In 1545 we find this same style of design and cutting on a larger scale inLes dix premiers livres de l’Iliade d’Homère, Prince des Poetes, traduictz en vers François, par M. Hugues Salel, and printed by Iehan Loys for Vincent Sertenas. The cuts are in two sizes, the smaller being surrounded with Toryesque borders. It is difficult to pass any judgment other than one of praise on such delicate work. Nevertheless, just as thefanfarestyle of binding used by Nicolas Eve, with its profuse repetition of small tools, is much more effective on a small book cover than on a large, so here we may well feel that some bolder and clearer design would be better suited to the illustration of a folio. In the title-cut here shown (Plate XXVI) a rather larger style is attempted with good results.
The year after the Homer there appeared at Paris from the press of Jacques Kerver a French translation of theHypnerotomachiaby Jean Martin. This is one of the most interesting cases of the rehandling of woodcuts, the arrangement of the original designs being closely followed, while the tone is completely changed by the substitution of the tall rather thin figures which had become fashionable in French woodcuts for the short and rather plump ones of the Venetian edition, and by similar changes in the treatment of landscape.
In the second half of the century at Paris excellent woodcut portraits, mostly in an oval frame, are sometimes found on titlepages, and in other cases decoration is supplied by a neatly cut device. Where illustrations are needed for the explanation of works on hunting or any other subjects they are mostly well drawn and cut. Butthe use of woodcuts in books of imaginative literature became more and more rare.
At Lyon, as at Paris, at the beginning of the century the store of fifteenth century cuts was freely drawn on for popular editions. Considerable influence, however, was exercised at first by Italian models, afterwards by Germany, so that while in the early sixteenth century Latin Bibles the cuts are mostly copied from Giunta’s Malermi Bible, these were gradually superseded by German cuts, which Anton Koberger supplied to the Lyonnese printers who worked for him. While in Italy the small octavos popularized by Aldus continued to hold their own, in France, from about 1530, editions in 32° came rapidly into fashion, and about the middle of the century these were especially the vogue at Lyon, the publishers often casing them in very gay little trade bindings sometimes stamped in gold, but often with painted interlacements. The publication by the Trechsels in 1538 of the two Holbein books, theDance of Deathand illustrations to the Old Testament, must have given an impetus to picture-making at Lyon, but this was at first chiefly visible in illustrated Bibles and New Testaments. Gilles Corrozet, who had written the verses for both the Holbein books, continued his career, as we have seen, at Paris. The most typical Lyonnese illustrated books were the rival editions of Ovid’sMetamorphosesin French, one printed by Macé Bonhomme in 1556, with borders to every page and little cuts measuring about 1½ in. by 2, and a similar edition (reissued in Dutch and Italian) of the next year from the press of Jean de Tournes, the borders and little pictures in which are attributed to Bernard Salomon. In 1557 De Tournes issued also theDevises Héroiquesof Claude Paradin, and he was also the publisher of aCalendrier Historial, a memorandum book charmingly decorated with cuts of the seasons.
Partly owing to religious troubles the book trade at Lyon soon after this rapidly declined, but the French style was carried on for a while at Antwerp by ChristopherPlantin, who printed Paradin’sDevises Héroiquesin 1562 and in 1564, and the two following years three books of Emblems, those of Sambucus, Hadrianus Junius, and Alciatus himself. His earlier Horae are also illustrated with woodcuts, and in at least one edition we find the unusual combination of woodcut borders and copperplate pictures. But although Plantin never wholly gave up the use of woodcuts, for his more sumptuous editions he developed a marked preference for copperplates, and by his example helped to complete the downfall of the woodcut, which by the end of the sixteenth century had gone almost completely out of fashion.
44Mr. Dodgson also ascribes to Traut the illustrations in theLegend des heyligen vatters Francisci(Nuremberg, 1512), and some of the cuts in theTheuerdank(1517).45Including perhaps the four sets of decorative capitals attributed to Holbein, one ornamental, the others representing a Dance of Peasants, Children, and a Dance of Death.
44Mr. Dodgson also ascribes to Traut the illustrations in theLegend des heyligen vatters Francisci(Nuremberg, 1512), and some of the cuts in theTheuerdank(1517).
45Including perhaps the four sets of decorative capitals attributed to Holbein, one ornamental, the others representing a Dance of Peasants, Children, and a Dance of Death.
CHAPTER XII
PRINTING IN ENGLAND (1476-1580)46
Somethinghas already been written about the earliest English books on the scale to which they are entitled in a rapid survey of European incunabula. We may now consider them more in detail as befits a book written in English.
William Caxton, a Kentishman, born about 1420, had been brought up as a mercer in the city of London, and the relations between the English wooltraders and the clothmakers of Flanders being very intimate, he had, as he tells us himself, passed thirty years of his life (in round numbers the years from twenty years of age to fifty) “for the most part in Brabant, Flanders, Holland, and Zealand.” During the last few years of this time he had held the important position of Governor of the English merchants at Bruges, but about 1469 he surrendered this in order to become secretary to Edward IV’s sister, Margaret, wife of Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Some years before this, Raoul Lefèvre, chaplain to the Duke’s predecessor, had compiled an epitome of the histories of Troy,Le Recueil des histoires de Troye, and in March, 1469, Caxton amused himself by beginning to translate this into English. Dissatisfied with the result he laid it on one side, but was bidden by his patroness, the Duchess, to continue his work. This he finished on 19 September, 1471, while staying at Cologne. According to a distinct statement by Wynkyn de Worde, whom (at least as early as 1480) he employed as his foreman, Caxton printed at Cologne “himself to avaunce” the first Latin edition of theDe Proprietatibus Rerum, a kind ofencyclopaedia “on the properties of things,” by an English friar of the thirteenth century named Bartholomew. Now the first edition of this work is undoubtedly one printed at Cologne about 1471 or 1472 at an anonymous press which Bradshaw called that of the printer of the 1473 edition of theDialogi decem Auctorum, and Mr. Proctor, less happily, that of the printer of theFlores Sancti Augustini, an undated book in the same type. TheDe Proprietatibus Rerumis certainly slightly earlier than either of these, and there are some typographical differences which suggest that between the completion of the one book and the beginning of the other two the press may have changed masters. TheDe Proprietatibusis by far the largest book of the whole group, and being by, or credited to, an English author, it is highly probable that the well-to-do ex-Governor of the English merchants became temporarily a member of the firm for its production and shared in the venture. This is the natural meaning of Wynkyn de Worde’s statement that Caxton was the “first prynter of this boke,” and is quite as likely to be true as the supposition that he took part in printing it as a kind of amateur journeyman to advance himself in the art. It may be noted, moreover, that the books of this anonymous press belong to the less advanced school of printing at Cologne, a school technically several years behind that of Ulrich Zell, and this takes the force out of the objection raised by William Blades, that if Caxton had learnt printing at Cologne, he must have printed better when he made his start.
Caxton does not seem to have followed up this beginning at all quickly, and it was not till printing had been brought much nearer to Bruges by the starting of presses at Alost in 1473 and at Louvain in 1474 that he was stirred to action. The first printer at Louvain was Jan Veldener, who worked there from 1474 to 1477, and Mr. Gordon Duff conjectures that Caxton may have received some help from him. There is no doubt, however, that his partner at Bruges was Colard Mansion, a skilledcalligrapher, who continued printing there till 1484, when he fled from the town, leaving his rent unpaid. Caxton’s own account in theRecuyell of the Histories of Troyeof how he came to start is that
for as moche as in the wrytyng of the same my penne is worn, myn hande wery and not stedfast, myn eyen dimmed with ouer-moche lokyng on the whit paper ... and also because I haue promysid to dyuerce gentilmen and to my frendes to adresse to hem as hastily as I myght this sayd book. Therfore I haue practysed & lerned at my grete charge and dispence to ordeyne this saide book in prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here see.
for as moche as in the wrytyng of the same my penne is worn, myn hande wery and not stedfast, myn eyen dimmed with ouer-moche lokyng on the whit paper ... and also because I haue promysid to dyuerce gentilmen and to my frendes to adresse to hem as hastily as I myght this sayd book. Therfore I haue practysed & lerned at my grete charge and dispence to ordeyne this saide book in prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here see.
There is nothing here to encourage the idea which Mr. Proctor seems to have entertained that Colard Mansion had already begun work on his own account, and that Caxton obtained his help for his English books. It seems more likely that it was Caxton who made the start, and that the first two books printed at Bruges were both in English, the first being theRecuyell, and the secondThe Game and Pleye of the Chesse, a translation of a moral treatise in which the functions of the chessmen were used as texts for sermonizing, written in Latin by Jacobus de Cessolis. After this a new type was cut and another didactic book,Les Quatre Derennières Choses, a treatise of the Four Last Things (Death, Judgment, Hell, and Heaven) printed in it in French. These three books probably appeared in 1475 and the early months of 1476. By this time Charles the Bold was picking a quarrel with the Swiss, and his disastrous defeat at Morat on 21 June, 1476, must have powerfully quickened the desire with which we may reasonably credit Caxton, of being the first printer in his native land. He made arrangements to rent a shop in the Sanctuary at Westminster from the following Michaelmas and departed for England, taking with him the newer of the two types and leaving the older one to Colard Mansion, who printed with it the original French of Lefèvre’sRecueil des histoires de Troye, and the same author’sLes Fais et prouesses dunoble et vaillant cheualier Jason, and then abandoned it, having already cut a larger type for his own use.
The first dated book produced by Caxton in England wasThe Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers, a translation by Earl Rivers (the brother of Edward IV’s queen) from a French version of an anonymous Latin book of the fourteenth century. Caxton was entrusted by the Earl with the oversight of the translation, and contributed to it an amusing Epilogue, in which he gives some unfavourable remarks about women attributed to Socrates, with his own comments. The Epilogue is dated 1477, and in one copy more minutely, 18 November. Though this is the first dated English book, it cannot be said that it was the first book printed in England, as it was probably preceded both by Caxton’s English version of Lefèvre’sJason, and also by some of the thin quartos in the same type.
Among the earlier books printed by Caxton after he set up his press at Westminster was Chaucer’sCanterbury Tales, of which later on he printed a second edition which he imagined to be from a better text, and ornamented with clumsy pictures of the pilgrims. He printed also in separate volumes most of Chaucer’s other works, including his translation of Boethius,De Consolatione Philosophiae;also Gower’sConfessio Amantis, some of the shorter poems of Lydgate, Malory’sMorte d’Arthur, and several translations of French romances (Charles the Great,Paris and Vienne, theFour Sons of Aymon, etc.), translations ofAesopand ofReynard the Fox, Higden’sPolychronicon, and theChronicles of England, theGolden Legend(the name given to the great collection of Lives of the Saints by Jacobus de Voragine), several editions of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, a Latin Psalter, a decorative edition of the Prayers called theFifteen Oeswith a border to every page (see Plate XXVII), numerous moral treatises and books of devotion, and several Indulgences. In all just one hundred books and documents issued from his press, printed in eight differenttypes (including that left behind at Bruges). More than twenty of these books he had translated himself, and to others he contributed interesting prologues or epilogues. While many printers on the Continent easily surpassed him in typographical skill, few published more books which can still be read with pleasure, and his prefaces and epilogues show a real love of good literature (especially of Chaucer) and abundant good sense, kindliness, and humour. Caxton died in 1491 while engaged on translating into English the Latin Lives of the Fathers, and the account-books of the churchwardens of S. Margaret’s, Westminster, show that he was buried in its churchyard, four torches being supplied at a cost of two shillings and sixpence, and another sixpence being charged for the bell.
During Caxton’s lifetime only one other Englishman set up a press, an anonymous schoolmaster at St. Albans, who began work in 1480 (possibly in 1479) and printed till 1486, producing first six scholastic books and then two English ones. He appears to have borrowed some type from Caxton, so that it was presumably with the latter’s goodwill that he reprinted his version of theChronicles of England, adding thereto an appendix entitledFructus Temporum, or Fruits of Time. It is from Wynkyn de Worde’s reprint of this edition in 1497 that we obtain our only knowledge of the printer, for we are there told that it was “compiled in a booke and also enprynted by one sometyme scolemayster of saynt Albons, on whose soule God haue mercy.” His other popular book was that famous trio of treatisesOf Haukyng and Huntyng and also of Cootarmuris, commonly known as theBook of St. Albans. The second treatise, which is in metre, ends with the words “Explicit Dam Julyan Barnes in her boke of huntyng,” and this is the only basis for the popular attribution of all three treatises to a hypothetical Juliana Bernes or Berners, who is supposed to have been the daughter of Sir James Berners (executed in 1388), and Prioress of the Nunnery of Sopwell,a dependency of St. Albans, of which the list of prioresses has conveniently perished.47
Between 1478 and 1486 or ’87, some seventeen books were printed at Oxford by Theodoric Rood of Cologne, who towards the end of his career was in partnership with an English bookseller named Thomas Hunte. The earliest of his books,48all of which are in Latin, was an Exposition on the Apostles’ Creed wrongly attributed to S. Jerome. By the accidental omission of an X this is dated MCCCCLXVIII, i.e. 1468, but such misprints are common in early books, and no one now maintains that it was printed until ten years later. Among the other books printed at Oxford we may note an edition of Cicero’sPro Milone, the spurious Letters of Phalaris, and a very large folio, Lyndewode’sProvincial Constitutionsof the English Church. That the Oxford press came to an end so soon and that none was started at Cambridge during the fifteenth century may be attributed to a statute of Richard III’s permitting the free importation of books into England. Although this measure was amply justified by the interests of learning, it made it practically impossible for any scholastic press to maintain itself in the limited English market against the competition of the fine editions which could be imported from Italy.
Caxton’s press was at Westminster, which in the fifteenth century was much more sharply distinguished for business purposes from the city of London than it isnow. The first press set up within the city itself was that of John Lettou, whose surname shows him to have been a native of Lithuania, which in Caxton’s time, as in Chaucer’s, was known in England as Lettowe. Mr. Gordon Duff thinks that John Lettou must have learnt to print at Rome and brought his punches with him to England, as the type with which he started to print here is indistinguishable from one used by a small printer at Rome, who bore the curiously English name John Bulle, though he came from Bremen. Lettou printed an Indulgence in 1480, and also a commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, a curiously learned work for a city press, but which he was commissioned to print by a certain William Wilcocks, for whom the next year he printed also a commentary on the Psalms.
After 1482 Lettou was joined by William of Mechlin, or Malines, in Belgium, usually known by the Latin name of his birthplace, Machlinia. Lettou and Machlinia printed five law books together, and then Lettou disappears and Machlinia in 1483 started working by himself, at first at a house near the bridge over the Fleet, where he printed eight books, and then in Holborn, where he printed fourteen. When working by himself he printed in addition to law books some works of a more popular character, a Book of Hours, theRevelation to a Monk of Evesham,49Speculum Christiani(a devotional work interspersed with English verse), theChronicles of England, and several editions of “A little treatise against the Pestilence” by a certain Bishop Canutus of Aarhus. One of these editions was the first English book which has a titlepage. It is printed in two lines, and reads:—
“A passing gode lityll boke necessarye &behouefull agenst the Pestilens.”
The exact date at which Machlinia died, or gave up work, is not known. He was printing in 1486, but his books after that are undated. We may take 1490 or a littleearlier as the year of his disappearance, and it is practically certain that his stock of books was taken over by Richard Pynson from Normandy, who probably began printing in 1491 or 1492 (his first dated book was finished in November of the latter year), and while he was getting his workshop ready commissioned Guillaume Le Talleur of Rouen to print two law books for him for sale in England.
Up to the death of Caxton the only native English printer besides himself was the unidentified schoolmaster-printer at St. Albans, Thomas Hunte, who joined Theodoricus Rood at Oxford, being only a stationer. After his death, for over twenty years there was no native Englishman at work as a master printer50at all. Two of the three presses at work were in the hands of Wynkyn de Worde of Lorraine and Richard Pynson of Normandy, and the third was worked for some time with two French partners by Julyan Notary, who was probably a Frenchman himself, since in 1498 he spells his name as Notaire.
By far the most prolific of these three firms was that of Wynkyn de Worde, who was born, as his name implies, at Worth, now in Alsace, but formerly part of the Duchy of Lorraine. He probably came to England with Caxton in 1476, since we hear of him as early as 1480 in a legal document about a house. After Caxton’s death De Worde made a cautious start, only issuing five books in the first two years and not putting his own name in an imprint until 1494. By the end of the century, however, he had printed 110 books of which copies or fragments survive, and by the time of his death in 1534 the number had risen to 800, an extraordinarily high total, more especially when it is remembered that the small quarto editions of romances and popular works of devotion, of which he printed a great many, were peculiarly likely to be thumbed to pieces, so that his actual output was probably much greater. As far as his choice of books was concernedhe showed himself a mere tradesman, seldom printing an expensive book unless Caxton’s experience had shown it to be saleable. For two apparent exceptions to this lack of enterprise there were special reasons. The first, a translation of theLives of the Fathers, he was almost bound in honour to take up, since Caxton had completed it on his death-bed. The second book, a really fine edition (issued about 1495) of Trevisa’s version of theDe Proprietatibus Rerum, was also, as we have seen, connected with Caxton, who, De Worde tells us, had acted as “the fyrst prynter of this boke In latin tongue at Coleyn himself to avaunce.” De Worde’s edition is itself notable as being the first book printed on English paper, the manufacturer being John Tate of Hertford.
In 1500 De Worde moved from Caxton’s house at Westminster to the sign of the Sun in Fleet Street, perhaps for the greater protection offered by the city against attacks by anti-alien mobs. In 1508 he was appointed printer to the Countess of Richmond and Derby, mother of Henry VII, a very old lady, who died the following year. De Worde himself must have been a very old man at his death towards the end of 1534 or early in January, 1535, as he had by that time been at work in England for between fifty and sixty years. Towards the end of his life he seems to have had some of his books printed for him by John Skot, and Robert Copland was also employed in his business.
The output of Richard Pynson was only about half that of Wynkyn de Worde, and his taxable property amounted to only £60 against over£200 at which De Worde was assessed. Nevertheless the fact that for the last twenty-two years of his life (1508-30) he was the King’s Printer helped to procure him a few important books, and also kept his workmanship at a considerably higher standard. As already mentioned, he probably came to England about 1490 and took over Machlinia’s stock, employing Guillaume Le Talleur of Rouen to print two law books for him while his owntype was being made. He probably began work with a fine edition of Chaucer’sCanterbury Tales, but his first dated book is an ugly little edition of theDoctrinaleof Alexander Gallus, issued in November, 1492. A copy of this was unearthed a few years ago in the library of Appleby Grammar School, and to secure the first dated book printed by Pynson the British Museum had to pay over £300 for it. In 1494 Pynson brought out Lydgate’s poem on theFalles of Princes, translated from the Latin of Boccaccio, illustrating it with woodcuts borrowed from Jean Du Pré’s French edition of the same book.51In 1495 he printed aTerence. Up to the close of the fifteenth century he had printed about eighty-eight books known to Mr. Gordon Duff, against the 110 printed by Wynkyn de Worde. In 1500 he moved from the parish of S. Clement Dane’s, outside Temple Bar, to the sign of S. George, at the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, the change bringing him inside the city walls. Among the best of the books printed by him after this are Alexander Barclay’sShip of Fools(1509), a translation of Sebastian Brant’sNarrenschiff; Fabyan’sChronicle(1516), Barclay’s translation of Sallust (about 1520), Henry VIII’sAssertio Septem Sacramentorum(1521), and Lord Berners’ translation of Froissart’sChronicles(1522-5). He also printed some fine service-books, notably a Sarum Missal, called after Cardinal Morton who favoured it the Morton Missal (1500). Mr. Duff conjectures that in the Latin books he printed from 1518 onwards Pynson was aided by Thomas Berthelet.52
Julian Notary’s business was on a far smaller scale than those of Wynkyn de Worde and Pynson, for less than fifty books are known to have been printed by him.He began work in London about 1496 in partnership with Jean Barbier and another printer or bookseller whose initials were I. H., probably Jean Huvin of Rouen. In 1498 I. H. had left the firm and Notary and Barbier were at Westminster. In 1500, like De Worde and Pynson, he changed houses, moving to just outside Temple Bar, possibly to Pynson’s old house, giving his new premises the sign of the Three Kings. At a later date he had also a bookstall in S. Paul’s Churchyard, and ultimately moved his printing office into the city. Notary’s books were of much the same kind as De Worde’s—the Golden Legend, the Chronicles of England, the Shepherds’ Calendar, Sermons, Lives of the Saints, etc. He has the distinction of having printed the smallest English incunable of which any trace has come down to us, an edition of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, finished in April, 1500, measuring only an inch by an inch and a half. He seems to have ceased printing about 1520, but was alive in 1523.
Summing up the work of these printers who were active before 1500, we may note that Caxton printed 100 books and editions that have come down to us; De Worde 110 before 1500, about 800 altogether; Pynson 88 before 1500, nearly 400 altogether; Notary about 8 before 1500, and 48 altogether; Lettou and Machlinia about 30, Oxford 17, St. Albans 8. Thus the total number of English incunabula at present known is about 360, but Pynson and Wynkyn de Worde were both large printers in the sixteenth century.
As we have seen, Pynson became King’s Printer in 1508. He had been preceded in that office by William Faques, who like himself was a Norman, and was the first to hold the title. He was worthy of the distinction, for though he only printed eight books and documents that have come down to us, his work was very good. His dated books belong to the year 1504, when he printed a proclamation against clipped money, with a fine initial H and some neat woodcuts of coins; also a beautiful littleLatin Psalter. His business was in the heart of the city, in Abchurch Lane. After his death it passed to Richard Faques, who made his name more English by spelling it first Fakes, then Fawkes. Richard worked in S. Paul’s Churchyard, and among his publications were theSalus corporis salus animeof Gulielmus de Saliceto, a Sarum Horæ, Skelton’sGoodly Ballad of the Scottish King(1509), andGarland of Laurell(1523), and lastly,The Myrroure of Our Lady(1530).
With Robert Copland we come to the first native English printer after Caxton and the schoolmaster of St. Albans. Copland is rather an interesting person, who made translations and wrote prefaces and addresses to the reader in verse, besides printing books. His name occurs in the imprints of only twelve books, spread over twenty-two years, 1514-35, the explanation being that he was probably working for De Worde during this time, and only occasionally indulged in a private venture. After a long interval he printed two books for Andrew Borde in 1547-8, and appears to have died while the second was in progress. He was succeeded by William Copland, probably his son, who printed numerous romances and other entertaining books, and died in 1568 or 1569.
At intervals during the years 1516-28, John Rastell, an Oxford graduate, barrister of Lincoln’s Inn and brother-in-law of Sir Thomas More, issued nine dated law books. In 1526 he printed two jest books, in 1529 he became involved in religious controversy on the Protestant side, and died in poverty and prison in 1536. Altogether some forty books are attributed to him, including some plays, which may perhaps rather have been printed by his son William. William Rastell was also a lawyer, and not sharing his father’s Protestantism, became a Judge of the Queen’s Bench under Mary, on whose death he fled to Louvain. As a printer he worked only from 1530 to 1534, printing over thirty books, including several works by his uncle, Sir Thomas More, and five plays by John Heywood.
Between 1518 and 1524 Henry Pepwell printed a few popular books at the sign of the Trinity in S. Paul’s Churchyard; for the rest of his life he appears to have been only a stationer. John Skot, who printed at four different addresses in the city of London between 1521 and 1537, worked partly for De Worde, partly on his own account, printing upwards of thirty books for himself, a few of them legal, the rest popular English books.
Two printers began to issue books in 1523. Robert Bankes, who turned out a few popular books in his first six years, was then silent for a time, and reappears in the religious controversies of 1539-42, and Robert Redman, who seems to have followed in Pynson’s footsteps both in S. Clement’s Without Temple Bar and at the sign of the George. In his office of Royal Printer Pynson was succeeded by Thomas Berthelet, or Bartlet, who had probably worked with him for upwards of ten years before starting on his own account in Fleet Street at the sign of Lucrece in 1528. We know of altogether about 400 pieces of printing from his press, but a large proportion of these consists of editions of the Statutes and Proclamations. For the Proclamations some of Berthelet’s bills survive, and we learn that he charged a penny a piece for them, and imported his paper from Genoa. With his official printing must be reckoned his editions of theNecessary Doctrine of a Christian Man, issued with the royal sanction on 29 May, 1543. In order to produce sufficient copies of this he printed it simultaneously eight times over, all eight editions bearing the same date. Of the books which he printed on his own account the place of honour must be given to his handsome edition of Gower’sConfessio Amantisin an excellent black-letter type in 1532, and the various works of Sir John Eliot, all of which came from his press.
On the accession of Edward VI Berthelet ceased to be Royal Printer, the post being given to Grafton. Berthelet died in September, 1555, leaving considerable property. He was buried as an Esquire with pennon and coat armourand four dozen scutcheons, and all the craft of printers, stationers, and booksellers followed him to his grave.
Richard Grafton, who succeeded Berthelet as Royal Printer, had a very chequered career. He was originally a member of the Grocers’ Company, and, in conjunction with Edward Whitchurch and Anthony Marler of the Haberdashers’ Company, superintended the printing of the English Bible of 1537, probably at Antwerp, and that of 1539 by François Regnault at Paris. When Bible-printing was permitted in England Grafton and Whitchurch shared between them the printing of the six editions of the Great Bible during 1540 and 1541. But when Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the chief promoter of Bible-printing, was beheaded, Grafton was himself imprisoned. In 1544, on the other hand, he and Whitchurch obtained an exclusive patent for printing Primers, and before Henry VIII’s death Grafton was appointed printer to the Prince of Wales. Thus when Edward became king Grafton displaced Berthelet as Royal Printer, and henceforth had time for little save official work. Five editions of the Homilies and seven of Injunctions, all dated 31 July, 1547, were issued from his presses; in 1548 he published Halle’sUnion of Lancaster and Yorkand several editions of the Order of Communion and Statutes; in 1549 came two Bibles and five editions of the first Prayer Book of Edward VI; in 1550 a reprint of Halle and an edition of Marbeck’s Book of Common Prayer noted; in 1551 Wilson’sRule of Reason; in 1552 six editions of the second Prayer Book of Edward VI, and more Statutes. Proclamation-work, of course, went on steadily throughout the reign, and on Edward’s death Grafton printed the enormously long document by which the adherents of Lady Jane Grey tried to justify her claim to the Crown. He did his work very handsomely, but on the triumph of Mary, though he impartially printed a proclamation for her nine days after “Queen Jane’s,” he naturally lost his post and might easily have lost his head also. For the rest of his life he was mainly occupiedin writing his chronicle. But he printed a Book of Common Prayer in 1559, and (according to Herbert) a Bible in 1566. He died in 1573.
While Grafton was the King’s printer for English books, the post of Royal Printer in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew had been conferred in 1547 on Reginald or Reyner Wolfe. Wolfe, who had come to England from Gelderland, was at first a bookseller, and was employed by various distinguished persons as a letter-carrier between England and Germany. When he set up as a printer in 1542, with type which he seems to have obtained from a relative at Frankfort, he was employed by the great antiquary, John Leland, and by John Cheke, Professor of Greek at Cambridge, for whom he printed in 1543 two Homilies of S. Chrysostom in Greek and Latin, this being the first Greek work printed in England. During Edward VI’s reign he does not seem to have been given much to do in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, but printed Cranmer’sDefence of the SacramentandAnswer unto a Crafty Cavillation. After keeping quiet during Mary’s reign he enjoyed the patronage of Elizabeth and Archbishop Parker, and lived, like Grafton, till 1573.
Though he never worked on a large scale, Wolfe certainly raised the standard of printing in England. In John Day it is pleasant to come to a native Englishman who did equally good work, and that in a larger way of business. Day was a Suffolk man, born in 1522 at Dunwich, a town over which the sea now rolls. He began printing in partnership with William Seres as early as 1546, but, save some fairly good editions of the Bible, produced nothing of importance during this period. His first fine book, published in 1559, isThe Cosmographicall Glasse, a work on surveying, by William Cunningham. This has a woodcut allegorical border to the titlepage, a fine portrait of Cunningham, a map of Norwich, and some good heraldic and pictorial capitals. Its text is printed throughout in large italics. The book thus broke away entirely from the old black-letter traditions ofEnglish printing, and could compare favourably with the best foreign work. Day printed other folios in this style, and in some of them instead of a device placed a large and striking portrait of himself. In 1563 he printed the first edition ofActs and Monumentes of these latter and perillous days touching matters of the Church, better known asFoxe’s Book of Martyrs. This is a book of over two thousand pages, and is plentifully illustrated with woodcuts of varying degrees of merit. Day by this time had attracted the patronage of Archbishop Parker, and in 1566 printed for him a book calledA Testimony of Antiquitie, showing the auncient fayth of the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publikely preached and also receaved in the Saxons tyme, above 600 yeares agoe. For this sermon, attributed to Archbishop Aelfric, some Anglo-Saxon type, the first used in England, was specially cut. Later on Day printed at Lambeth Palace Parker’sDe Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae. He also printed Ascham’sScholemasterand other important works. He appears, moreover, to have possessed a bookbinding business, or at least to have had binders in his employment who invented a very striking and dignified style of binding. Altogether, Day is a man of whom English bookmen may well be proud. He died in 1584.
Richard Tottell was another printer of some importance. The son of an Exeter man, he began printing about 1553, and early in his career received a patent which gave him a monopoly of the publication of law books. These, to do him justice, he printed very well, and he also published a number of works of literary interest. Chief among these, and always associated with his name, is the famousSongs and Sonnetsof Wyatt and Surrey and other Tudor poets, edited by Nicholas Grimald, but often quoted, for no very good reason, asTottell’s Miscellany. To his credit must also be placed editions of Lydgate’sFalles of Princes, Hawes’sPastimeof Pleasure, Tusser’sFive Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry, the works of Sir Thomas More in 1458 folio pages, Gerard Legh’sAccedens of Armoury, numerous editions of Guevara’sDiall of Princes, as translated by Sir Thomas North, and a version of Cicero’sDe Officiis, by Nicholas Grimald. In 1573 Tottell petitioned unsuccessfully for a monopoly of paper-making in England for thirty years, in order to encourage him to start a paper-mill. He lived till 1593.
Henry Denham (1564-89), Henry Bynneman (1566-83), and Thomas Vautrollier (1566-88), and the latter’s successor, Richard Field, were the best printers of the rest of the century. Denham was an old apprentice of Tottell’s, who gave him some important books to print for him. Herbert remarks of him: “He was an exceeding neat printer, and the first who used the semicolon with propriety.” Among his more notable books were Grafton’sChronicle(for Tottell and Toy, 1569), editions of the Olynthiac orations of Demosthenes in English (1570) and Latin (1571),An Alvearie or quadruple dictionarie containing foure sundrie tongues, namelie, English, Latine, Greeke, and French, with a pleasing titlepage showing the royal arms and a beehive (1580), Thomas Bentley’sThe Monument of Matrons: containing seuen seuerall Lamps of Virginitie, a work in praise of piety and Queen Elizabeth (1582), Hunnis’sSeuen Sobs of a Sorrowfull Soule for Sinne, a metrical version of the penitential psalms (1585), and the second edition of Holinshed’sChronicles(1587).
Henry Bynneman, though not so high in Archbishop Parker’s favour as John Day, was yet recommended by him to Burghley in 1569, and deserved his patronage by much good work. He printed an English version of Epictetus, Dr. Caius’sDe Antiquitate Cantabrigiensis Academiæ(1568), a handsome book with the text in italics, according to the fashion of the day, Van der Noodt’sTheatre of Voluptuous Worldlings(1569), a Latin text of Virgil believed to be the first printed inEngland (1570), theHistoria Brevisof Thomas Walsingham (1574), a handsome folio, several books by Gascoigne and Turberville, the first edition of Holinshed’sChronicles(1577, published by John Harrison), and a few books in Greek.
Thomas Vautrollier, a French refugee, set up a press at Blackfriars, at which he printed several editions of the Prayer Book in Latin (Liber Precum Publicarum in Ecclesia Anglicana), and of the New Testament in Beza’s Latin version, for which latter he was granted a ten years’ privilege in 1574. In 1579 he printed two very notable works, Fenton’s translation of the History of Guicciardini and Sir Thomas North’sPlutarch, the latter being one of the handsomest of Elizabethan books. In 1580 and again in 1584 he went to Edinburgh, printing several books there in 1584 and 1585. His second visit is said to have been due to trouble which came upon him for printing theSpaccio della Bestia Triomphanteof Giordano Bruno. His press at Blackfriars continued to work during his absence. His daughter Jakin married Richard Field, who succeeded to his house and business in 1588, and continued his excellent traditions.
A company of stationers had existed in London since 1403, and in 1557 this was reconstituted and granted a Royal Charter. The object of the Crown was to secure greater control over printing, so that no inconvenient criticisms on matters of Church or State might be allowed to appear. The object of the leading printers and booksellers, who formed the court of the company, was to diminish competition, both illegitimate and legitimate. Both objects were to a very considerable degree attained. The quarter of a century which followed the grant of a charter witnessed a great improvement in the English standard of book production. Up to this time it seems probable that few English printers, who had not the royal patronage, had found their craft profitable. Caxton no doubt did very well for himself—as he richly deserved. He enjoyed the favour of successive kings,and received good support from other quarters. We may guess, moreover, that both as translator and publisher he kept his finger on the pulse of well-to-do book-buyers to an extent to which there is no parallel for the next two centuries. No one else in England possessed this skill, and certainly no one else enjoyed Caxton’s success. The Act of Richard III permitting unrestricted importation of books quickly killed the presses at Oxford and St. Albans, which could not compete with the publications of the learned printers of Italy, France, and Switzerland. Until more than half-way through the reign of Elizabeth the united output of books from Oxford and Cambridge amounted to less than a couple of score. For more than twenty years after Caxton’s death there was no undoubted Englishman as a master printer. Mr. Gordon Duff has lately published53the assessments of some of the chief stationers and printers from the Lay Subsidy Rolls of 1523-4. By far the highest of them is the £307 at which was assessed John Taverner, a stationer who is only otherwise known as having bound some books for the Royal Chapel, and who was wise enough not to meddle with printing. Wynkyn de Worde, most commercial of printers, was assessed at £201 11s. 1d.; a practically unknown stationer named Neale at £100; Pynson, who was Royal Printer and did really good work, at £60; three other stationers, one of whom printed (Henry Pepwell), at £40 apiece; Julyan Notary at £36 6s. 8d.; other printers at £10 (Robert Redman), £6 13s. 4d. (John Rastell), and £4 (Robert Wyer). It is tolerably clear that there was absolutely no inducement to an English stationer to take up printing. In 1534 Henry VIII repealed the Act of 1484, on the plea that native printing was now so good that there was less need to import books from abroad, the King’s real reason, no doubt, being to make it easier to check the importation of heretical works. Mr. Duff has written of the King’s action:
“The fifty years of freedom from 1484 to 1534 not only brought us the finest specimens of printing we possess, but compelled the native workman in self-protection to learn, and when competition was done away with his ambition rapidly died also. Once our English printing was protected, it sank to a level of badness which has lasted, with the exception of a few brilliant experiments, almost down to our own day.”54
“The fifty years of freedom from 1484 to 1534 not only brought us the finest specimens of printing we possess, but compelled the native workman in self-protection to learn, and when competition was done away with his ambition rapidly died also. Once our English printing was protected, it sank to a level of badness which has lasted, with the exception of a few brilliant experiments, almost down to our own day.”54
As a rule, whatever Mr. Duff writes about English printing is incontrovertible, but this particular pronouncement seems curiously unfounded. Whether we consider what they printed or how they printed it, the work of the English presses from 1535-57 is better, not worse, than the work of the corresponding period, 1512-34. There is nothing in the earlier period to compare with the Great Bibles, and the books of Berthelet and Reyner Wolfe are fairly equal to those of Pynson. If we take 1557 as a fresh point of departure, the books issued from then to about 1580 present a still more remarkable advance. While the work of the rest of Europe deteriorated, that of England, in the hands of such men as Day, Denham, and Bynneman, improved, and alike for their typography, their illustrations and decorations and their scholarship, they surpass those of any previous period since the days of Caxton, and deserve far more attention from collectors than they have yet received.
46For English provincial printing after 1500 see Chapter XIII.47A fourth treatise, that on Fishing with an Angle, is often included in the attribution with even less reason. This was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496, with the following curious explanation of its being tacked on to theBook of St. Albans: “And for by cause this present treatyse sholde not come to the hondys of eche ydle persone whyche wolde desire it yf it were enprynted allone by it self & put in a lytyll paunflet, therfore I haue compyled it in a greter volume of dyuerse bokys concernynge to gentyll & noble men, to the entent that the forsayd ydle persones whyche sholde haue but lytyll mesure in the sayd dysporte of fyshynge sholde not by this meane utterly destroye it.”48Two points may be noted about Rood: (i) he does not put his name in his earliest books, and as there is a change of type in his signed work, it is possible, though unlikely, that the books in type 1 are from another press; (ii) he is not to be identified, as was once proposed, with a certain Theodoricus of Cologne, lately proved by Dr. Voullième to be Theodoricus Molner, a stepson of ther Hoernen.49The place-name here is an early misreading for “Eynsham.”50This statement should perhaps be modified to admit of the possibility that Julian Notary was English rather than French, as is generally assumed.51This and theDives and Pauperof 1493 (which, until the discovery of theDoctrinale, was reckoned Pynson’s first dated book) and several other of his earliest editions were published partly at the expense of a merchant named John Rushe, who took six hundred copies of theDivesand theBoccaccioat 4s. apiece. SeeTwo Lawsuits of Richard Pynson, by H. R. Plomer, inThe Library, second series, Vol. X.52SeeThe Library, second series, Vol. VIII, pp. 298sqq.53InThe Library, second series, Vol. IX, pp. 257-81.54“The Printers, Stationers, and Bookbinders of Westminster and London, 1476-1535” (last paragraph).
46For English provincial printing after 1500 see Chapter XIII.
47A fourth treatise, that on Fishing with an Angle, is often included in the attribution with even less reason. This was first printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1496, with the following curious explanation of its being tacked on to theBook of St. Albans: “And for by cause this present treatyse sholde not come to the hondys of eche ydle persone whyche wolde desire it yf it were enprynted allone by it self & put in a lytyll paunflet, therfore I haue compyled it in a greter volume of dyuerse bokys concernynge to gentyll & noble men, to the entent that the forsayd ydle persones whyche sholde haue but lytyll mesure in the sayd dysporte of fyshynge sholde not by this meane utterly destroye it.”
48Two points may be noted about Rood: (i) he does not put his name in his earliest books, and as there is a change of type in his signed work, it is possible, though unlikely, that the books in type 1 are from another press; (ii) he is not to be identified, as was once proposed, with a certain Theodoricus of Cologne, lately proved by Dr. Voullième to be Theodoricus Molner, a stepson of ther Hoernen.
49The place-name here is an early misreading for “Eynsham.”
50This statement should perhaps be modified to admit of the possibility that Julian Notary was English rather than French, as is generally assumed.
51This and theDives and Pauperof 1493 (which, until the discovery of theDoctrinale, was reckoned Pynson’s first dated book) and several other of his earliest editions were published partly at the expense of a merchant named John Rushe, who took six hundred copies of theDivesand theBoccaccioat 4s. apiece. SeeTwo Lawsuits of Richard Pynson, by H. R. Plomer, inThe Library, second series, Vol. X.
52SeeThe Library, second series, Vol. VIII, pp. 298sqq.
53InThe Library, second series, Vol. IX, pp. 257-81.
54“The Printers, Stationers, and Bookbinders of Westminster and London, 1476-1535” (last paragraph).
CHAPTER XIII
ENGLISH BOOKS PRINTED ELSEWHERE THAN AT LONDON
Duringthe fifteenth century presses were set up in more than fifty places in Germany, in more than seventy in Italy, in nearly forty in France, in more than twenty in the Netherlands, in twenty-four in Spain, in only three (counting London and Westminster as one) in England. In London and Westminster over 330 books are known to have been printed; in Oxford and St. Albans only twenty-five. The reason for this paucity of provincial printing in England must be found by the social historian. The beginning of the sixteenth century brought no change in the facts. For thirty years from March, 1487, there was no printing-press at Oxford. In December, 1517, a Latin commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle appeared with the imprint “Academia Oxonie,” and in four subsequent books, printed in 1518, the printer of this gave his name as Johannes Scolar. A fragment of a sixth book has lately been found at the British Museum. In 1519 Scolar’s place was taken by Carolus Kyrforth, who printed aCompotus, or small arithmetic book. A prognostication by Jaspar Laet may have been printed apparently either by Scolar or Kyrforth. After the appearance of these eight books there was no more printing at Oxford until a press was started there in 1585 by Joseph Barnes, under the auspices of the University. The last book of the Schoolmaster-printer appeared at St. Albans in 1486, and after this there was no more printing there until 1534. In that year, at the request of Abbot Catton, a printer named John Hertfort, or Herford, printed thereTheglorious lyfe and passion of seint Albon. Robert Catton was succeeded as abbot by Richard Stevenage, and in the years 1536-8 three religious books were printed for him by Hertfort, who also printed an Arithmetic and two other books on his own account, making seven books in all. Then, in October, 1539, John Hertfort fell under suspicion of having printed a “little book of detestable heresies,”55and the Abbot had to send him to London. The abbey itself was suppressed by the King the same year, and Hertfort, deprived of his patron, had no inducement to return. He is next heard of as printing in London in 1544.
At York aDirectoriumwas printed by Hugo Goes, and there is a seventeenth century reference to aDonatus minorandAccidencefrom his press. Three small books are also known to have been printed by Ursyn Mylner in 1514 and 1516. Previous to this, in or about 1507, anExpositio hymnorum et sequentiarumfor use at York had been printed at Rouen by Pierre Violette for a stationer named Gerard Freez (also known as Gerard Wandsforth), who died in 1510. This Gerard Freez had a brother Frederick, who is described not only as a bookbinder and stationer, but as a printer, and may therefore have printed books which have perished without leaving any trace behind them. But the only extant York books of the sixteenth century are theDirectoriumof 1507, two small service-books of 1513, and a little grammatical work in 1516. After this there was no more printing in York until 1642.
At Cambridge a stationer named John Laer, of Siberch, i.e. Siegburg, near Cologne, settled, in or about 1520, and acted as publisher to an edition of Croke’sIntroductiones in Rudimenta Græca, printed at Cologne by Eucharius Cervicornus. After this, in 1521 and 1522, Siberch himself printed nine small books at Cambridge, the first of them being a Latin speech by Henry Bullock addressedto Cardinal Wolsey. Among the other books was a Dialogue of Lucian’s (περὶ διψάδων), for which Siberch had to use some Greek type, and a work on letter-writing (De conscribendis epistolis) by Erasmus, with whom he seems to have been on friendly terms. After 1522 no more books were printed at Cambridge until 1583.
At Tavistock in 1525 a monk named Thomas Richard printed a translation of Boethius’sDe Consolatione Philosophiaefor “the ryght worschypful esquyer Mayster Robert Langdon.” Nine years later, in 1534, the same press printed theStatutesconcerning the Devonshire Stannaries or Tin Mines. These are the only two early books known to have been printed at Tavistock.
At Abingdon in 1528, John Scolar, presumably the same man who had previously worked a few miles off at Oxford, printed a Portiforium or Breviary for the use of the monastery. No other early book is known to have been printed there.
From 1539, when John Hertfort was summoned from St. Albans, to the end of the reign of Henry VIII, we know of no provincial printing in England. But on the accession of Edward VI the extreme Protestants who had fled from England to the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, came flocking back, and some of them seem to have stopped at Ipswich. Two, or perhaps three printers, all in the Protestant interest, worked there in the first few months of the new reign. The first of these, Anthony Scoloker, printed seven books at Ipswich in 1547 and 1548, and then went on to London. The second, John Overton, brought over with him from Wesel the text of Bishop Bale’s Latin bibliography of the Illustrious Writers of Britain, printed there by Theodoricus Plateanus, otherwise Dirick van der Straten, and may or may not have printed at Ipswich two additional sheets, which he dated there 31 July, 1548.56The third printer, John Oswen,printed at Ipswich eleven tracts, mostly controversial, in or about 1548, and then removed to Worcester.
On his arrival at Worcester late in 1548, or early in 1549, John Oswen obtained a special privilege from Edward VI for printing service-books for use in the Principality of Wales, and produced there three editions of the first Prayer Book of Edward VI and a New Testament. Besides these, from 1549 to 1553 he printed eighteen other books, mostly of controversial theology, calling himself in his imprints “Printer appoynted by the Kinges Maiestie for the Principalitie of Wales and the Marches of the same.” On the accession of Mary, it being no longer safe to print Protestant theology, Oswen’s press ceased working.
At Canterbury in 1549 John Mychell, or Mitchell, who had moved there after producing a few books in London, printed an English psalter, “poynted as it shall be songe in churches.” During Edward’s reign Mychell printed at Canterbury altogether some twenty books and tracts, mostly more or less controversial treatises on the Protestant side. On the accession of Mary he ceased publishing till 1556, when his press was employed by Cardinal Pole to print his Articles of Visitation.
The next year, by the charter granted to the Stationers’ Company, printing outside London was forbidden, the prohibition being subsequently relaxed in favour of the two Universities, although it was nearly thirty years before they availed themselves of their right. In the previous eighty years only about a hundred books57had been produced at the provincial presses, and in the year in which the charter was granted it can hardly be said that any press outside London was in existence. The new regulation stood in the way of development, but it was a development for which there seems to have been little demand. We may see some slight confirmation of thisview in the fact that during Elizabeth’s reign there was very little secret printing, though there had probably been a good deal under Mary. The three Elizabethan secret presses which have been chronicled were:
(1) A Puritan press which printed various tracts on Church government, written by Thomas Cartwright. These were printed secretly in 1572 and 1573, first at Wandsworth, afterwards at Hempstead, near Saffron Walden, in Essex. The press was seized in August, 1573, and the type handed to Henry Bynneman, who, the next year, used it to reprint Cartwright’s attack, interpolating Whitgift’s replies in larger type.
(2) A Jesuit press which printed for Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons in 1580 and 1581, first at Greenstreet House in East Ham, afterwards at Stonor Park, near Henley. The press was managed by Stephen Brinckley, who was ultimately captured and imprisoned for nearly two years.
(3) The Puritan travelling press, from which issued the famous Martin Marprelate tracts in 1588 and 1589. Some of these were printed in East Molesey, in Surrey; others in the house of Sir Richard Knightley at Fawsley, near Daventry, others in that of Roger Wigston of Wolston Priory, between Coventry and Rugby. The chief printer of them was Robert Waldegrave, who eventually fled first to La Rochelle, where he may have printed one of the tracts, and then to Edinburgh, where he became a printer of some importance.
While there was thus very little secret printing in England, exiled Protestants, Catholics, and Nonconformists all in turn made frequent recourse to foreign presses, and apparently succeeded in circulating their books in England. Religious repression, however, though the chief, was not the only cause of English books being printed abroad. From a very early time the superior skill of foreign printers had procured them many commissions to print service-books for the English market, alike on account of their greater accuracy, theirexperience in printing in red and black, and the more attractive illustrations which they had at their disposal. Not long after 1470 a Sarum Breviary was printed abroad, possibly at Cologne. Caxton employed George Maynyal, of Paris, to print a Missal (and probably aLegenda) for him in 1487, and Johann Hamman or Herzog printed a Sarum Missal in 1494 as far away as Venice. When the Paris printers and publishers had won the admiration of all Europe by their pretty editions of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, they competed with each other for the English market. Early in the sixteenth century Wolfgang Hopyl printed some magnificent Sarum Missals and also an Antiphoner andLegenda, besides some very fine editions of Lyndewood’s Constitutions. Breviaries, Missals, and Primers were also poured out for English use by François Regnault, and in lesser numbers by nearly a dozen other Paris firms, and Martin Morin and other printers plied the same trade at Rouen, while Christoffel van Remunde, of Endhoven, was busy at Antwerp. The predominance of the foreign editions of these books over those printed in England may be estimated from the fact that of 105 Sarum service-books printed before 1540 in the possession of the British Museum, one was printed at Basel, one at Venice, eleven at Rouen, twelve at Antwerp, as many as fifty-six at Paris, and only twenty-four in England.58
In addition to service-books, a good many of the smaller Latin grammatical works were printed for the English market in France and the Low Countries, their destination being occasionally stated, but more often inferred from the appearance in them of English explanations of Latin words or phrases. A few attempts were also made to issue popular English works in competition with those produced at home. The most formidable of these rivalries was that of Gerard Leeu at Antwerp, who,after printing three entertaining books (The History of Jason,Knight Paris and the Fair Vienne, and theDialogue of Salomon and Marcolphus), embarked on a more important work,The Chronicles of England, and might have seriously injured the home trade had he not met his death in a quarrel with a workman while theChronicleswere still on the press.59
Soon after 1500 another Antwerp printer, Adriaen von Berghen, in addition to Holt’sLac Puerorum, published the commonplace book of a London merchant which passes under the name ofArnold’s Chronicle, and is famous as containing the earliest text of theNutbrown Maid. A little later still, Jan van Doesborch was at work at the same place, and between 1505 and 1530 produced at least eighteen popular English books, includingTyll Howleglas,Virgilius the Magician,Robin Hood, and an account of recent discoveries entitled, “Of the new landes and of the people found by the messengers of the kynge of portyngale named Emanuel.”
Doesborch’s books are poorly printed and illustrated, but his texts are not noticeably worse than those in contemporary editions published in England. The reverse is the case with two English books produced (1503) by the famous Paris publisher, Antoine Vérard,The traitte of god lyuyng and good deyingandThe Kalendayr of Shyppars. These have the illustrations which book-lovers prize so highly in theKalendrier des BergersandArt de bien viure et de bien mourir, but the translations seem to have been made by a Scot, only less ill equipped in Scottish than in French. In a third translation, from Pierre Gringore’sChasteau de Labeur, Vérard was more fortunate, for theCastell of Labourwas rendered into (for that unpoetical period) very passable verse by Alexander Barclay. Vérard, however, had no cause to congratulate himself, for both Pynson and De Worde reprinted Barclay’s translation with copies of the woodcuts, and the other twobooks in new translations, so that in future he left the secular English market alone.
It may be supposed that the Act of 1534, restricting the importation of foreign books into England, finally put an end to competition of the kind which Leeu, Vérard, and Doesborch had attempted. But isolated English books have continued to appear abroad down to our own day, and form a miscellaneous, but curious and interesting appendix in the great volume of the English book trade. From 1525 onwards, however, until nearly the end of the seventeenth century, compared with the masses of theological books alternately by Protestant and Roman Catholic English exiles, printed in the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, and France, the output of secular work sinks into insignificance. The stream begins with Tyndale’s New Testament, of which a few sheets were printed at Cologne (see Plate XXVIII), two editions at Worms, and half a dozen or more at Antwerp before it was suffered to appear in England.
The first English Bible is believed to have been printed (1535) by Christopher Froschauer at Zurich, the second (1537) at Antwerp, the third (1539) was begun at Paris and completed in England. Besides their New Testaments, Tyndale and George Joy published a good many controversial works at Antwerp. In the next generation the city became one of the strongholds of the Romanist exiles after the accession of Elizabeth, and Hans de Laet, John Fouler, Willem Sylvius, and Gillis van Diest the younger were frequently called on in 1564-6 to provide paper and print for Stapleton, Harding, William Rastell, and the other antagonists of Bishop Jewel.
In 1528 and the following year books by Tyndale, Roy, and Frith appeared purporting to be printed by “Hans Luft at Malborowe in the land of Hesse.” A later book with this imprint has been shown by Mr. Sayle to have been printed at Antwerp; whether these earlier works were really produced at Marburg, or, as has been conjectured, at Cologne, or again at Hamburg, isstill uncertain. In the ’forties and ’fifties Christopher Froschauer printed several English Protestant books at Zurich, includingA faythfull admonycion of a certen trewe pastor and prophete sent unto the germanes, translated from Luther’sWarnunge, with the pleasing imprint “at Grenewych by Conrade Freeman in the month of may 1554.” In the ’fifties, again, Jean Crespin and other Geneva printers worked for John Knox, and the Geneva New Testament was produced there in 1558 and the Bible in 1560. In the ’sixties, as we have seen, many treatises attacking Bishop Jewel were issued at Antwerp, others appeared at Louvain, and about the same time (1566), at Emden, G. van der Erven was printing for exiled Puritans some of their diatribes against the “Popish aparrell” (i.e. the surplice) which Elizabeth prescribed for the English Church.
In 1574 we encounter at Amsterdam a curious group of nine little books “translated out of Base-Almayne into English,” in which Hendrik Niclas preached the doctrines of the “Family of Love.” From that time onwards a good deal of theological literature on the Protestant side was published by Amsterdam presses. Richard Schilders at Middelburg was also an extensive publisher of this class of book. Presses at Leyden and Dort made similar contributions, but on a smaller scale. On the Roman Catholic side the head-quarters of propagandist literature, as we have seen, were at first at Antwerp and Louvain, at both of which places John Fouler had presses. In the ’eighties the existence of the English college at Rheims caused several Catholic books to be printed there, notably the translation of the New Testament which was made in the college itself. For like reasons much Catholic literature was published from 1602 onwards at St. Omer, and from 1604 onwards at Douai. Books of the same class, though in smaller numbers, appeared also at Paris and Rouen.
Individually the books from the presses we have been naming, both on the Romanist and the Puritan side, areunattractive to look at and dull to read. Collectively they form a very curious and interesting episode in English bibliography, which deserves more study than it has yet received, though Mr. Sayle has made an excellent beginning in his lists of English books printed on the Continent in the third volume of hisEarly English Printed Books in the University Library, Cambridge. Since then Mr. Steele and Mr. Dover Wilson have made important contributions to the subject, but much still remains to be done.
It was doubtless the existence of these foreign safety-valves which rendered the course of English printing after the grant of a charter to the Stationers’ Company so smooth and uneventful.60Two violations of the terms of the charter were winked at or authorized, in some way not known to us, by the Crown. The first of these was the printing of a few books for the use of foreign refugees by Antony de Solempne at Norwich. Most of these books were in Dutch, but in 1569 Antony Corranus, previously pastor of the Spanish Protestant congregation at Antwerp, published through de Solempne certain broadside tablesDe Operibus Deiin Latin, French, Dutch, and English, of which copies only of the first and second have been traced. In 1570 another English broadside commemorated the execution at Norwich of Thomas Brooke. Archbishop Parker seems to have resented the publication, unexamined, of theDe Operibus Dei, but de Solempne placed the royal arms and a loyal motto (Godt bewaer de Coninginne Elizabeth) on some of his books, and seems in some way or another to have secured the Queen’s protection.
Mr. Allnutt, to whose exhaustive articles on “English Provincial Printing” in the second volume ofBibliographicaall subsequent writers on the subject must needs be indebted, conscientiously includes among hisnotes one on the edition of Archbishop Parker’sDe Antiquitate Ecclesiae Britannicaeprinted for him by John Day, in all probability at Lambeth Palace, where a small staff of book-fashioners worked under the archiepiscopal eye. Eton is a good deal farther “out of bounds” than Lambeth, but the employment of the King’s Printer, John Norton, and a dedication to the King saved Sir Henry Savile from any interference when he started printing his fine edition of the works of S. John Chrysostom in the original Greek. The eight folio volumes of which this consists are dated from 1610 to 1613, and in these and the two following years five other Greek books were printed under Savile’s supervision. After this his type was presented to the University of Oxford, where a fairly flourishing press had been at work since 1585.
That printing at Oxford made a new start in 1585 was due no doubt to the example of Cambridge, which two years earlier had at last acted on a patent for printing granted by Henry VIII in 1534, the year, it will be remembered, in which restrictions were placed on the importation of foreign books on account of the proficiency in the art to which Englishmen were supposed to have attained. In the interim Printers to the University seem to have been appointed, but it was not till 1583 that a press was set up, whereupon, as soon as a single book had been printed, it was promptly seized by the Stationers’ Company of London as an infringement of the monopoly granted by their charter. Although the Bishop of London seems to have backed up the Stationers, Lord Burghley (the Chancellor of the University) and the Master of the Rolls secured the recognition of the rights of the University. Forty years later they were again attacked by the Stationers, and the Privy Council forbade the Cambridge printer to print Bibles, Prayer Books, Psalters, Grammars, or Books of Common Law, but in 1628 the judges pronounced strongly in favour of the full rights of the University, and the next year these were recognized with some modifications by the Privy Council.Up to this time there had been three printers, Thomas Thomas (1583-8), John Legate (1588-1610), and Cantrell Legge (1606-29), the University Library possessing (in 1902) 34 books and documents printed by the first, 108 by the second, and 55 by the third, or a total of 197 for a period of forty-six years. From 1628 to 1639 the majority of Cambridge books bear no individual names on them, but have usually the imprint “Cantabrigiæ, ex Academiæ celeberrimæ typographeo.” But Thomas and John Buck and Roger Daniel, in various combinations, were responsible for a good many publications.
While Burghley was Chancellor of Cambridge, Dudley, Earl of Leicester, held the Oxford Chancellorship, and doubtless felt that, charter or no charter, it concerned his honour to see that his University should be allowed all the privileges possessed by the other. Under his auspices a press was started late in 1584 or early in 1585 by Joseph Barnes, an Oxford bookseller, to whom the University lent £100 to enable him to procure the necessary equipment, and on Leicester’s visiting the University on 11 January, 1585, aCarmen gratulatoriumin four elegiac couplets was presented to him, printed on an octavo leaf at the new press. The first book to appear was aSpeculum Moralium Quaestionum in uniuersam Ethicen Aristotelis, by John Case, a former fellow of S. John’s, with a dedication to Leicester by the author and another by the printer. In the latter the promise was made “ea solum ex his prælis in lucem venient que sapientum calculis approbentur & Sybille foliis sint veriora,” but the remaining publications of the year were a polemical treatise by Thomas Billson, two issues of a Protestant adaptation of theBooke of Christian exercise appertaining to Resolution, by Robert Persons, the Jesuit, and two sermons. In 1586 no fewer than seventeen books were printed (a number not again attained for several years), and among them was an edition of six homilies of S. Chrysostom, “primitiæ typographi nostri in græcis literis preli.” After this thepress settled down to an average production of from eight to a dozen books a year, including a fair number of classical texts and translations, with now and then a volume of verse which brings it into connection with the stream of Elizabethan literature. Among the more interesting books which it produced, mention may be made of theSixe Idilliaof Theocritus (1588), poems by Nicholas Breton and Thomas Churchyard (1592), Richard de Bury’sPhilobiblon(1599), theMicrocosmusof John Davies of Hereford (1603), Captain John Smith’sMap of Virginia, with a description of the Countrey(1612), and Burton’sAnatomy of Melancholy(1621). In the ’twenties of the seventeenth century the average annual output was still only 14; in the ’thirties, under the fostering care of Laud, it had risen as high as 25. In 1641 it was but 19. Then, on the outbreak of the Civil War, the King came to Oxford, and under the stress of official publications and royalist controversy the numbers shot up to about 147 in 1642, followed by 119 in 1643, about 100 in 1644, and 60 in 1645. Then they become normal again, and in 1649 under the Parliamentaryrégimesink as low as seven. These statistics are taken from the various works of Mr. Falconer Madan, mentioned in our bibliography, and from the same source we learn that until the nineteenth century the annual average of production, calculated by periods of ten years, never exceeded thirty-two.