing there until the Revolution, when he also retired to New Hampshire, where he died in 1776.

CHAPTER X

1750-1800

he improvement in printing which Caslon had begun quickly spread to other parts of the kingdom, even as far north as Scotland, where, before the middle of the century, there was established at Glasgow a press that became notable for the beauty of its productions.

Robert and Andrew Foulis, the founders of this press, were the sons of Andrew Faulls and Marion Paterson, Robert being born at Glasgow on April 20th, 1707, and his brother on November 23rd, 1712.

Robert Foulis was apprenticed to a barber, but his love for literature led him to study at the University, where he attended the moral philosophy lectures of Francis Hutcheson, who advised him to become a bookseller and printer. His brother, Andrew, entered the University at a later date, destined for the ministry, and[Pg 262] during their vacations they travelled throughout England and on the Continent. In the course of these travels they sought for and brought back with them many rare and beautiful books, and gained a wide knowledge of the book trade.

At length, in 1741, Robert Foulis set up as a bookseller in Glasgow. In some of his earlier publications will be found lists of books printed and sold by him, which are very interesting. One of these, which enumerates fifteen books, includes a Greek Testament, Buchanan's edition of the Psalms, Burnet's Life of the Earl of Rochester, seven or eight classics, among which were a Cicero, Juvenal, Cornelius Nepos, Phædrus, and Terence, and two of Tasso's works. The Terence was printed for him by Robert Urie, and shows some excellent founts of small italic and Roman. Robert Foulis seems to have begun printing on his own account in 1742, and among his earliest patrons was Professor Hutcheson, for whom he printed a treatise entitled Metaphysicæ Synopsis, a duodecimo of ninety pages, and a work on Moral Philosophy of three hundred and thirty pages. He also printed in the same year the second and third editions of a sermon preached by William Leechman before the Synod of Glasgow and Ayr, The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and editions of Cicero and Phædrus. All these were in duodecimo or small octavo, printed in a clear[Pg 263] readable type, that probably came from Urie's foundry. On the 31st March 1743, Robert Foulis was appointed printer to the University of Glasgow, and published Demetrius Phalerus de Elocutione in two sizes, quarto and octavo. This was the first book printed at Glasgow in Greek type, the Greek and Latin renderings being printed on opposite pages—the Latin in a fount of English Roman that cannot be distinguished from Caslon's letter, while the italic also has a strong resemblance to that of the English founder. Among other productions of the year 1743 was a specimen of another Glasgow man's work, Bishop Burnet's translation of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, to which was prefixed Holbein's portrait of the great Chancellor.

In 1744 Dr. Andrew Wilson, who for some years had been furnishing Scotch and Irish printers with types from his foundry, moved to Camlachie, a spot within a mile of Glasgow, and at once began to furnish letter for Robert Foulis. In the same year Robert took his brother Andrew into partnership, and the firm quickly became famous for the beauty and correctness of their classics, beginning with the edition of Horace, which, from the fact of its having only six errors in the text, was christened the immaculate. Other attractive books were the Sophocles of 1745, quarto; Cicero in twenty volumes, small octavo; the small folio edition of Callimachus, which took[Pg 264] the silver medal offered in Edinburgh for the finest book of not fewer than ten sheets; the magnificent Homer, which Reed in his Old English Letter Foundries describes as 'for accuracy and splendour the finest monument of the Foulis press.' But the Foulis press did not confine itself to classics only. It published several fine editions of English authors, among them a folio edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, and editions of the poems of Gray and Pope. In 1775 Andrew Foulis died suddenly. The blow was very severely felt by his brother, and coming as it did upon the failure of his Academy of Arts, completely crushed him. He removed his art collection to London for sale; but here another disappointment awaited him—the sum realised after paying expenses being fifteen shillings. He returned to Edinburgh, and was on the point of starting for Glasgow when he died on the 2nd June 1776. The Foulis press was carried on by the younger Andrew Foulis until the end of the century.

In England, the chief event of this period was the appearance of John Baskerville at Birmingham.

No satisfactory biography of Baskerville has yet been written, but the best sketches of his life are those by the late T. B. Reed in his History of the Old English Letter Foundries (chap, xiii.), which contains some highly interesting and valuable correspondence between Baskerville and his[Pg 265] publisher, R. Dodsley, and the more recent article in the Dictionary of National Biography, from the pen of Mr. Tedder.

John Baskerville was born in 1706 at Wolverley, a village in Worcestershire. No one has discovered where he was educated: yet this is one of the points upon which we should like to know something, because it is generally admitted that he was a very beautiful writer; indeed, it was to his love of calligraphy that we owe the regular and well-proportioned letters associated with his name. For some time he earned his living as a writing-master; after which he appears to have gone into the japanning trade, and in 1750 embarked some capital in a letter foundry. Another point upon which his biographers are silent is the place where he learnt the art of printing. For we know that the punches of his foundry were not cut by himself, and that he was not in any sense a practical printer; yet he must have obtained some knowledge of the rudiments of the art before taking over the responsibilities of a foundry of his own. Baskerville appears to have employed the most skilled artists he could obtain, and it is said that he spent upwards of £600—some say £800—before he obtained a fount to suit him. His letters to Dodsley show how anxious he was to attain perfection. The result of all this care and labour was shown in the quarto edition of Virgil which appeared in 1757,[Pg 266] and was followed by quarto editions of Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.

The appearance of Baskerville's publications gave rise to no little controversy. By some they were hailed with unstinted praise; while others, such as Mores and Dr. Bedford, looked upon them with something little short of contempt. Yet it is difficult to understand the grounds of these adverse criticisms. As regards type, there is very little to choose between Caslon's Roman and that of Baskerville, while the italic of Baskerville was unquestionably the most beautiful type that had ever been seen in England; and the ridiculous criticism passed on it that its very fineness was injurious to the eyesight, was shown to be utterly worthless by Franklin's letter to the printer, which is printed in Reed's Old English Letter Foundries. But there are also other features of excellence about these books of Baskerville's. They are simplicity itself. There is not a single ornament or tail-piece introduced into them to divide the attention. The books were printed with deep and wide margins, and the lines were spaced out with the very best effect.

The first public body to recognise Baskerville's ability was the University of Oxford, which in July 1758 empowered him to cut a fount of Greek types for 200 guineas. This order proved to be beyond his power. It is generally admitted that his Greek type was a failure, and he wisely[Pg 267] made no further attempts at cutting learned characters. Some of the punches of Baskerville's Greek types are still preserved at Oxford, and are the only specimens of his foundry that we have.

In his Preface to Paradise Lost, Baskerville stated that the extent of his ambition was to print an octavo Prayer Book and a folio Bible. In connection with this ambition, he applied to the University of Cambridge for appointment as their printer, a privilege which was granted to him, but at the cost of such a heavy premium that he obtained no pecuniary profit from it. The Prayer Book printed in two forms appeared in 1760, and the same year saw the prospectus and specimen of the Bible issued, the Bible itself appearing in 1763 in imperial folio. Both are beautiful specimens of the printer's art.

But Baskerville soon became disgusted with the ill-natured criticism to which he was subjected, coupled with the failure of booksellers to support him, and was anxious to have done with the business. The year before the publication of the Bible, he wrote to Horace Walpole a letter given by Reed (p. 278) in which he says that he is sending specimens of his foundry to foreign courts in the hope of finding among them a purchaser for the whole concern, and during the next few years he was in correspondence with Franklin with the same object. Fortunately for his country, these attempts were unsuccessful[Pg 268] during his life-time, and between the years 1760-1773 he produced not only several editions of the Bible and Common Prayer, but the works of Addison, 4 vols. 1761, 4to; the works of Congreve, 3 vols. 1761, 8vo; Æsop's Fables; and in 1772 a series of the classics in quarto, which, Reed says, 'suffice, had he printed nothing else, to distinguish him as the first typographer of his time' (p. 281).

Baskerville died on January 8th, 1775, and for a few years his widow carried on the foundry; but at the same time endeavoured to dispose of it. Both our Universities refused it, and no London foundry would touch it, because the booksellers would have nothing but the types of Caslon and Jackson. The type was eventually sold in 1779 to the Société Littéraire-typographique of France for £3700, and was used in a sumptuous edition of the works of Voltaire.

Yet one firm was found bold enough to model its letter on that of Baskerville. In 1764 Joseph Fry, a native of Bristol, began letter-founding in that city. He took as a partner William Pine, proprietor of the Bristol Gazette, but the business was not carried on in their name but in that of Isaac Moore, their manager. In 1768 they removed the foundry to London, and issued a prospectus. But so strong was the prejudice against Baskerville's letter—or, perhaps, it would be better to say, so strong was the hold which[Pg 269] Caslon's foundry had obtained—that they were compelled to recast the whole of their stock. This took them several years; meanwhile, they issued one or two editions of the Bible in their first fount. In 1776 Isaac Moore severed his connection with the firm. In 1782 Mr. Pine also withdrew, and Joseph Fry admitted his two sons, Edmund and Henry, into partnership. At length in 1785 appeared the first specimen-book of Fry's foundry, and it was frankly admitted in the preface that the founts of Roman and italic were modelled on those of Caslon.

Joseph Fry retired from the business in 1787. Amongst the books printed with his later type may be mentioned the quarto edition of the classics edited by Dr. Homer.

Caslon the First died at Bethnal Green on January 23rd, 1766. His son, Caslon the Second, died intestate on the 17th August 1778, when the business came to his son, William Caslon the Third. In the same year that Joseph Fry published his Specimen of Types, Caslon the Third also published a specimen-book of sixty-two sheets, in every way worthy of the reputation the firm had established. It included, besides Romans and italics of great beauty and regularity, every variety of oriental and learned founts, and several sheets of ornaments and flowers, arranged in various designs. This book was dedicated to the king, and contained an address to the reader in[Pg 270] which, after reviewing the establishment of the foundry, Caslon referred bitterly to the eager rivalry of other printers and their open avowal of imitation. In 1793 Caslon the Third disposed of his share in the Chiswell Street business to his mother and his brother Henry's widow.

Mrs. William Caslon, senior, died in October 1795, when the business was sold by auction and bought by Mrs. Henry Caslon for £520.

Joseph Jackson, who shared with the Caslons the favour of the London booksellers, was one of two apprentices formerly in the employ of William Caslon II. Some dispute arose in the foundry about the price of certain work, and Joseph Jackson and Thomas Cottrell, having acted as ringleaders in the movement, were dismissed, and being thrown on their own resources, set up a foundry of their own in Nevil's Court, Fetter Lane. Of the two Jackson proved far the more skilful, but seems to have been of a roving disposition. After working for a year or two with Cottrell he went to sea, leaving Cottrell to carry on the business alone. This he did with a fair measure of success, though his foundry was never at any time a large one. After a few years' absence Jackson returned to England in 1763, and again turned his attention to letter-cutting, serving for a time under his old partner Cottrell; but having obtained the services and, what was of more value, the pecuniary help of two of[Pg 271] Cottrell's workmen, he set up for himself, and quickly took a foremost place in the trade. Among his most successful work was a fount of English 'Domesday,' for the Domesday Book published by order of Parliament in 1783, which was preferred to that cut by Cottrell for the same purpose. Jackson also cut a fount for Dr. Woide's facsimile of the Alexandrian Codex with great success. But perhaps his most successful effort was the two-line English which he cut for Macklin's edition of the Bible, begun in 1789. At the time of his death in 1792 he was at work upon a fount of double pica for Bowyer's edition of Hume's History of England. After his death his foundry was purchased by William Caslon III.

Both Macklin's Bible and Hume's History were printed at the press of Thomas Bensley in Bolt Court, Fleet Street. As a printer of sumptuous books Bensley had only one rival, William Bulmer, who is generally accorded the first place. But Bensley was certainly earlier in the field. His work was quite equal to that of Bulmer, and, apart from this, the world owes more to his enterprise than it has ever yet acknowledged.

Thomas Bensley was the son of a printer in the Strand, and in 1783 he succeeded to the business of Edward Allen in Bolt Court, a house adjoining that in which Johnson had lived. He at once turned his attention to printing as a fine[Pg 272] art. Dibdin, in his Bibliographical Decameron (vol. ii. p. 397, etc.), gives a list of the works printed by Bensley, and says that he began with a quarto edition of Lavater's Physiognomy in 1789, following this up with an octavo edition of Allan Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd in 1790. In this list, however, Dibdin has omitted the folio edition of Bürger's poem Leonora, printed by Bensley in 1796, with designs by Lady Diana Beauclerc. In 1797 he printed a very beautiful edition of Thomson's Seasons, in royal folio, with engravings by Bartolozzi and P. W. Tomkins from pictures by W. Hamilton.

But the chief glories of his press are the Bible and Hume's History. The first was begun in 1789; but Jackson's death caused some delay when the Book of Numbers had been reached, owing to more type being required. For some reason, not clearly shown, Bensley would not employ Caslon, but applied to Vincent Figgins, who for ten years had been in the service of Jackson, to complete the type. Figgins' foundry was in Swan Yard, Holborn, where he had established himself after Jackson's death in 1792. He succeeded with the task set him, and his type, which was an exact facsimile of Jackson's, was brought into use in the Book of Deuteronomy. The whole work was completed in seven volumes, in the year 1800, and this date appears on the title-page; but the dedication to the king was[Pg 273] dated 1791, and the plates, which were the work of Loutherbourg, West, Hamilton, and others, were variously dated between those years. The text was printed in double columns, in a handsome two-line English, with the headings to chapters in Roman capitals, no italic type being used, and no marginalia.

Robert Bowyer's edition of Hume was in the press at the time of Jackson's death, but was not completed until 1806. The type used in this is a double pica, and the founder, it is said, declared that it should 'be the most exquisite performance of the kind in this or any other country.' He died before its completion, and the work was completed by Figgins; but the book is a lasting memorial to the skill both of the founder and the printer.

In January 1791 appeared the first number of Boydell's Shakespeare. The history of this notorious undertaking was briefly this. Boydell was an art publisher in Pall Mall, where he had established a gallery and filled it with the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, Opie, and Northcote, chiefly in Shakesperian subjects. George Nicol the bookseller proposed to the Boydells that William Martin, brother of Robert Martin of Birmingham, should be employed to cut a set of types with which to print an edition of Shakespeare's works, to be illustrated with the drawings then in Boydell's gallery. This William[Pg 274] Martin had learnt his art in the foundry of Baskerville; and such is the irony of fate, that less than twenty years after the death of that eminent founder, his work, scorned by the booksellers of London in his own day, was imitated in what was certainly one of the most pretentious books that had ever come from the English press. The printer selected for the work was William Bulmer, a native of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he was apprenticed to Mr. Thomson, the printer, of Burnt House Entry, St. Nicholas Churchyard. At that time he formed a friendship with Thomas Bewick, the engraver, who in his Memoir tells us that Bulmer used to 'prove' his cuts for him.

After serving his time, Bulmer came to London and entered the printing-office of John Bell, who was then issuing a miniature edition of the poets. A fortunate accident won him his acquaintance with Boydell and Nicol, and so led to his subsequent employment at the Shakespeare press.

The Shakespeare was followed by the works of Milton in three volumes folio in 1794-5-7, and again in 1795 by the Poems of Goldsmith and Parnell in quarto. In the advertisement to this work, Bulmer pointed out how much had been done by English printers within the last few years to raise the art of printing from the low depth to which it had fallen—a work in which the Shakespeare press had borne no little part. He went on to say that much pains had been taken[Pg 275] with this edition of Goldsmith to make it a complete specimen of the arts of type and block printing. The types were Martin's, the woodcuts Bewick's, and the paper Whatman's. One copy of this book was printed on white satin, and three on English vellum.

Among the books that appeared within the last five years of the century was an edition of Lucretius in three volumes large quarto, which certainly ranks for beauty of type and regularity of printing with any book of that period. Like most of the works of Baskerville, this book was quite free from ornament, and claims admiration only from the excellence of the press-work. The notes were printed in double columns in small pica, the text itself in double pica. In the whole three volumes not a dozen printer's errors have been found. This work came from the press of Archibald Hamilton.

Time has not dealt kindly with some of these specimens of what was called 'fine' printing. After the lapse of a century, we begin to see that though the type and press-work were all that could be desired, and placed the English printers on a level with the best of those on the Continent, there was something radically wrong with the production of illustrated books. Whether it was due to the ink, or to the paper, or, as some suppose, to insufficient drying, in all these sumptuous volumes the oil has worked out of the illustra[Pg 276]tions, leaving an ugly brown stain on the opposite pages, and totally destroying the appearance of the books. This applies not only to large and small illustrations, but in many cases to the ornamental wood blocks used for head and tail pieces. In Macklin's Bible, and in the 'Milton' printed at the Shakespeare press, this discoloration has completely ruined what were undoubtedly, when they came from the press, extremely beautiful works.

Before leaving the work of the eighteenth century, a word or two must be said about the private presses that were at work during that time. The first place must, of course, be given to that at Strawberry Hill. None of the curious hobbies ridden by Horace Walpole became him better, or was more useful, than his fancy for running a printing-press. He was not devoid of taste, and though no doubt he might have done it better, he carried this idea out very well. The productions of his press are very good examples of printing, and are far above any of the other private press work of the eighteenth century. His type was a neat and clear one, though somewhat small, and the ornaments and initial letters introduced into his books were simple and in keeping with the general character of the types, without being in any sense works of art. The following brief account of the Strawberry Hill press is compiled from Mr. H. B. Wheatley's[Pg 277] article in Bibliographica, and from Austin Dobson's delightful Horace Walpole, a Memoir, 1893.

The press was started in August 1757 with the publication, for R. Dodsley, of two 'Odes' by Gray. 'I am turned printer, and have converted a little cottage into a printing office,' he tells one friend; and to another he writes, 'Elzevir, Aldus, and Stephens are the freshest persons in my memory'; and referring to the 'Odes,' he writes to John Chute in July 1757, 'I found him [Gray] in town last week; he had brought his two Odes to be printed. I snatched them out of Dodsley's hands.'

Walpole's first printer was William Robinson, an Irishman, who remained with him for two years. The Odes were followed by Paul Hentzner's A Journey into England, of which only 220 copies were printed. In April 1758 came the two volumes of Walpole's Catalogue of Royal and Noble Authors, of which 300 copies were printed and sold so rapidly, that a second edition—not printed at Strawberry Hill—was called for before the end of the year.

In 1760 Walpole wrote to Zouch, in reference to an edition of Lucan, 'Lucan is in poor forwardness. I have been plagued with a succession of bad printers, and am not got beyond the fourth book.' It was published in January 1761, and in the following year appeared the first and second[Pg 278] volumes of Anecdotes of Painting in England, with plates and portraits, and having the imprint, 'Printed by Thomas Farmer at Strawberry Hill, MD.CCLXII.' Then another difficulty appears to have arisen with the printers, and the third volume, published in 1763, had no printer's name in the imprint. The fourth volume, not issued till 1780, bears the name of Thomas Kirgate, who seems to have been taken on in 1772, and held his post until Walpole's death. Between 1764 and 1768 the Strawberry Hill press was idle, but in the latter year Walpole printed in octavo 200 copies of a French play entitled Cornélie Vestale, Tragédie, and from that time down to 1789 it continued at work at intervals, its chief productions being Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, 1772, 4to, of which only 100 copies were printed, twenty-five of which went to Paris; The Sleep Walker, a comedy in two acts, 1778, 8vo; A description of the villa of Mr. Horace Walpole, 1784, 4to, of which 200 copies were printed; and Hieroglyphic Tales, 1785, 8vo.

Next to the press of Horace Walpole, that of George Allan, M. P. for Durham, at the Grange, Darlington, must be noticed. The owner was an enthusiastic antiquary, and he used his press chiefly for printing fugitive pieces relating to the history of the county of Durham. The first piece with a date was Collections relating to St. Edmunds Hospital, printed in 1769, and the[Pg 279] last a tract which he printed for his friend Thomas Pennant in 1788, entitled Of the Patagonians, of which only 40 copies were worked off.

The productions of his press were very numerous, but of no great merit. Allan was his own compositor, and gave much time to his hobby; but his printer appears to have been a dissolute and dirty workman, who caused him much annoyance and trouble. Altogether it may safely be said that Allan's press cost him a great deal more than it was worth.

Another of those who tried their hand at amateur printing was Francis Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk, who started a press at his rectory at Fersfield. Here he printed the first volume of his History in 1736, and also the History of Thetford, a thin quarto volume, in 1739. But the result was an utter failure. The type was bad to begin with, and the attempt to use red ink on the title-pages only made matters worse. The press-work was carelessly done; and it is not surprising to find that the second volume of the History, published in 1745, was entrusted to a Norwich printer.

The celebrated John Wilkes also carried on a private printing-office at his house in Great George Street, Westminster. Three specimens of its work have been identified: An Essay on Woman, 1763, 8vo, of which only twelve copies[Pg 280] are said to have been printed [19]; a few copies of the third volume of the North Briton; and Recherches sur l'Origine du Despotisme Orientale, Ouvrage posthume de M. Boulanger, 1763, 12mo. A note in a copy of this volume states that it was printed by Thomas Farmer, who had also assisted Horace Walpole at the Strawberry Hill press.

During the last four years of the century the Rev. John Fawcett, a Baptist minister of some repute, established a press in his house at Brearley Hall, near Halifax, which he afterwards removed to Ewood Hall. He used it chiefly for printing his own sermons and writings, among the most important issue's being The Life of Oliver Heywood, 1796, pp. 216; Miscellanea Sacra, 1797; A Summary of the Evidences of Christianity, 1797, pp. 100; Constitution and Order of a Gospel Church, 1797, pp. 58; The History of John Wise, 1798; Gouge's Sure Way of Thriving; Watson's Treatise on Christian Contentment; and Dr. Williams's Christian Preacher. Most of these were in duodecimo.

The type used in this press was a very good one, and the press-work was done with care. Owing to his growing infirmities Fawcett was obliged to dispose of the press in 1800. There is reason to believe that the above list might be considerably increased.[Pg 281]

At Bishopstone, in Sussex, the Rev. James Hurdis printed several works at his own press, the most important being a series of lectures on poetry, printed in 1797, a quarto of three hundred and thirty pages, and a poem called The Favorite Village, in 1800, a quarto of two hundred and ten pages.

To these must be added a press at Lustleigh, in Devon, made and worked by the Rev. William Davy, and at which was printed some thirty copies of his System of Divinity, 26 vols. 1795, 8vo, a copy of which remarkable work is now in the British Museum, and is considered one of its curiosities; a press at Glynde, in Sussex, the seat of Lord Hampden, from which at least one work can be traced; and a press at Madeley, in Shropshire, from which several religious tracts were printed in 1774 by the Rev. John Fletcher, and in 1792 a work entitled Alexander's Feast, by Dr. Beddoes.

CHAPTER XI

THE PRESENT CENTURY

t has been said that printing sprang into the world fully armed. At least this is certain, that for nearly four centuries after its birth the printing-press in use in all printing-houses remained the same in form as that which Caxton's workmen had used in the Red Pale at Westminster. There had been some unimportant alterations made in it by an Amsterdam printer in the seventeenth century; but until the year 1800 no important change in the form or mechanism of the printing-press had ever been introduced. Some such change was sorely needed. The productive powers of the old press were quite unable to keep pace with the ever-increasing demand for books and newspapers that a quickened intelligence and national anxiety had awakened. Up to 1815 England was constantly at war, and men and women alike were eager for news from abroad. In 1800 Charles Mahon, third Earl Stanhope, invented a new printing-press.

The Stanhope press substituted an iron frame[Pg 283]work for the wooden body of the old press, thus giving greater solidity. The platen was double the size of that previously in use, thus allowing a larger sheet to be printed, and a system of levers was adopted in place of the cumbersome handlebar and screw used in the wooden press. The chief merits of the new invention were increased speed, ease to the workman, evenness of impression, and durability. Further improvements in the mechanism of hand machines were secured in the Columbian press, an American invention, brought to this country in 1818, and later in the Albion press, invented by R. W. Cope of London, and since that time by many others. Yet even with the best of these improved presses no more than 250 or 300 impressions per hour could be worked off, and the daily output of the most important paper only averaged three or four thousand copies. But a great and wonderful change was at hand.

In 1806 Frederick Kœnig, the son of a small farmer at Eisleben in Saxon Prussia, came to England with a project for a steam printing press. The idea was not a new one, for sixteen years before an Englishman, named William Nicholson, took out a patent for a machine for printing, which foreshadowed nearly every fundamental improvement even in the most advanced machines of the present day. But from want of means, or some other cause, Nicholson never[Pg 284] actually made a machine. Nor did Kœnig's project meet with much encouragement until he walked into the printing-house of Thomas Bensley of Bolt Court, who encouraged the inventor to proceed, and supplied him with the necessary funds. There is reason to believe that Kœnig made himself acquainted with the details of Nicholson's patent during the time that his machine was building. He also obtained the assistance of Andrew F. Bauer, an ingenious German mechanic. His first patent was taken out on the 29th March 1810, a second in 1812, a third in 1814, and a fourth in 1816. The first machine is said to have taken three years to build, and upon its completion was erected in Bensley's office in Bolt Court. There seems to be considerable uncertainty as to what was the first publication printed on it. Some say it was set to work on the Annual Register, one writer [20] asserting that in April 1811, 3000 sheets of that publication were printed on it; but Mr. Southward, in his monograph Modern Printing, confines himself to the statement that two sheets of a book were printed on the machine in 1812. Curiously enough neither Bensley's publication, the Annual Register, nor the Gentleman's Magazine takes any notice of the new invention, although in the Gentleman's Magazine for 1811 there is a notice[Pg 285] of a printing machine invented at Philadelphia, which apparently embodied all the same principles as Kœnig's (Gent. Mag., vol. lxxxi. p. 576).

In 1814 John Walter, the second proprietor of the Times, saw Kœnig's machine, and ordered one to be supplied to the Times office, the first number printed by steam being that of the 28th November 1814. This machine was a double cylinder, which printed simultaneously two copies of a forme of the newspaper on one side only. But it was a cumbersome and complicated affair, and its greatest output 1800 impressions per hour.

In 1818 Edward Cowper, a printer of Nelson Square, patented certain improvements in printing, these improvements consisting of a better distribution of the ink and a better plan for conveying the sheets from the cylinders. Having joined his brother-in-law, Augustus Applegarth, they proceeded to make certain alterations in Kœnig's machine in Bensley's office which at one stroke removed forty wheels, and greatly simplified the inking arrangements. In 1827 they jointly invented a four-cylinder machine, which Applegarth erected for the Times. The distinctive features of this machine were its ability to print both sides of a sheet at once, its admirable inking apparatus, and great acceleration of speed, the new machine being capable of printing five thousand copies per hour.[Pg 286]

These machines at once superseded the Kœnig, and were to be found in use in all parts of the country for printing newspapers until quite lately. In 1848 the same firm constructed an eight-cylinder vertical machine, which was one of the sights of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Shortly afterwards Messrs. Hoe, of New York, made further improvements in the mechanism, raising the output to 20,000 per hour. All these machines had to be fed with paper by hand, but in 1869 it occurred to Mr. J. C. Macdonald, the manager of the Times, and Mr. J. C. Calverley, the chief engineer of the same office, that much saving of labour would result if paper could be manufactured in continuous rolls; and the result of their experiments was the rotary press, which was named after Mr. John Walter, the fourth of that name, then at the head of the Times proprietorship. Since then the improvement in printing machines has steadily continued, and may be said to have culminated in the Hoe 'double supplement' press in use at the present day in many newspaper offices, which is capable of printing, cutting, and folding 24,000 copies per hour of a full-sized newspaper.

These great changes in presses and press-work have occasioned similar changes in type-founding.

At the beginning of the century, the firm of Caslon had been given a new lease of life by the energy of Mrs. Henry Caslon, who in 1799 had[Pg 287] purchased the foundry, a third share in which a few years earlier had been worth £3000, for the paltry sum of £520. She at once set to work to have new founts of type cut, and was ably helped by Mr. John Isaac Drury. The pica then produced was an improvement in the style of Bodoni, and quickly raised the foundry to its old position. Mrs. Caslon took into partnership Nathaniel Catherwood, but both died in the course of the year 1809. The business then came into the hands of Henry Caslon II., who was joined by John James Catherwood. Other notable firms were those already noticed in the last chapter—Mrs. Fry, Figgins, Martin, and Jackson. One and all of these suffered severely from the change in the fashion of types at the beginning of the century, the ugly form of type, known as fat-faced letters, then introduced, remaining in vogue until the revival of Caslon's old-faced type by the younger Whittingham.

Upon the advent of machinery and cylinder printing, the use of movable type for printing from was supplemented by quicker and more durable methods, and William Ged's long-despised discovery of stereotyping is now an absolutely necessary adjunct of modern press-work. This, again, was in some measure due to Earl Stanhope, who in 1800 went to Andrew Tilloch, and Foulis, the Glasgow printer, both of whom had taken out a patent for the invention, and learnt[Pg 288] from them the process. He afterwards associated himself with Andrew Wilson, a London printer, and in 1802 the plaster process, as it was called, was perfected. This remained in use until 1846, when a system of forming moulds in papier mâché was introduced, and this was succeeded by the adaptation of the stereo-plates to the rotary machines.

It would be foreign to the purpose of this work, which is concerned with printing as applied to books, to attempt to describe the Linotype and its rival processes which have been recently introduced to further facilitate newspaper printing. We must, therefore, return to our book-printers, and note first that the Shakespeare Press of William Bulmer, for which Martin the type-founder was almost exclusively employed, continued to turn out beautiful examples of typographic work during the early years of the nineteenth century. A list of the works issued from this press up to 1817 is given by Dibdin in his notes to the second volume of his Decameron, pp. 384-395. Some of the chief items were The Arabian Nights Entertainments, 5 vols. 1802, 8vo; The Book of Common Prayer, with an introduction by John Reeves, 1802, 8vo; The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales, translated by Sir R. C. Hoare, 2 vols. 1806, 4to; Richardson's Dictionary of the Arabic and Persian Languages, 2 vols. 1806-10, 4to; Hoare's[Pg 289] History of Wiltshire, 1812, folio; Dibdin's Typographical Antiquities, 4 vols. 1812, 4to; and the same author's Bibliotheca Spenceriana, 4 vols. 1814-15, 8vo, and Bibliographical Decameron, 3 vols. 1817, 8vo. These three last are considered to be some of the best work of this press, which also turned out many books for private circulation only. William Bulmer died on September 9th, 1830, after a long and active life, and was succeeded by his partner Mr. William Nichol.

Nor had Thomas Bensley slackened anything of his enthusiasm for fine printing. Twice during the first twenty years of the century he suffered severely by fire: the first time in 1807, when a quarto edition of Thomson's Seasons, an edition of the Works of Pope, and many other books were destroyed; the second in 1819, on June 26th, when the premises were totally burnt down. This was followed by the death of his son, and shortly afterwards he retired from business, and died on September 11th, 1835. Not only was he an excellent printer, but he did more than any other man of his time to introduce the improved printing machine into this country.

John Nichols was another of the great printers of his day, and he too was burnt out on the night of February 8th, 1808. No better account of the magnitude of his undertakings at that time could be found than his own description of the disaster,[Pg 290] which he contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine in the following March:—

'Amongst the books destroyed are many of very great value, and some that can never be replaced. Not to mention a large quantity of handsome quarto Bibles, the works of Swift, Pope, Young, Thomson, Johnson, etc. etc., the Annals of Commerce, and other works which may still be elsewhere purchased, there are several consumed which cannot now be obtained at any price. The unsold copies of the introduction to the second volume of the Sepulchral Monuments; Hutchins' Dorsetshire; Bigland's Gloucestershire; Hutchinson's Durham; Thorpe's Registrum and Custumale Roffense; the few numbers that remained of the Bibliotheca Topographica; the third volume of Elizabethan Progresses; the Illustrations of Ancient Manners; Mr. Gough's History of Pleshy, and his valuable account of the Coins of the Seleucidæ, engraved by Bartolozzi; Colonel de la Motte's Allusive Arms; Bishop Atterbury's Epistolary Correspondence; and last, not least, the whole of six portions of Mr. Nichols' Leicestershire, and the entire stock of the Gentleman's Magazine from 1782 to 1807, are irrecoverably lost.'

'Of those in the press, the most important were the concluding portion of Hutchins' Dorsetshire (nearly finished); a second volume of Manning and Bray's Surrey (about half printed);[Pg 291] Mr. Bawdwin's translation of Domesday for Yorkshire (nearly finished); a new edition of Dr. Whitaker's History of Craven; Mr. Gough's British Topography (nearly one volume); the sixth volume of Biographia Britannica (ready for publishing); Dr. Kelly's Dictionary of the Manx Language; Mr. Neild's History of Prisons; a genuine unpublished comedy by Sir Richard Steele; Mr. Joseph Reid's unpublished tragedy of Dido; four volumes of the British Essayists; Mr. Taylor Combe's Appendix to Dr. Hunter's Coins; part of Dr. Hawes' annual report for 1808; a part of the Biographical Anecdotes of Hogarth; two entire volumes, and the half of two other volumes of a new edition of the anecdotes of Mr. Bowyer,' etc.

Writing to Bishop Percy in July of that year, Nichols stated that he had lost £10,000 beyond his insurance in this outbreak.

John Nichols died on the 26th November 1826, after a long and laborious life. He was a born antiquary, and a voluminous author, his chief works being The History and Antiquities of the Town and County of Leicester, completed in 1815 in eight folio volumes, and Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, 1812-15, an expansion of the Biographical and Literary Anecdotes of William Bowyer, which had been printed in 1782. This work was afterwards supplemented by Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth[Pg 292] Century, 6 vols. 1817-31, to which his son afterwards added two additional volumes. John Nichols was Common Councillor for the ward of Farringdon Without from 1784 to 1786, and again from 1787 to 1811. In 1804 he was Master of the Stationers' Company. He was succeeded in business by his son John Bowyer Nichols, and the firm subsequently became J. Nichols, Son, and Bentley. Like his father, John Bowyer Nichols was editor and author of many books, and was appointed Printer to the Society of Antiquaries in 1824. He died at Haling on October 16th, 1863, leaving seven children, of whom the eldest, John Gough Nichols, born on 22nd May 1806, became the head of the printing-house, and editor of the Gentleman's Magazine, as his father and grandfather had been before him. He was one of the founders of the Camden Society (1838), and edited many of its publications. He was the promoter and editor of The Herald and Genealogist, and his researches in this direction were of great importance. The Dictionary of National Biography enumerates thirty-four works from his pen, most of which it would be safe to say were also printed by him. He died on 14th November 1873.

Another press of importance in the first half of the nineteenth century was that of Thomas Davison. He was the printer of most of Byron's works, and many of those of Campbell, Moore[Pg 293] and Wordsworth; but his chief claim to notice rests upon the magnificent edition of Whitaker's History of Rickmondshire in two large folio volumes, printed in 1823, and upon that of Dugdale's Monasticon, in eight folio volumes, issued between 1817 and 1830, an undertaking of great magnitude. In Timperley's Encyclopædia it is stated that Davison made important improvements in the manufacture of printing ink, and that few of his competitors could approach him in excellence of work.

The story of the firm of Eyre and Spottiswoode would, if material were available, form an interesting chapter in the history of English printing. It is the direct descendant in the royal line of Pynson, Berthelet, the Barkers, and finally of John and Robert Baskett, the last of whom assigned the patent to John Eyre of Landford House, Wilts, whose son, Charles Eyre, the great-grandfather of the present George Edward Briscoe Eyre, succeeded to the business in 1770. During the seventeenth century, the work of the Government and the sovereign had been divided among several firms, but in the eighteenth century it was again given to one man, John Baskett. In the printing of the Bible and Book of Common Prayer the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge have also a share; but all the other Government work is done by Messrs. Eyre and Spottiswoode.[Pg 294]

Charles Eyre, not being a practical printer, obtained the co-operation of William Strahan. On the renewal of the patent in 1798, the name of John Reeves was inserted, but Mr. Strahan purchased his interest. In 1829, the patent was again renewed to George Eyre, the son of Charles, John Reeves, and Andrew Strahan. George Edward Eyre, son of George William Strahan, was born at Edinburgh in April 1715, and, after serving his apprenticeship in Edinburgh, took his way to London, where, it is believed, he found a post in the office of Andrew Miller. In 1770 the printing-house was removed from Blackfriars to New Street, near Gough Square, Fleet Street. William Strahan was intimately associated with the best literature of his time, among those for whom he published being Dr. Johnson, Hume, Adam Smith, Robertson, and many other eminent writers. In 1774 he was Master of the Stationers' Company, Member of Parliament for Malmesbury, and sat for Wootton Bassett in the next Parliament. Among his greatest friends was Benjamin Franklin, who kept up a correspondence with him in spite of the strong political differences between them. Strahan died at New Street on July 9th 1785, leaving three sons and two daughters. The youngest son, Andrew, succeeded his father in the Royal Printing House, and one of the daughters married John Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode, whose son, Andrew, afterwards entered the firm.[Pg 295] Andrew Strahan was noted for his benevolence, and on his death in 1831 he left handsome bequests to the Literary Fund and the Company of Stationers.

Andrew Spottiswoode, who died in 1866 at the ripe age of seventy-nine, had a large printing business apart from the office of Queen's Printer, and his imprint will be found in much of the lighter literature of the period. His son, William Spottiswoode, after a distinguished career at Oxford, ultimately attained high rank as a mathematician, and in 1865 became President of the Mathematical Section of the British Association. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1853, and became its President on 30th November 1878. He died on 27th June 1883.

Equally renowned is the firm of Gilbert and Rivington. Early in the second half of the eighteenth century (the exact date is not known) John Rivington, the fourth son of John Rivington the publisher, and direct descendant of Charles Rivington of the Bible and Crown in Paternoster Row, succeeded to the business of James Emonson, printer, of St. John's Square, Clerkenwell. John Rivington died in 1785, and was succeeded by his widow, who in 1786 took as partner John Marshall. A series of classical works, of which they were the printers, was very favourably received. These included the Greek Testament,[Pg 296] Livy, and Sophocles, as well as a series of Latin poets and authors, edited by Michael Maittaire. The business next passed into the hands of Deodatus Bye. He in turn admitted Henry Law as partner, and the firm became successively Law and Gilbert and Robert and Richard Gilbert. The partnership being dissolved early in the present century by the death of Robert Gilbert, Richard carried on the business alone until 1830, when he took into partnership Mr. William Rivington, a great-grandson of the first Charles Rivington, and from that day the firm has gone by the name of Gilbert and Rivington. Richard Gilbert died in 1852, and for eleven years after his death the printing business was carried on by Mr. William Rivington, who issued many valuable and standard works on subjects of classical and ecclesiological interest.

William Rivington retired from business in 1868, being succeeded by his son, William John Rivington, and his nephew, Alexander. The business increased largely in their hands; one of their first undertakings being the purchase in 1870 of the plant of the late Mr. William Mavor Watts, by which they secured a large addition to their collection of Oriental types. In 1875 Mr. E. Mosley entered the firm, and Mr. William John Rivington left it to join the publishing house of Sampson Low, Marston and Searle. Mr. Alexander Rivington retired from the firm[Pg 297] in 1878, being thus the last Rivington connected with the house, which shortly afterwards was turned into a limited liability company.

Messrs. Gilbert and Rivington's collection of Oriental and other foreign types enables them to print in every known language, their specimen books embracing 267 distinct tongues. They are Oriental printers to the British Museum, India Office, British and Foreign Bible Society. Speaking of the Oriental work, the most striking feature in the firm's business, a correspondent to the British Printer (March-April 1895), says:

'Most of the type faces noticed were on English bodies, and the composition is somewhat similar. Arabic is composed just as with English. Sanskrit possesses some little features of accents and kerned sections, which render justification quite a fine art, accents on varying bodies needing to be utilised.... The firm does much Hindustani work, and possesses seven sizes of type in this language. Amongst the curiosities are the cuneiform types, the wedge-like series of faces in which old Persian, Median, and Assyrian inscriptions are written; and last, but by no means least in interest, the odd-looking hieroglyphic type faces, which are on bodies ranging from half nonpareil to three nonpareils, and some idea of their extent may be derived by noting that this type occupies fourteen cases of one hundred boxes each.'

To the firm of Messrs. Clowes of Stamford Street belongs the credit of being the first to print cheap periodical literature. William Clowes the elder, a native of Chichester, born in 1779, was apprenticed to a printer of that town, and coming to London in 1802 commenced business on his[Pg 298] own account in the following year 1803. By marriage with the daughter of Mr. Winchester of the Strand, he obtained a share of the Government printing work. On moving to Stamford Street, Blackfriars Road, he was chosen to print the Penny Magazine, edited by Charles Knight, the first attempt to provide the public with good literature in a cheap periodical form. The work was illustrated with woodcuts, and so great was its success that from No. 1 to No. 106 there were sold twenty million copies; but the undertaking was heavily handicapped by the paper tax of threepence per pound (see The Struggles of a Book, C. Knight, 1850, 8vo). In 1840 an article appeared in the Quarterly Review, written, it is said, by Sir F. B. Head, but which is more in the style of T. F. Dibdin, on the Clowes printing-office. Even at that time there were no less than nineteen of Applegarth and Cowper's machines at work there, with a daily average of one thousand per hour each. Besides these there were twenty-three hand presses and five hydraulic presses. The foundry employed thirty hands, and the compositors numbered one hundred and sixty.

In 1851 Messrs. Clowes printed the official catalogues of the Great Exhibition, for which they specially cast 58,520 lbs. of type. They subsequently printed the catalogues of the Exhibitions of 1883-1886, and the Royal Academy catalogues, and have been connected from their[Pg 299] inception with two works of a very different character, Hymns Ancient and Modern—the circulation of which has to be reckoned in millions—and the great General Catalogue of the Library of the British Museum, for their excellent printing of which all 'readers' are indebted to them. William Clowes the elder died in 1847. He was succeeded by his son, William, who died in 1883; and a third William, a grandson, is one of the managing directors of the firm which in 1881 was turned into a limited liability company.

But the chief honours of book production in London during the present century have been rightly awarded to the Chiswick Press.

Charles Whittingham the elder was born at Calledon, near Coventry, in 1767, and was apprenticed to a printer of that city. As soon as his time was out he came to London, and set up a press in Fetter Lane, his chief customers being Willis, a bookseller of Stationers' Court, Jordan of Fleet Street, and Symonds of Paternoster Row. His beginning was humble enough, his chief work lying in the direction of stationery, cards, and small bills. His first important publisher was a certain Heptinstall, who set him to print new editions of Boswell's Johnson, Robertson's America, and other important works. This was enough to set him going, and in 1797 he moved to larger premises in Dean Street, Fetter Lane,[Pg 300] and then began to issue illustrated books. In 1803 he took a second workshop at 10 Union Buildings, Leather Lane, and again in 1807 he moved to Goswell Street. In 1811 he took his foreman Robert Rowland into partnership, and shortly afterwards left him to manage the city business, while he himself set up a press at Chiswick and took up his abode at College House. Here he continued to work until his death in 1840. For a short time, from 1824 to 1828, he was joined with his nephew Charles, to whom at his death he left the Chiswick business.

There is not much to be said of the work of the elder Whittingham. He confined his attention to the issue of small books, such as the British Classics, which he began to print in 1803. His books are chiefly notable for the printing of the woodcuts, which by the process known as overlaying, he brought to great perfection. His relations with the publishers were, however, none of the best. They accused him of piracy, and considered it to be against the best interests of the trade to issue small and cheap books. The productions of the elder Whittingham's press have, moreover, been largely overshadowed by those of his nephew.

Charles Whittingham the younger was a genuine artist in printing. He loved books to begin with, and thought no pains too great to bestow upon their production. Born at Mitcham,[Pg 301] on October 30th, 1795, he was apprenticed to his uncle in 1810. In 1824 he was taken into partnership, but this lasted only four years, and he then set up for himself at 21 Took's Court, Chancery Lane. A near neighbour of his at that time was the publisher William Pickering, who since 1820 had been putting in the hands of the public some excellently printed and dainty volumes. It is stated in the Dictionary of National Biography that the series known as the Diamond Classics was printed for Pickering at the Chiswick Press. But this was not the case. He had no dealings whatever with the Whittinghams or the Chiswick Press before his introduction to Charles Whittingham the younger in 1829. The Diamond Classics, which he began to issue while he was living in Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1822, were printed by C. Corrall of Charing Cross, and the Oxford English Classics, in large octavo, chiefly by Talboys and Wheeler of Oxford, while most of his other work, amongst it the first eleven volumes of the works of Bacon, was done by Thomas White, who is first found at Bear Alley, and subsequently at Johnson Court and Crane Court in Fleet Street.

Few of these early books of Pickering's had any kind of decoration beyond a device on the title-page. Simplicity, combined with what was best in type and paper, seem to have been the publisher's chief aim at that time; but in some[Pg 303] of the Diamond Classics will be found the small and artistic border-pieces which he afterwards used frequently.

The first of Pickering's books in which anything of a very ornamental character occurs is The Bijou, or Annual of Literature, a publication which fixes very clearly his association with Whittingham. The Bijou first appeared in 1828, printed by Thomas White, with one or two charming head-pieces designed by Stothard. The volume for 1829 was also printed by White, and is noticeable as having the publisher's Aldine device, showing that this came into use during the year 1828. The volume for 1830 was printed by C. Whittingham of Took's Court. The meeting between the two men had been brought about by Basil Montagu in the summer of 1829. They found themselves kindred spirits on the subject of the artistic treatment of books, and a friendship sprang up between them, that ceased only with Pickering's death in 1854, and was productive of some of the most beautiful books that had ever come from an English press. Mr. Arthur Warren in his book, The Charles Whittinghams, Printers (p. 203), tells us: 'The two men met frequently for consultation, and whenever the bookseller visited the press, which he often did, there were brave experiments toward. The printer would produce something new in title-pages, or in colour work, or ornament,[Pg 305] and the bookseller would propound some new venture in the reproduction of an ancient volume.... They made it a point, moreover, to pass their Sundays together, either at the printer's house or at Pickering's.'

In the artistic production of books they were ably assisted by Whittingham's eldest daughter Charlotte, and Mary Byfield. The former designed the blocks, many of which were copied from the best French and Italian work of the sixteenth century, and the latter engraved them.

Among the notable books produced by these means were the Aldine Poets, editions of Milton, Bacon, Isaak Walton's Complete Angler, the works of George Peele, reprints of Caxton's books, and many Prayer-books. In 1844 Pickering and Whittingham were in consultation as to the production of an edition of Juvenal to be printed in old-face great primer, and the foundry of the latest descendant of the Caslons was ransacked to supply the fount. The edition was to be rubricated and otherwise decorated, and this, or the printer's stock trouble, 'lack of paper,' occasioning some delay, the revived type first appeared in a fiction entitled Lady Willoughby's Diary, to which it gave a pleasantly old-world look in keeping with the period of which the story treats. By the kindness of Mr. Jacobi, the present manager of the Chiswick Press, an exact copy of the title-page of this book is here given, and[Pg 307] with it, examples of the decorative initials and devices, in the revival of which also the Chiswick Press led the way.

Pickering died in 1854, and though Charles Whittingham the younger lived to the age of eighty-one, his death not taking place till 1876, he had retired from business in 1860. The business was afterwards acquired by Mr. George Bell.

In the English provinces Messrs. Clay, of Bungay, in Suffolk, have made for themselves a reputation both as general printers and more particularly for the careful production of old English texts; and Messrs. Austin, of Hertford, are well known for their Oriental work. But the pre-eminence certainly rests with the Clarendon Press at Oxford, whose work, whether in its innumerable editions of the Bible and Prayer-book, its classical books, or its great dictionaries, is probably, alike in accuracy of composition, in excellence of spacing and press-work, and in clearness of type, the most flawless that has ever been produced. Book-lovers have been known to complain of it as so good as to be uninteresting, but it certainly possesses all the distinctive virtues of a University Press.

If England has no lack of good printers at the present day, in Scotland they are, at least, equally plentiful.

The Ballantyne Press was founded by James[Pg 308] Ballantyne, a solicitor in Kelso, with the aid of Sir Walter Scott. Ballantyne and Scott had been school-fellows and chums, and an incident in their school life recorded by Ballantyne aptly illustrates the characters of the two men. Ballantyne was studious but not quick, and often when he was bothered with his lessons, Scott would whisper to him, 'Come, slink over beside me, Jamie, and I'll tell you a story.' Although their roads lay apart for some years, while Scott was studying in Edinburgh and Ballantyne was carrying on the Kelso Mail, they met and renewed their friendship in the stage coach that ran between Kelso and Glasgow. Shortly afterwards, Ballantyne called on Scott, and begged him to supply a few paragraphs on legal questions of the day to the Kelso Mail. This Scott readily undertook to do, and when the manuscript was ready he took it himself to the printing-office, and with it some of the ballads destined for Lewis's collection then publishing in Edinburgh. Before he left he suggested that Ballantyne should print a few copies of the ballads, so that he might show his friends in Edinburgh what Ballantyne could do. Twelve copies were accordingly printed, with the title of Apologies for Tales of Terror. These were published in 1799, and Scott was so pleased with their appearance that he promised Ballantyne that he should be the printer of a selection of Border ballads that he was then making. This[Pg 309] selection was given the title of Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and formed two small octavo volumes, with the imprint, 'Kelso, 1802.'

Ballantyne's work, as shown in these volumes, was equal in every way to the best work done by Bensley and Bulmer at this time. Good type and good paper, combined with accuracy and clearness, at once raised Ballantyne's reputation. Longman and Rees, the publishers, declared themselves delighted with the printing, and Scott urged his friend to remove his press to Edinburgh, where he assured him he would find enough work to repay him for the removal. After some hesitation Ballantyne acquiesced in the proposal, and having found suitable premises in the neighbourhood of Holyrood House, set up 'two presses and a proof one,' and shortly afterwards, in April 1803, printed there the third volume of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. From this time forward Scott made it a point that whatever he wrote or edited should be printed at the Ballantyne Press. The first quarto, the Lay of the Last Minstrel, was published in January 1805. The poem was printed in a somewhat heavy-faced type; but in other respects the typography left nothing to be desired. In the same year Ballantyne and Scott entered into partnership, Scott taking a third of the profits of the printing-office. So rapidly did James Ballantyne extend his business that in 1819 Scott, in a[Pg 310] letter to Constable, says that the Ballantyne Press 'has sixteen presses, of which only twelve are at present employed.' In 1826 the firm became involved in the bankruptcy of the publishers Messrs. Constable. After this Ballantyne was employed as editor of the Weekly Journal, and the literary management of the printing-house. He died on the 17th January 1833. The firm is now known as Ballantyne, Hanson and Co., and admirably sustains its old traditions.

Another great Scottish printing-house, that of T. and A. Constable, was founded by Thomas Constable, the fourth son of Archibald Constable the publisher. He learned his art in London under Mr. Charles Richards, and on returning to Edinburgh, in 1833, he founded the present printing-house in Thistle Street. Shortly afterwards he was appointed Queen's Printer for Scotland, and the patent was afterwards extended to his son Archibald, the present titular head of the house. Some years later he received the appointment of Printer to the University of Edinburgh. Thomas Constable inherited and incorporated with his own firm the printing business of his maternal grandfather, David Willison, a business founded in the eighteenth century. The firm has always been noted for its scholarly reading and the beauty of its workmanship; and only the fact that this volume is being printed by it prevents a longer eulogy.

Among other Scottish firms who are doing[Pg 311] excellent work mention may be made also of Messrs. R. and R. Clark of Edinburgh, who tread very closely on the heels of the Clarendon Press, and Messrs. Maclehose, the printers to the University of Glasgow. In America also there is much good work being done, that of Mr. De Vinne and of the Riverside Press, Cambridge, being of the very highest excellence.

In the history of English printing, the close of the nineteenth century will always be memorable for the brilliant but short-lived career of the Kelmscott Press.

In May 1891 Mr. William Morris, whose poems and romances had delighted many readers, issued a small quarto book entitled The Story of the Glittering Plain, which had been printed at a press that he had set up in the Upper Mall, Hammersmith.

Lovers of old books could recognise at once that in its arrangement, and, to some extent, in its types, this first-fruit of the Kelmscott Press went straight back to the fifteenth century, resembling most nearly the quartos printed at Venice about 1490. Until within a few years of that date printed books, like the old manuscripts, had dispensed altogether with a title-page. Their first few pages might be occupied with a prologue or a table of contents, and though, when the text was reached, it was usual to herald it with an Incipit or Incomincia, followed by the title of the work, the information as to date of issue, printer[Pg 312] or publisher, and place of imprint or sale, which we look to find in the title-page, was only given in a crowning paragraph or colophon at the end of the book, save for one or two accidental instances. The full title-page, as we know it, is not found before about 1520, and did not come into general use, so as to supersede the colophon, until many years after that date. But about 1480 the advantage of getting the short title of the book clearly stated at its outset was becoming pretty generally recognised, and from this date onwards what may be called the label title-page—that is, a first page containing the title and nothing else—is very frequently found. Ten years later a practice occasionally adopted elsewhere became common at Venice, and the first page of the text of a book was decorated with an ornamental border, and occasionally with a little picture as well. It was this temporary fashion which commended itself to Mr. Morris, and The Story of the Glittering Plain was issued with one of these label title-pages and with the first page of the story surrounded by a very beautiful border cut on wood from a design by Mr. Morris himself, here reproduced by the kind permission of his executors. It contained also a number of decorative initial letters, to use the clumsy phrase which the misappropriation of the word capitals to stand for ordinary majuscules, or 'upper case' letters, makes inevitable. Mr. Morris's initials were, of course,[Pg 314] true capitals—i.e. they were used to mark the beginnings of chapters, and the only fault that could be found with them was that they were a little too large for the quarto page. These also were from Mr. Morris's own designs, ideas in one or two cases having been borrowed from a set used by Sweynheym and Pannartz, the Germans who introduced printing into Italy; but the borrowing, as always with Mr. Morris, being absolutely free. As for the type, it was clear that it bore some resemblance to that used by Nicolas Jenson, the Frenchman who began printing in Venice in 1470, and whose finer books, especially those on vellum, are generally recognised as the supreme examples of that perfection to which the art of printing attained in its earliest infancy. Mr. Morris's type was as rich as Jenson's at its best, and showed its authorship by not being quite rigidly Roman, some of the letters betraying a leaning to the 'Gothic' or 'black-letter' forms, which had found favour with the majority of the mediæval scribes. At the end of the book came the colophon in due fifteenth-century style, with information as to when and where it was printed. The ornamental design bearing the word 'Kelmscott,' by way of the device or trade-mark without which no fifteenth-century printer thought his office properly equipped, was not used in this book, but speedily made its appearance.

Pretty as was this edition of the The Story of[Pg 315] the Glittering Plain, it yet raised a doubt—the doubt as to whether there was any real life in this effort to start afresh from old models, or whether it was a mere antiquarian revival and nothing more. The history of printing—or rather of the handwriting which the first printers took as their models—recorded, at least, one instance in which an antiquarian revival had been of permanent service; for the Roman letter, which the printers have used now for four centuries, was itself a happy reversion on the part of the fifteenth-century scribes to the Caroline minuscules of 600 years earlier, which had gradually been debased past recognition. There was no room for a second such sweeping reform as this, but those who compared the best modern printing with the masterpieces of the craft in its early days knew that the modern books by the side of the old ones looked flat and grey; and the new Glittering Plain, though not entirely satisfactory, was certainly free from these faults. A few months later the appearance of the three-volume reprint of Caxton's version of the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, sufficed to show that the Kelmscott Press was capable of turning out a book large enough to tax the resources of a printing-office, and the new book was not only larger but better than its predecessor. It became known that this, but for an accident, should have been the first book issued from the new press; and it was[Pg 316] evident that the initial letters were exactly right for this larger page, while the splendid woodcuts from the designs of Sir Edward Burne-Jones revived the old glories of book-illustration. In the Golden Legend also appeared the first of those woodcut frontispiece titles which formed, as far as we know, an entirely new departure, and confer on the Kelmscott books one of their chief distinctions. Printed sometimes in white letters on a background of dark scrollery, sometimes in black letters on a lighter ground, these titles are always surrounded by a border harmonising with that on the first page of text, which they face. They thus carry out Mr. Morris's cardinal principle, that the unit, both for arrangement of type and for decoration, is always the double page. How persistently even the best printers in the trade ignore this principle is known to any one who has asked for a specimen of how a book is to be printed, it being almost impossible to get more than a single page set up. If a double page is insisted on, the craftsman, ingenious in avoiding trouble, will print the same page twice over, thus confusing the eye by the exact parallelism of line with line and paragraph with paragraph. But Mr. Morris, who had all the capacity of genius for taking pains, understood that, when a book lies open before us, though we only read one page at a time, we see two, and in the selection of the type, the adjustment of letterpress and[Pg 317] margins, and finally in the pursuit of a decorative beginning, either to the book itself, or to its sections, he never arranged a single page except in relation to the one which it was to face.

As far as permanent influence is concerned Mr. Morris's Roman letter, the 'Golden type,' as it was dubbed, from its use in the Golden Legend, is the most important of the three founts which he employed. His own sympathies, however, were too pronouncedly mediæval for him to be satisfied with it, and for the next large book which he took in hand, a reprint of Caxton's Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, the first work printed in the English tongue, he designed a much larger and bolder type, an improvement on one of the 'Gothic' founts used by Anton Koberger at Nuremberg in the fifteenth century. This 'Troy' type was subsequently recut in a smaller size for the double-columned Chaucer, and in both its forms is a very handsome fount, while the characters are so clearly and legibly shaped that, despite its antique origin, any child who knows his letters can learn to read it in a few minutes. With these three founts the Kelmscott Press was thoroughly equipped with type; but until his final illness took firm hold on him Mr. Morris was never tired of designing new initials, border-pieces, and decorative titles with a profusion which the old printers, who were parsimonious in these matters, would have thought[Pg 319] extravagantly lavish. Including those completed by his executors after his death, he printed in all fifty-three books in sixty-five volumes, and this annual output of nine or ten volumes of all sizes, save the duodecimo, which he refused to recognise, gave his work a cumulative force which greatly increased its influence. Had he printed only a few books his press might have been regarded as a rich man's toy, an outbreak of æstheticism in a new place, of no more permanent interest than the cult of the sunflower and the lily in the 'eighties. Even the great Chaucer by itself might not have sufficed to take his press out of the category of experiments. But when folio, quarto, octavo, and sexto-decimo appeared in quick succession, each with its appropriate decorations, and challenging and defying comparison with the best work of the best printers of the past, the experimental stage was left far behind, and publishers and printers awoke to the fact that a model had been set them which they would do well to imitate.

As to what will be the permanent result of Mr. Morris's efforts to reform modern printing it is too soon as yet to speak, but signs of their influence are already abundantly visible. The books issued from the 'Vale Press' of Messrs. Ricketts and Shannon have their admirers; but they have that rather irritating degree of likeness which makes every difference—and the differences[Pg 321] are numerous—appear a wilful and regrettable divergence.

The 'Macmillan Greek type,' designed by Mr. Selwyn Image, which has now been in use for some time, may be regarded as another offshoot of Mr. Morris's theories, and deserves all the praise due to a brave experiment. By permission of the Messrs. Macmillan a page of it, taken from their 'Parnassus' Homer, is here shown, and few modern types will bear comparison with it. That it is not wholly and entirely successful is due to the fact that for so many centuries Greek types have been dominated by the models set by Aldus and the other printers of the early sixteenth century, who tried to imitate the rapid cursive hand of the Greek scholars of their day. Had the introduction of printing been preceded by a revival of the beautiful Greek book-hand of the eleventh century, similar to the revival of the Caroline minuscules, all would have been well. But in going back himself to the eleventh century Mr. Image was obliged perpetually to conciliate eyes used to the later cursive forms, and the result is too obviously eclectic. The mere fact, however, that such an effort has been made is full of promise for the future, for it is only by new effort, joined with constant reference to old models, that types can be improved.

INDEX OF PRINTERS, TYPEFOUNDERS, Etc.

INDEX TO PLACES

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

FOOTNOTES:

[1] E. G. Duff, Early Printed Books, pp. 84 and 139.

[2] It is rather remarkable that of the eight books dated 1534 six are in octavo. Readers of the works of Erasmus, Colet, and Lily seem to have shown a preference for this form, which is used most frequently for the works of these friendly authors.

[3] The Registers of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars, edited by W. J. C. Moens (Introduction, pp. xiii.-xiv.).

[4] See Strype's Life of Parker, p. 541. Arber's Transcript, vol. ii.

[5] Strype's Life of Parker, pp. 382, 541.

[6] P. C. C., 1 Martyn.

[7] P. C. C., 32 Martyn.

[8] For the materials of this chapter free use has been made of Mr. Allnutt's series of papers contributed to the second volume of Bibliographica, to whom my thanks are due.

[9] Forty-second Report of the Worcester Diocesan Arch, and Archæological Society. Paper by Rev. J. R. Burton on 'Early Worcestershire Printers and Books.'

[10] For the material of this chapter I am chiefly indebted to the valuable work of Messrs. Dickson and Edmond, Annals of Scottish Printing.

[11] Domestic State Papers, vol. 357, No. 172, 173; vol. 371, No. 102.

[12] Domestic State Papers, vol. 354, No. 180.

[13] Dom. S. P., Chas. II., vol. 243, p. 181.

[14] Chancery Proceedings, 1753 (Record Office).

[15] Notes and Queries, First Series, vol. xii. p. 197.

[16] Harl. MS. 5906.

[17] Hyett and Bazeley, Bibliog. Man. of Glouc. Literature, vol. iii. p. 339.

[18] Allnutt, Bibliographica, vol. ii. p. 302.

[19] Chalmers' Life of Wilkes.

[20] The History of Printing. London: Printed for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1855, 8vo.

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Portrait of William Morris,	Frontispiece
Portrait of Roger L'Estrange,	at p. 203
Portrait of Caslon,	" 239
Portrait of Baskerville,	" 265

Decr. 15th, 1735—
Printing the first volume of Mr. Pope's Works, Cr., Long Primer, 8vo, 3000 (and 75 fine), @ £2, 2s. per sheet, 14 sheets and a half,	30.	09.	0
Title in red and black,	1.	1
Paid for 2 reams and 1/4 of writing demy,	2.	16.	3

	PAGE
Editor's Preface,	vii
CHAPTER I
Caxton and his Contemporaries,	1
CHAPTER II
From 1500 to the Death of Wynkyn de Worde,	31
CHAPTER III
Thomas Berthelet to John Day,	61
CHAPTER IV
John Day,	79
CHAPTER V
John Day's Contemporaries,	103
[Pg xiv]CHAPTER VI
Provincial Presses of the Sixteenth Century,	122
CHAPTER VII
The Stuart Period (1603-1640),	154
CHAPTER VIII
From 1640 to 1700,	187
CHAPTER IX
From 1700 to 1750,	228
CHAPTER X
From 1750 to 1800,	261
CHAPTER XI
The Present Century,	282
Index,	323

Printing the first Epistle of the Second Book of Horace Imitated, folio, double size, Poetry, No. 2000, and 150 fine, [seven] shts., at 27s. per sht.,	9.	09.	0
May 18, 1737. 150 fol. titles, Second Book of Epistles,		4.	0

The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898

EDITED BY ALFRED POLLARD

A SHORT HISTORY

OF

ENGLISH PRINTING

1476-1898

BY HENRY R. PLOMER

LONDON KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER AND COMPANY, LIMITED 1900

The English Bookman's Library

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

EDITOR'S PREFACE

CONTENTS AND LIST OF PLATES

LIST OF PLATES

CHAPTER I

CAXTON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

CHAPTER II

FROM 1500 TO THE DEATH OF WYNKYN DE WORDE

CHAPTER III

THOMAS BERTHELET TO JOHN DAY

CHAPTER IV

JOHN DAY

APPENDIX

LIST OF PRINTERS AND STATIONERS ENROLLED IN THE CHARTER

CHAPTER V

JOHN DAY'S CONTEMPORARIES

CHAPTER VI

PROVINCIAL PRESSES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY[8]

PRINTING IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY[10]

CHAPTER VII

THE STUART PERIOD

1603-1640

CHAPTER VIII

FROM 1640 TO 1700

APPENDIX No. I

LIST OF ENGLISH PRINTERS 1649-50

APPENDIX No. II

APPENDIX No. III

NUMBER OF PRESSES AND WORKMEN EMPLOYED IN THE PRINTING-HOUSES OF LONDON IN 1668

CHAPTER IX

1700-1750

CHAPTER X

1750-1800

CHAPTER XI

THE PRESENT CENTURY

INDEX OF PRINTERS, TYPEFOUNDERS, Etc.

INDEX TO PLACES

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty

FOOTNOTES:

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

EDITED BY
ALFRED POLLARD

LONDON
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER
AND COMPANY, LIMITED
1900

The English
Bookman's
Library

PROVINCIAL PRESSES OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY [8]

PRINTING IN SCOTLAND AND IRELAND DURING THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY [10]