Similar causes to those which brought about the sudden increase in the Oxford output in 1642 led to the establishment of presses at Newcastle and York. In 1639, when Charles I marched against the Scots, his head-quarters were at Newcastle, and the Royal Printer, Robert Barker,61printed there a sermon by the Bishop of Durham, theLawes and Ordinances of Warre, and some proclamations. In March, 1642, again Barker wasin attendance on the King at York, and printed thereHis Majesties Declaration to both Houses of Parliament, in answer to that presented to him at Newmarket, and some thirty-eight other pieces. Another London printer, Stephen Bulkley, was also given employment, and in the years 1642-4 printed at York some twenty-eight different pieces. Bulkley also attended the King at Newcastle in 1646, when he was in the hands of the Scots, and remained printing there and at Gateshead until the Restoration, when he returned to York, where a Puritan press had in the meantime been set up by Thomas Broad.
Charles I left York on 16 August, 1642, and six days later the Royal Standard was raised at Nottingham.His Majesties Instructions to his Commissioners of Array, dated “at our Court at Nottingham, 29th August, 1642,” were printed by Barker at York. Two days later the King ordered that the press should be brought to Nottingham, but we next hear of Barker at Shrewsbury, where he served the King’s immediate needs, and then remained at work for the rest of the year and the greater part of 1643 reprinting Oxford editions and publishing other royalist literature. After the capture of Bristol for the King on 2 August he removed once more and printed there during 1644 and 1645.
During the confusion of the Civil War an Exeter stationer, Thomas Hunt (the local publisher of Herrick’sHesperides), had a book printed for him—Thomas Fuller’sGood Thoughts in Bad Times—which is described in the dedication as the “First Fruits of the Exeter Presse,” and another is said to have been printed there in 1648. But we hear of no other presses being set up. After the Restoration printing was allowed to continue at York. Otherwise provincial printing outside the Universities was once more non-existent. The arrival of William of Orange caused some broadsides to be printed at Exeter in 1688, and in the same year Thomas Tillier printed at Chester, not onlyAn account of a lateHorrid and Bloody Massacre in Irelandon a single leaf, but also a handsome folio,The Academy of Armory, for Randall Holme, who rewarded him for any risk he may have run by devising for him a fancy coat. Nevertheless, despite the change of Government, the Act of Parliament restricting printing to London, Oxford, Cambridge, and York was not allowed to expire till 1695. A press was set up at Bristol the same year. Plymouth and Shrewsbury followed in 1696, Exeter in 1698, and Norwich in 1701, the first provincial newspaper,The Norwich Post, dating from September in that year. By 1750 about seventy-five provincial towns possessed presses, cities and small country places starting them at haphazard, not at all in the order of their importance. The dates for some of the chief are as follows (all on the authority of Mr. Allnutt): 1708, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; 1709, Worcester; 1710, Nottingham; 1711, Chester; 1712, Liverpool; 1715, Salisbury; 1716, Birmingham; 1717, Canterbury; 1718, Ipswich, Leeds, and Taunton; 1719, Manchester and Derby; 1720, Northampton; 1721, Coventry and Hereford; 1723, Reading; 1731, Bath; 1737, Sheffield; 1745, Stratford-on-Avon; 1748, Portsmouth.
As a side-consequence of the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695, it became possible for any private person to buy a printing press, hire a journeyman printer, and start printing any books he pleased. Several private presses were thus set up during the second half of the eighteenth century, the most famous of them being that of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham. Walpole started in 1757 by printing two of the Odes of his friend Gray, and at intervals during the next twenty-seven years printed several of his own works, and a few other books, of which an edition of Grammont’sMémoireswas the most important. Walpole’s example was followed by George Allan, M.P. for Durham, and Francis Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk; also in the nineteenth century by Thomas Johnes, who printed his translation of Froissartin four large quarto volumes at his own house at Hafod in Cardiganshire in 1803-5, and followed them up with a Joinville in 1807 and a Monstrelet in 1810. Between 1813 and 1823 Sir Egerton Brydges caused a number of interesting literary reprints to be issued for him in limited editions from a press in or near his house at Lee Priory in Kent. The work of both these presses, like that of Walpole’s, was perhaps equal to the best commercial printing of its day, but was not superior to it, and perhaps the same may be said of the few reprints manufactured, in still more jealously limited editions, by E. V. Utterson between 1840 and 1843 at Beldornie House, Ryde. Sir Thomas Phillipps, who printed numerous antiquarian documents between 1822 and 1862 at Middle Hill in Worcestershire, and between 1862 and 1872 at Cheltenham, set even less store by typographical beauty and accuracy. The other private presses of the first half of the nineteenth century are not more interesting, though that of Gaetano Polidori at Park Village East, near Regent’s Park, 1840-50, has become famous as having printed Gabriel Rossetti’sSir Hugh the Heronin 1843, and Christina Rossetti’s first volume of verse four years later, Polidori being the grandfather of the young authors on their mother’s side.
Passing north of the Tweed, where the most formidable competitors of the London printers now abide, we find the first Scottish press at work at Edinburgh in 1508. In September of the previous year Andrew Myllar, a bookseller who had gained some experience of printing at Rouen, and Walter Chapman, a merchant, had been granted leave to import a press, chiefly that they might print an Aberdeen Breviary, which duly appeared in 1509-10. The books which anticipated it in 1508 were a number of thin quartos,The Maying or Disport of Chaucer, dated 4 April, theKnightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane, dated 8 April, thePorteous of Noblenes, “translated out of franche in scottis beMaistir Andrew Cadiou,” dated 20 April, and eight undated pieces, three of them by Dunbar (The Goldyn Targe,The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy, and theTwa Marrit Wemen and the Wedo, with other poems), the others being theBallad of Lord Barnard Stewart,Orpheus and Eurydice, theBuke of Gude Counsale,Sir Eglamoure of Artoys, andA Gest of Robyn Hode. All these have survived (some of them much mutilated) in a single volume, and it is at the reader’s pleasure to decide whether they represent the harvest of some careful person who bought up all Chapman and Myllar’s fugitive pieces, or are merely the remnants of a much larger output. The Aberdeen Breviary, which the printers were encouraged to produce by protection against the importation of Sarum books from England or abroad, is really handsomely printed in black and red. At the end of one of the four or five copies of it now known is an addendum, theOfficium Compassionis Beatae Virginis(commemorated on the Wednesday in Holy Week), which bears the colophon “Impressum Edinburgi per Johannem Story nomine & mandato Karoli Stule,” which Scottish bibliographers assign to about 1520. A fragment of aBook of the Howlatmay belong to the same period. Thus although Scottish writers, such as John Vaus and Hector Boece of Aberdeen, had to send their books to France to be printed, it is possible that presses were at work in Edinburgh or elsewhere in Scotland, of which nothing is now known.
The next printer of whom we have certain information is Thomas Davidson, who in February, 1541 (1542), produced a handsome edition ofThe New Actis and Constitutionis of Parliament maid be the Rycht Excellent Prince Iames the Fift. This was his only dated book, but he issued also a fine edition ofThe hystory and croniklis of Scotland, translated by “Johne Bellenden, Archdene of Murray, chanon of Ros,” from the Latin of Hector Boece, and some smaller works.
The next Scottish printer is John Scot, whom thebest authorities, despite the fact that he is first heard of in Edinburgh in 1539, refuse to identify with the John Skot who printed in London from 1521 to 1537. Whoever he was, he had no very happy existence, as notwithstanding some efforts to please the Protestant party, the work he did for the Catholics twice brought him into serious trouble. His first dated book, Archbishop Hamilton’sCatechism, did not appear till 29 August, 1552, and was printed not at Edinburgh, but at St. Andrews. How he had been employed between 1539 and this date we have no means of knowing. At St. Andrews Scot printed Patrick Cockburn’sPia Meditatio in Dominicam Orationem(1555), and probably also Lauder’sDewtis of Kingis(1556). Scot also printed controversial works on the Catholic side by the Abbot of Crosraguell (Quentin Kennedy) and Ninian Winzet, and for the opposite partyThe Confessione of faith Professit and Belevit be the Protestantes within the Realme of Scotland(1561). He issued also two editions (1568 and 1571) of the works of Sir David Lindesay, while his undated books include some of Lindesay’s single poems.
Since John Scot printed mainly on the Catholic side, the Protestant General Assembly in December, 1562, started a printer in opposition to him, Robert Lekpreuik, lending him “twa hundreth pounds to help to buy irons, ink and papper and to fie craftesmen for printing.” He had previously, in 1561, like Scot, printed theConfession of the Faith, also Robert Noruell’sMeroure of an Chr[i]stianeand anOrationby Beza. The grant allowed him was in connection with an edition of the Psalms, which eventually appeared in 1565, together with theForm of Prayer and Ministration of the Sacraments used in the English Church at Genevaand the Catechism (dated 1564). Lekpreuik continued active till 1574, and after an interval issued three books in 1581 and perhaps one in 1582. In Mr. Aldis’s List he is credited with ninety-one publications (mostly controversial) as against four assigned to Davidson and fifteen to Scot. During 1571 he printedat Stirling, and the next two years at St. Andrews. Like Scot, he found printing perilous work, his intermission after the beginning of 1574 being due to imprisonment.
Thomas Bassandyne, who had previously published books at Edinburgh, began printing there in 1572. He produced but ten (extant) books and documents in all, but his name is famous from its connection with the first Scottish Bible, of which he produced the New Testament in 1576, the Old Testament being added, and the whole issued by his successor, Alexander Arbuthnot, in 1579. Besides the Bible, only five books were printed by Arbuthnot. Between 1574 and 1580 twenty-six were produced by John Ross, and on his death Henry Charteris, a bookseller, took over his material, and by the time of his death in 1599 had printed forty more. But the best Edinburgh work towards the end of the century was produced by two craftsmen from England, Thomas Vautrollier, who produced ten books in 1584-6, and Robert Waldegrave (1590-1603), who had to flee from England for his share in the Marprelate tracts, and during his thirteen years in Edinburgh issued 119 books.
When Joseph Ames was desirous of obtaining information about early printing in Ireland he applied to a Dr. Rutty, of Dublin (apparently a Quaker), who could only furnish the name of a single book printed there before 1600, this being an edition of the Book of Common Prayer, which states that it is “Imprinted by Humphrey Powell, printer to the Kynges Maiesti, in his Highnesse realme of Ireland dwellyng in the citie of Dublin in the greate toure by the Crane. Cum Privilegio ad imprimendum solum. Anno DominiMDLI.” We know from the records of the English Privy Council that Humphrey Powell, an inconspicuous English printer, was granted £20 in July, 1550, “towards his setting up in Ireland,” and this Prayer Book was doubtless the first fruits of his press. Powell remained in Dublin for fifteen years, but the only other products of his press still in existence are two proclamations, one issued in 1561against Shane O’Neill, the other in 1564 against the O’Connors, andA Brefe Declaration of certein Principall Articles of Religion, a quarto of eight leaves set out by order of Sir Henry Sidney in 1566.
In 1571 John O’Kearney, Treasurer of St. Patrick’s, was presented with a fount of Irish type by Queen Elizabeth, and a Catechism by him and a broadside poem on the Last Judgment, by Philip, son of Conn Crosach, both in Irish type, are still extant. But there seems to be no trustworthy information as to where they were printed, though it was probably at Dublin.
An Almanac, giving the longitude and latitude for Dublin, for the year 1587, appears to have been printed at London. But in 1595 William Kearney printed a Proclamation against the Earl of Tyrone and his adherents in Ireland “in the Cathedrall Church of the Blessed Trinitie, Dublin.”
We reach continuous firm ground in 1600 when John Francke, or Franckton (as he called himself in 1602 and thenceforward), printed one or more proclamations at Dublin. In 1604 Franckton was appointed King’s Printer for Ireland, and he continued at work till 1618, when he assigned his patent to Felix Kyngston, Matthew Lownes, and Thomas Downes. Some four-and-twenty proclamations and upwards of a dozen books and pamphlets from his press are extant, some of them in Irish type. In 1620 the office of Printer-General for Ireland was granted for a period of twenty-one years to Kingston, Lownes, and Downes, all of them members of the London Stationers’ Company, and the usual imprint on the books they issued is that of the Company (1620-33) or Society (1633-42) of Stationers. They seem to have appointed an agent or factor to look after their interests, and the last of these factors, William Bladen, about 1642 took over the business.
The earliest allusion to books printed in what afterwards became the United States of America occurs in the diary of John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts Bay,for March, 1639: “A printing house was begun at Cambridge by one Stephen Daye, at the charge of Mr. Glover, who died on sea hitherward. The first thing which was printed was the freemen’s Oath; the next was an almanac made for New England by Mr. William Pierce, mariner; the next was the Psalms newly turned into metre.” The Mr. Glover here mentioned was the Rev. Joseph Glover, rector of Sutton in Surrey from 1628 to 1636, who, after collecting funds for the benefit of Harvard College at Cambridge, Mass., sailed with his family from England in the summer of 1638, but died on the way. His widow (Elizabeth Glover), shortly after her arrival, married the Rev. Henry Dunster, the first President of Harvard, and thus, as had happened in Paris, the first press in America was set up in a college under clerical auspices. Stephen Day, the printer whom Glover had brought from England, is naturally supposed to have been a descendant of John Day, the great Elizabethan printer, but of this there is no evidence. He obtained some grants of land in consideration of his services to the colony, but did not greatly thrive, and in 1648, or early in 1649, was superseded by Samuel Green. Of the specimens of his press mentioned by Governor Winthrop theOath of a Freemanand theAlmanachave perished utterly. Of the “Bay Psalter,” or the “New England Version of the Psalms,” as it was subsequently called, at least eleven copies are known to be extant, of which five are stated to be perfect.62It is a small octavo of 148 leaves, disfigured by numerous misprints, but with passable presswork. The translation was made by the Massachusetts clergy, who prefixed to it “A discourse declaring not only the lawfullnes but also the necessity of the heavenly ordinance of singing Scripture Psalmes in the Churches of God.” Its titlepage bears the name neither of printer nor of place, but merely“Imprinted 1640.” There is no doubt, however, that it was produced by Day at Cambridge, whereas the edition of 1647 appears to have been printed in London.
The Massachusetts records make it probable that Day printed several books and documents now lost. An imperfect copy of Harvard Theses with the imprint “Cantabrigiæ Nov. Ang., Mens. 8 1643” is the next production of his press still extant. After this comes an historical document of some interest: “A Declaration of former passages and proceedings betwixt the English and the Narrowgansets, with their confederates, wherein the grounds and iustice of the ensuing warre are opened and cleared. Published by order of the Commissioners for the United Colonies. At Boston the 11 of the sixth month 1645.” Another broadside of Harvard Theses (for 1647) and a couple of almanacs for 1647 and 1648, the first of which has the imprint “Cambridge Printed by Matthew Daye and to be solde by Hez. Usher at Boston. 1647”, are the only other remnants of this stage of the press. Of Matthew Day nothing more is known.
Samuel Green appears to have taken over Day’s business without any previous technical training, so that it is thought that Day may have helped him as a journeyman. The first book ascribed to Green is:
A Platform of Church Discipline gathered out of the word of God: and agreed upon by the Elders: and Messengers of the Churches assembled in the Synod at Cambridge in New-England. To be presented to the Churches and Generals Court for their consideration and acceptance in the Lord. The Eighth Moneth, Anno 1649. Printed by S.G. at Cambridge in New-England and are to be sold at Cambridge and Boston Anno Dom. 1649.
A Platform of Church Discipline gathered out of the word of God: and agreed upon by the Elders: and Messengers of the Churches assembled in the Synod at Cambridge in New-England. To be presented to the Churches and Generals Court for their consideration and acceptance in the Lord. The Eighth Moneth, Anno 1649. Printed by S.G. at Cambridge in New-England and are to be sold at Cambridge and Boston Anno Dom. 1649.
His next extant piece of work is an almanac for 1650, his next the third edition (the second, as noted above, had been printed at London in 1647) of the Bay Psalter, “printed by Samuel Green at Cambridge in New-England, 1651.” This was followed in 1652 by Richard Mather’sThe Summe of Certain Sermons upon Genes.15. 6, a treatise on Justification by Faith, and then Green seems to have begun to busy himself with work for the Corporation in England for the Propagation of the Gospel amongst the Indians in New England, or Corporation for the Indians, as it is easier to call it. A second press was sent over to enable this work to be undertaken, and a Primer by John Eliot (“the Apostle to the Indians”) was printed in 1654, and the Books of Genesis and Matthew the next year, all three in the Indian language, all three now known only from records. The same destruction has befallen an Indian version of some of the Psalms mentioned as having been printed in 1658, but of another Indian book of the same year, Abraham Peirson’sSome helps for the Indians, shewing them how to improve their natural reason to know the true God, and the true Christian Religion, two issues have been preserved, one in the New York Public Library, the other at the British Museum. Another edition, dated the next year, is also at the Museum, though it has escaped the notice of Mr. Evans, the author of the latest “American Bibliography.” By this time the Corporation for the Indians had sent over a skilled printer, Marmaduke Johnson, to aid Green in his work. Unfortunately, despite the fact that he had left a wife in England, Johnson flirted with Green’s daughter, and this conduct, reprehensible anywhere, in New England brought down on him fines of £20 and a sentence of deportation, which, however, was not carried out. Johnson’s initials appears in conjunction with Green’s inA Brief Catechism containing the doctrine of Godlines, by John Norton, teacher of the Church at Boston, published in 1660, and the two men’s names in full are in the Indian New Testament of 1661 and the complete Bible of 1663. Of the New Testament it is conjectured that a thousand, or perhaps fifteen hundred copies, were printed, of which five hundred were bound separately, and forty of these sent to England. How many copies were printed of the Old Testament is not known, butof the complete Bible some forty copies are still extant in no fewer than eight variant states produced by the presence or absence of the Indian and English titlepages, the dedication, etc., while of the New Testament about half as many copies may be known.
During the progress of the Indian Bible Green had continued his English printing on his other press, and had produced among other thingsPropositions concerning the subject of Baptismcollected by the Boston Synod, and bearing the imprint “Printed by S.G. for Hezekiah Vsher at Boston in New England 1662.” Printing at Boston itself does not appear to have begun until 1675, when John Foster, a Harvard graduate, was entrusted with the management of a press, and during that and the six following years printed there a number of books by Increase Mather and other ministers, as well as some almanacs. On his death in 1681 the press was entrusted to Samuel Sewall, who, however, abandoned it in 1684. Meanwhile, Samuel Green had continued to print at Cambridge, and his son, Samuel Green junior, is found working by assignment of Sewall and for other Boston booksellers. In 1690 his brother Bartholomew Green succeeded him, and remained the chief printer at Boston till his death in 1732.
At Philadelphia, within three years of its foundation in 1683, aKalendarium Pennsilvaniense, or America’s Messinger: being and[sic]almanack for the year of grace 1686, by Samuel Atkins, was issued with the imprint, “Printed and sold by William Bradford, sold also by the Author and H. Murrey in Philadelphia and Philip Richards in New York, 1685,” and in the same year there was published anonymously Thomas Budd’sGood Order established in Pennsilvania & New Jersey in America, being a true account of the country; with its produce and commodities there made. In 1686 Bradford printedAn Epistle from John Burnyeat to Friends in PensilvaniaandA General Epistle given forth by the people of the Lord called Quakers; in 1687 William Penn’sTheexcellent privilege of liberty and property being the birthright of the free-born subjects of England; in 1688 a collection including Böhme’sThe Temple of Wisdom, Wither’sAbuses Stript and Whipt, and Bacon’sEssays, edited by Daniel Leeds. In 1689 Bradford began working for George Keith, and three years later he was imprisoned for printing Keith’sAppeal from the Twenty Eight Judges to the Spirit of Truth and true Judgement in all faithful Friends called Quakers. In consequence of this persecution Bradford left Philadelphia the next year and set up his press at New York. Reinier Jansen and Jacob Taylor are subsequently mentioned as printers at Philadelphia, and in 1712 Andrew Bradford, son of William, came from New York and worked there until his death in 1742. From 1723 he had as a competitor Samuel Keimer, and it was in Keimer’s office that Benjamin Franklin began printing in Philadelphia. His edition of a translation of Cicero’sCato Major on Old Age, by J. Logan of Philadelphia, is said to have been the first rendering of a classic published in America.
Meanwhile, William Bradford had set up his press in New York in 1693, and obtained the appointment of Government Printer. His earliest productions there were a number of official Acts and Proclamations, on which he placed the imprint, “Printed and Sold by William Bradford, Printer to King William and Queen Mary, at the City of New York.” In 1700 he was apparently employed to print an anonymous answer to Increase Mather’sOrder of the Gospel, and a heated controversy arose as to whether the refusal of Bartholomew Green to print it at Boston was due to excessive “awe” of the President of Harvard or to a more praiseworthy objection to anonymous attacks. Bradford remained New York’s only printer until 1726, when Johann Peter Zenger set up a press which became notable for the boldness with which it attacked the provincial government. Such attacks were not regarded with much toleration, nor indeed was the press even under official regulation greatly beloved byauthority. In 1671 Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, in an official document remarked: “I thank God we have not free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects into the world; and printing has divulged them and libels against the government. God keep us from both.” Eleven years later (21 February, 1682) there is an entry in the Virginian records: “John Buckner called before the LdCulpeper and his council for printing the laws of 1680, without his excellency’s license, and he and the printer ordered to enter into bond in £100 not to print anything hereafter, until his majesty’s pleasure shall be known.” As a result there was no more printing in Virginia till about 1729, nor are any other towns than those here mentioned known to have possessed presses during the seventeenth century, the period within which American books may claim the dignity of incunabula.
55Mr. Duff is no doubt right in his suggestion that this isA very declaration of the bond and free wyll of man: the obedyence of the gospell and what the gospell meaneth, of which a copy, with colophon, “Printed at Saint Albans,” is in the Spencer Collection at the John Rylands Library. This increases Hertfort’s total to eight.56Mr. Duff plausibly suggests that Overton’s name in the colophon was merely a device for surmounting the restrictions on the circulation in England of books printed abroad.57Those recorded by Mr. E. G. Duff in his Sandars Lectures on “The English Provincial Printers, Stationers, and Bookbinders to 1557,” by my reckoning number 114.58This reckoning was made in 1896, but the proportion has not been substantially altered.59The colophon to theChronicleswhich commemorates Leeu has already been quoted (p. 81).60Before the incorporation of the Company brought English printing more easily under supervision, at least a few books had been issued by English printers with spurious foreign imprints, of which the most impudent was “At Rome under the Castle of St. Angelo.”61Robert Barker himself was imprisoned for debt in the King’s Bench at London in 1635, and died there in 1646. What is here written applies to his deputy, who may have been his son of the same name.62The assertion by Mr. Charles Evans (American Bibliography, p. 3) that one of these, “the Crowninshield copy, was privately sold by Henry Stevens to the British Museum for £157 10s.,” despite its apparent precision, is an exasperating error.
55Mr. Duff is no doubt right in his suggestion that this isA very declaration of the bond and free wyll of man: the obedyence of the gospell and what the gospell meaneth, of which a copy, with colophon, “Printed at Saint Albans,” is in the Spencer Collection at the John Rylands Library. This increases Hertfort’s total to eight.
56Mr. Duff plausibly suggests that Overton’s name in the colophon was merely a device for surmounting the restrictions on the circulation in England of books printed abroad.
57Those recorded by Mr. E. G. Duff in his Sandars Lectures on “The English Provincial Printers, Stationers, and Bookbinders to 1557,” by my reckoning number 114.
58This reckoning was made in 1896, but the proportion has not been substantially altered.
59The colophon to theChronicleswhich commemorates Leeu has already been quoted (p. 81).
60Before the incorporation of the Company brought English printing more easily under supervision, at least a few books had been issued by English printers with spurious foreign imprints, of which the most impudent was “At Rome under the Castle of St. Angelo.”
61Robert Barker himself was imprisoned for debt in the King’s Bench at London in 1635, and died there in 1646. What is here written applies to his deputy, who may have been his son of the same name.
62The assertion by Mr. Charles Evans (American Bibliography, p. 3) that one of these, “the Crowninshield copy, was privately sold by Henry Stevens to the British Museum for £157 10s.,” despite its apparent precision, is an exasperating error.
CHAPTER XIV
ENGLISH WOODCUT ILLUSTRATIONS
A fewilluminated manuscripts of English workmanship and a few with illustrations in outline have come down to us from the fifteenth century, but amid the weary wars with France and the still wearier struggles of Yorkists and Lancastrians, the artistic spirit which had been so prominent in England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries seems to have died out altogether. Until the reign of Queen Elizabeth, or perhaps we should rather say until the advent of John Day, few English books were illustrated, and of these few quite a large proportion borrowed or copied their pictures from foreign originals. Nevertheless, English illustrated books are rightly sought after by English collectors, and though we may wish that they were better, we must give the best account of them we can.
As we shall see in a later chapter, there is some probability that an engraving on copper was specially prepared for the first book printed by Caxton,The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye.For the present, however, we must concern ourselves only with illustrations on wood, or on soft metal cut in relief after the manner of wood, a difference of more interest to the technical student than to book-lovers. The first English books thus illustrated appear in or about 1481, the year in which Jean Du Pré began the use of cuts in Paris. England was thus fairly well to the front in point of time; it is the quality which is to seek. The first of these illustrated books was probably an undated edition of theMirrour of the World, a translation of a French version of a LatinSpeculumorImago mundi. Besides some woodcut diagrams copiedfrom drawings found in the French manuscripts, this has ten little cuts, seven of the masters of the seven liberal arts, one of the author, and two of the Creation. Two of the cuts illustrating the arts were used again almost at once in Caxton’s third edition of theParvus et Magnus Cato, a book of moral instruction for children in a series of Latin distichs. In 1481 also Caxton ornamented the second edition of the didactic treatise,The Game and Play of the Chess(from the Latin of Jacobus de Cessolis), with sixteen woodcuts, representing the characters after which the different pieces and pawns were called. The pictures are clumsy and coarsely cut, comparing miserably with the charming little woodcuts in the Italian edition printed at Florence, but they illustrate the book, and may conceivably have increased its sales. In any case, Caxton seems, in a leisurely way, to have set about producing some more, since by or about 1484 appeared three of his most important illustrated books, theGolden Legend, the second edition of Chaucer’sCanterbury Tales, and anAesop. TheGolden Legendis ornamented with eighteen large and thirty-two smaller woodcuts; theAesopwith a full-page frontispiece and one hundred and five smaller cuts; theCanterbury Taleswith a large cut of the Pilgrims seated at a round table, and with some twenty smaller pictures of the different story-tellers on their horses, some of these being used more than once. For theAesop, like many other foreign publishers, Caxton sent his illustrators to the designs made for the Zainers at Augsburg and Ulm, and quickly imitated all over Germany, and the copies he obtained are merely servile and so clumsy as occasionally to attain to unintended humour. Foreign influence is also evident in some at least of the cuts in theGolden Legend; on the other hand, we may be sure that the device of the Earl of Arundel on leaf 3 verso, a horse galloping past a tree, must have been made in England. Original, too, of necessity, were the illustrations to theCanterbury Tales, for which no foreign models could have been found. But the succession ofpilgrims, each decked with a huge string of praying-beads and mounted on a most ungainly horse, is grotesque in its cumulation of clumsiness, though when we find that the miller really has got a kind of bagpipe, we recognize that the illustrator had at least read his text.
Apparently Caxton himself realized that these English-made woodcuts were a failure, for the only two important illustrated books which he issued after this, theSpeculum Vitae Christi, printed about 1488 (see Plate XXIX), and theFifteen Oesof a year or two later, both seem to be decorated with cuts of Flemish origin. TheFifteen Oes(a collection of fifteen prayers, each beginning with O), though I have called it important, is so mainly as proving that Caxton must have printed a Horae of the same measurements (of which it may, indeed, have formed a part), illustrated with a set of very spirited woodcuts, undoubtedly imported from Flanders and subsequently found in the possession of Wynkyn de Worde. That the cuts in theSpeculum Vitae Christiare also Flemish is a degree less certain, but only a degree. Some of these were used again in theRoyal Book, theDoctrinal of Sapience, and theBook of Divers Ghostly Matters. But the seven books which we have named are the only ones for which Caxton troubled to procure sets of cuts, and of these seven sets, as we have seen, one was certainly and another probably imported, one certainly and another probably copied, and only three are of English origin, and these the rudest and clumsiest.
While our chief native printer made this poor record his contemporaries did no better. Lettou and Machlinia used no woodcuts which have come down to us save a small border, which passed into the possession of Pynson; for use at Oxford two sets of cuts were imported from the Low Countries, one which Mr. Gordon Duff thinks was originally designed for aLegenda Aurea, the other clearly meant for a Horae. These were used together in the Oxford edition of Mirk’sLiber Festivalis, and the cut of the author of theLegenda Aurea(Jacobus de Voragine)is used for Lyndewood in an edition of hisConstitutions. At St. Albans some poor little cuts were used in theChronicles of England, but from the point of view of illustration the anonymous schoolmaster-printer is chiefly memorable for having printed some cuts of coat-armour in the “Book of St. Albans” (The Boke of Haukyng, Huntyng and also of Cote-armuris) in colours.
Wynkyn de Worde inherited Caxton’s stock of woodcuts, and early in his career used some of them again in reprints of theGolden LegendandSpeculum Vitae Christi, and in his larger Horae used the full set of cuts which, while in Caxton’s hands, is only known from those which appear in theFifteen Oes. About 1492 he purchased some ornamental capitals (Caxton had only used a single rather graceful rustic A) and one or more cuts from Govaert van Os of Gouda. In his 1494 edition of Walter Hylton’sScala Perfectionis(the first book in which he put his name) he used a woodblock consisting of a picture of Christ suckled by His mother with a long woodcut inscription, part of which reads “Sit dulce nomen domini nostri ihesu christi et nomen genitricis virginis marie benedictum,” the whole surrounded by a graceful floral border. In 1495 came Higden’sPolychroniconwith a few woodcut musical notes, the “hystorye of the deuoute and right renommed lyues of holy faders lyuynge in deserte” (usually quoted as theVitas Patrum), with one large cut used six times and forty small ones used as 155, and about the same time a handsome edition of Bartholomaeus Anglicus’sDe proprietatibus rerum, with large cuts (two-thirds of the folio page) prefixed to each of the twenty-two books, apparently copied partly from those in a Dutch edition printed at Haarlem in 1485, partly from the illustrations (themselves not original) in a French edition printed at Lyon, of which Caxton, who finished the translation on his death-bed, had made use. In 1496, in reprinting theBook of St. AlbansDe Worde added a treatise onFishing with an angle, to which he prefixed a cut of a happy anglerhauling up a fish which will soon be placed in a well-filled tub which stands beside him on the bank. This is quite good primitive work and was sufficiently appreciated to be used for numerous later editions, but soon after this De Worde employed a cutter who served him very badly, mangling cruelly a set of rather ambitious designs for theMorte d’Arthurof 1498 (several of them used again in theRecuyellof 1503), and also some single cuts used in different books. For the next half-dozen years De Worde relied almost exclusively on old cuts, but at last found a competent craftsman who enabled him to bring out in January, 1505-6, an English version of theArt de bien vivre et de bien mourirwith quite neat reductions of the pictures in Vérard’s edition of 1492. It was, no doubt, the same workman who copied in 1506 the Vérard-Pigouchet cuts in Pierre Gringore’sChasteau de Labeuras translated by Alexander Barclay, but from the frequent omission of backgrounds it is obvious that in these he was hurried, and they are by no means so good as those in the 1505 edition by Pynson with which De Worde was enviously hastening to compete. TheCalendar of Shepherdswas another translation from the French, illustrated with copies of French cuts, while in the proseShip of Fools, translated by Henry Watson from a French version of the GermanNarrenschiffof Sebastian Brant, Basel originals were reproduced probably from intermediate copies. But when in 1509 Henry VII died, De Worde for once seems to have let his craftsman do a bit of original work for a title-cut to a funeral sermon by Bishop Fisher. In this (see Plate XXX) the bishop is shown preaching in a wooden pulpit, immediately below which is the hearse covered by a gorgeous pall on which lies an effigy of the dead king, while beyond the hearse stands a crowd of courtiers. It is evident that perspective was not the artist’s strong point, as the pavement seems climbing up the wall and the shape of the hearse is quite indeterminate, but the general effect of the cut is neat and pleasing. That it is an English cut is certain. Afew months later Bishop Fisher preached another funeral sermon, over Henry VII’s aged mother, Margaret Duchess of Richmond, and when De Worde economically wished to use the same woodcut on the titlepage of his edition of this, there was a craftsman on the spot able to cut out the royal hearse from the block and plug in a representation of an ordinary one, and the similarity of touch shows that this was done by the original cutter.
As we have already noted in Chapter XII, Wynkyn de Worde was singularly unenterprising as a publisher, and although he lived for nearly a quarter of a century after the accession of Henry VIII, during all this time he printed no new book which required copious illustration. On the other hand, he was a man of fixed habits, and one of these habits came to be the decoration of the titlepage of nearly every small quarto he issued with a woodcut of some kind or other, the title itself being sometimes printed on a riband above it. When a new picture was absolutely necessary for this purpose it was forthcoming and generally fairly well cut, but a few stock woodcuts, a schoolmaster holding a birch for grammatical books, a knight on horseback for a romance, etc., were used again and again, and often the block was picked out (we are tempted to say “at random,” but that would be an exaggeration) from one of the sets already described, which De Worde had commissioned in more lavish days.
One of Richard Pynson’s earliest books was an edition of Chaucer’sCanterbury Taleswith about a score of woodcuts of the pilgrims obviously influenced by those in Caxton’s second edition, but in no way an improvement on them. It is true that not only is the miller again allowed his bagpipe, but a little mill is placed in the corner of the cut to identify him beyond doubt. On the other hand, the knight’s horse is bedecked with the cumbrous skirts used in the tilt-yard, but which would have become sadly draggled ere much progress had been made along the miry road to Canterbury. The clerk,moreover, is made to carry a bow as if, instead of having his mind set on Aristotle, he were of the lusty sort that loved to get venison where they should not. Round most of the cuts there is a heavy edge of black, as if from an untrimmed block, which does not improve their appearance. Altogether they are poor work, and it was doubtless his recognition of this that caused Pynson in future to rely so largely on the purchase or imitation of foreign blocks. For his edition of Lydgate’sFalles of Princes, a verse rendering of Boccaccio’sDe casibus illustrium virorum, issued in 1494, he procured the woodcuts made for the fine French edition (De la ruine des nobles hommes), printed at Paris by Jean Du Pré in 1483. Before 1500 he brought out anAesop, copying as usual the German cuts. In 1505 he printed Alexander Barclay’s version of Pierre Gringore’sChasteau du Labeurwith cuts closely and fairly skilfully copied from those in the Pigouchet-Vérard editions. In 1506 he went further and procured from Vérard the blocks for a new edition of theKalendar of Shepherds, which, however, he caused to be retranslated, with sundry remarks on the extraordinary English of the version published by Vérard. In 1509 he produced in a fine folio Barclay’s free rendering of Brant’sNarrenschiff, illustrating this EnglishShip of Foolswith 117 cuts copied from the originals. In 1518 he procured from Froben some border-pieces for small quartos, one showing in the footpiece a boy carried on the shoulders of his fellows, another an elephant, a third Mutius Scaevola and Porsenna.
If Pynson had dealt largely in illustrated books the borrowings and copyings here recited might seem insignificant. He published, however, very little English work which can be set against them, and even of the cuts which pass for English the native origin is not always sure. I should be sorry to pledge myself, for instance, as to the provenance of some neat but rather characterless column-cuts in his edition of theSpeculum Vitae Christi(fifteenth century). The title-cut to theTraduction and Mariage of the Princesse(Katherine), printed in 1501, is almost certainly English in its heaviness and lack of charm, but despite the fact that they must have been produced in London we can hardly say as much of the two far prettier pictures which adorn theCarmenof Petrus Carmelianus on the treaty of marriage between the future Charles V and the Princess Mary (1508). In the first of these the ambassadors are being received by Henry VII, in the second by the Princess who is attended by her maids, and the latter is perhaps the first English book-illustration with any touch of grace. Unluckily there is a half Spanish, half Low-Country look about it, which suggests that some member of the ambassadors’ suite with an artistic turn may at least have supplied the design, so that one hesitates to claim it too vigorously as English work. We may be more confident about the one good cut (the rest are a scratch lot) in the 1513 edition of Lydgate’sThe hystory sege and dystruccion of Troy. In this Henry V is shown seated in a large room, with his suite, while Lydgate in his black habit as a Benedictine presents him with his book. There is a general resemblance between this and another good piece of work, the picture in Alexander Barclay’s translation of Sallust’sJugurtha(undated) of this other black monk offering his book to the Duke of Norfolk (see Plate XXXI). Probably both were from the same hand. It may be noted that the cut of Barclay was used again in theMyrrour of good maners conteyning the iiii. vertues called cardynall compyled in latin by Domynicke Mancyn, of which he was the industrious translator. In Pynson’s 1516 edition of Fabyan’sChronicle, besides some insignificant column-cuts of kings and some decorative heraldic work, there is an excellent picture of a disembarkation. In other books we find cuts of a schoolmaster with his pupils, of an author, of a woman saint (S. Bridget, though used also for S. Werburga), etc.
Towards the end of his career in the collection ofChaucer’s works (1526) and reprint of Lydgate’sFalles of Princes(1527), Pynson drew on his stock of miscellaneous blocks rather than allow works with which illustrations had become associated to go forth undecorated.63But with his purchase of the border-pieces from Froben in 1518, it would seem that he more or less definitely turned his back on pictorial illustration. Mr. Gordon Duff has shown that a change comes over the character of his books about this time, and has suggested that during the latter years of his life his business was to some extent in the hands of Thomas Berthelet, who succeeded him as King’s Printer. Berthelet himself in the course of his long and prosperous career eschewed illustrations altogether, while he took some trouble to get good capitals and had a few ornamental borders. It is thus hardly too much to say that from 1518 for some forty years, until in 1559 John Day published Cunningham’sCosmographicall Glasse, book-illustration in England can only be found lurking here and there in holes and corners. In 1526 Peter Treveris issued theGrete Herbalwith numerous botanical figures; in 1529 John Rastell printed his ownPastime of Peoplewith huge, semi-grotesque cuts of English kings; a few of Robert Copland’s books and a few of Robert Wyer’s have rough cuts of no importance. But when we think of Pynson’s edition of Lord Berners’Froissart, of Berthelet’s of Gower’sConfessio Amantis, of Godfray’sChaucer, and of Grafton’s edition of Halle’sChronicle, all illustratable books and all unillustrated, it is evident that educated book-buyers, wearied of rudely hacked blocks, often with no relevance to the book in which they were found, had told the printers that they might save the space occupied by these decorations, and that the reign of the primitive woodcut in English books, if it can be said ever to have reigned, was at an end.
This emphatic discouragement of book-illustrations during so many years in the sixteenth century was perhaps the best thing that could have happened—next to an equally emphatic encouragement of them. There can have been no reason in the nature of things why English book-illustrations should continue over a long period of time to be third-rate. A little help and a little guidance would probably have sufficed to reform them altogether. Nevertheless it can hardly be disputed that as a matter of fact they were, with very few exceptions, third-rate, the superiority of Pynson’s to Wynkyn de Worde’s being somewhat less striking than is usually asserted. In the absence of the needed help and guidance it was better to make a sober dignity the ideal of book-production than to continue to deface decently printed books by the use of job lots of column cuts. The borders and other ornaments used by Berthelet, Reyner Wolfe, and Grafton, the three principal firms of this period, are at least moderately good. All three printers indulged in the pleasing heresy of pictorial or heraldic capitals, Wolfe in theHomiliae duaeof S. Chrysostom (1543), Grafton in Halle’s Chronicle entitledThe Union of the Families of Lancaster and York(1548), and Berthelet in some of his later proclamations. As regards their devices, Grafton’s punning emblem (a tree grafted on a tun), though in its smallest size it may pass well enough, was not worthy of the prominence which he sometimes gave it; but Wolfe’s “Charitas” mark, of children throwing sticks at an apple tree, is perhaps the most pleasing of English devices, while Berthelet’s “Lucrece,” despite the fact that her draperies have yielded to the Renaissance temptation of fluttering in the wind rather more than a Roman lady would have thought becoming at the moment of death, is of its kind a fine piece of work. As for pictures, from which Berthelet, as far as I remember, was consistent in his abstinence—Wolfe and Grafton were wisely content to make an exception in favour of Holbein, a little medallion cut after his portrait of Sir Thomas Wyatt adorning Wolfe’s edition of Leland’sNaeniae(1542), and Grafton owing to him the magnificent titlepage to the Great Bibles in which Cranmer and Cromwell, with a host of other worthies, are seen distributing Bibles under the superintendence of Henry VIII. After the fall of Cromwell his armorial bearings were cut out of the block, a piece of petty brutality on a level with that which compelled owners of Prayer Books and Golden Legends to deface them by scratching out the word “pope” and as much as they could of the service for the day of that certainly rather questionable saint, Thomas à Becket.
In 1548 we come across a definitely illustrated book, Cranmer’sCatechism, published by Walter Lynne, with a delicately cut titlepage64showing figures of Justice, Prudence, and Victory, and also the royal arms, and in the text numerous small Biblical pictures, two of which are signed “Hans Holbein,” while others have been rashly attributed to Bernard Salomon. In 1556 we find Heywood’sSpider and the Flyillustrated not only with various woodcuts of spiders’ webs, but with a portrait of the author stiff and ungainly enough in all conscience, but carrying with it an impression of lank veracity (see Plate XXXII). About this time, moreover, William Copland was issuing folio and quarto editions of some of the poems and romances which had pleased the readers of the first quarter of the century, and some of these had the old cuts in them. It is evident that illustrations would have come back in any case—book-buyers can never abstain from them for long together. But it is only fair to connect this return with the name of John Day, who made a strenuous effort, which only just failed of success, to bring up book-illustration to the high level at which he was aiming in printing. Day had issued a few books during the reign of Edward VI, notably a Bible with an excellent pictorial capital showing the promoter of the edition, Edmund Becke, presenting a copy of it to the King. As a staunch Protestant he had been in some danger under Queen Mary, but with the accession ofElizabeth he came quickly to the front, thanks to the help of Archbishop Parker, and the edition ofThe Cosmographicall Glasseof William Cunningham, which he issued in 1559, is thus, as we have already suggested, a real landmark in English book-production. In addition to its fine types, this book is notable for its woodcut diagrams and pictorial capitals, ornamental titlepage, large map of Norwich and, most important of all, a strong and vigorous portrait of the author, his right hand on a globe, aDioscorideswith a diagram of a rose lying open before him, and a wooded landscape being seen in the distance. The whole is enclosed in an oval frame, round which runs a Greek motto cut in majuscules,Η ΜΕΓΑΛΗ ΕΥΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΗ ΟΥΔΕΝΙ ΦΘΟΝΕΙΝ(“the great happiness is to envy no man”), with the author’s age, “ÆTATIS28” at the foot. The portrait measures about 6 inches by 4½, and occupies the whole folio page. It is only too probable that it was the work not of a native Englishman, but of some Dutch refugee, but here at last in an English book was a piece of living portraiture adequately cut on wood, and with better luck it should have been the first of a long series. John Day himself did his best to promote a fashion by prefixing a small portrait of Becon to that author’sPomander of Prayer, 1561, and having a much larger one of himself cut the next year, “ÆTATIS SVÆXXXX,” as the inscription tells us, adding also his motto, “LIEFE IS DEATHE AND DEATH IS LIEFE”, the spelling in which suggests a Dutch artist, though Dutch spelling about this time was so rampant in England that we may hope against hope that this was English work. The oval portrait is surrounded with strap-work ornament, another fashion of the day, and at the foot of this are the initials I. D. On one interpretation these would lead us to believe not only that the work is English, but that Day himself was the cutter. But bindings from his shop are sometimes signed I. D. P. (Ioannes Day pegit), and we must hesitate before attributing to him personal skill not only in printing, but in binding and wood-cutting as well.The portrait itself is taken side-face and shows a cropped head, keen eye, and long beard, the neck being entirely concealed by a high coat-collar within which is a ruff. The ground to the front of the face is all in deep shadow, that at the back of the head is left white, a simple contrast which perhaps makes the general effect more brilliant. Day used this portrait as a device in some of his largest folio books—for instance, his three-volume edition of Becon’s works (1560-4) and Foxe’sBook of Martyrs(1563).
The full title of theBook of Martyrs, which we have now reached, isActes and Monuments of these latter and perillous dayes, touching matters of the Church, wherein ar comprehended and described the great persecutions and horrible troubles, that have bene wrought and practised by the Romishe Prelates, especially in this Realm of England and Scotlande, from the yeare of our Lorde a thousande unto the tyme nowe present. It bears an elaborate titlepage showing Protestants and Catholics preaching, Protestants being burnt at the stake contrasted with Catholics offering the sacrifice of the Mass, and finally the Protestant martyrs uplifted in heaven, while the Catholic persecutors are packed off to hell. The text is very unevenly illustrated, but the total number of woodcuts even in the first edition (1563) is very considerable, and as many new pictures were added in the second (1570), the book was certainly the most liberally illustrated with cuts specially made for it which had yet been produced in England. One or two of the smaller cuts, mostly the head of a martyr praying amid the flames, are used several times; of the larger cuts only a very few are repeated, and, considering the monotonous subject of the book, it is obvious that some trouble must have been taken to secure variety in the illustrations. A few of these occupy a whole page, that illustrating the Protestant legend of the poisoning of King John by a fanatic monk being divided into compartments, while others showing some of the more important martyrdoms areambitiously designed. The drawing of some of the later pictures is coarse, but on the whole the designs are good and with a good deal of character in them. The cutting is careful and painstaking, but hardly ever succeeds in making the picture stand out boldly on the page, so that the general effect is grey and colourless. As to the personality of the designers and cutters we know nothing. Day at one time was anxious to get leave to keep more than the permitted maximum of four foreigners in his employment, but we have really no sufficient ground for arguing either for an English or a foreign origin for these illustrations.
A few years after this, in 1569, when the new edition of theBook of Martyrswas in preparation, Day issued another illustrated book:A christall glasse of christian reformation, wherein the godly maye beholde the coloured abuses used in this our present tyme. Collected by Stephen Bateman, better known as the “Batman uppon Bartholomew,” i.e. the editor by whom theDe Proprietatibus Rerumof Bartholomaeus Anglicus was “newly corrected, enlarged, and amended” in 1582. TheChristall glasse of christian reformationis a dull book with dull illustrations, which are of the nature of emblems, made ugly by party spirit. A more interesting book by the same author and issued in the same year wasThe travayled Pylgrime, bringing newes from all partes of the worlde, to which Bateman only put his initials and which was printed not by Day, but by Denham. This, although I cannot find that the fact has been noted, is largely indebted both for its scheme and its illustrations to theChevalier Délibéréof Olivier de la Marche, though the woodcuts go back not to those of the Gouda and Schiedam incunabula, but to the Antwerp edition of 1555, in which these were translated into some of the most graceful of sixteenth century cuts. Needless to say, much of the grace disappears in this new translation, although the cutting is more effective than in theBook of Martyrs.
Besides these two books by Stephen Bateman, 1569saw the issue of the first edition of one of John Day’s most famous ventures,A Booke of Christian Prayers, collected out of the ancient writers and best learned in our time, worthy to be read with an earnest mind of all Christians, in these dangerous and troublesome daies, that God for Christes sake will yet still be mercifull vnto us. From the presence on the back of the titlepage of a very stiff portrait of the Queen kneeling in prayer (rather like a design for a monumental brass), this is usually quoted asQueen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book. It was reprinted in 1578 (perhaps also earlier), 1581, and 1590, and the later editions, the only ones I have seen, ascribe the compilation to R. D., i.e. Richard Day, John Day’s clergyman son. The book is in appearance a kind of Protestant Horae, having borders to every page divided into compartments as in the Paris editions, showing scenes from the life of Christ, the cardinal virtues and their opposites, the works of charity, and a Dance of Death. Compared with the best, or even the second best, of the Horae of Pigouchet or Kerver, the book looks cold and colourless, but the rarity of the early editions shows that it must have been very popular.
The only other book issued by Day with borders to every page was the (supposititious)Certaine select prayers gathered out of S. Augustines Meditations, which he calleth his selfe-talks with God, which went through several editions, of which the first is dated 1574. This is a much less pretentious book, the borders being decorative instead of pictorial, but it makes rather a pretty little octavo. Another 1569 book which has cuts is the edition of Grafton’sChronicleof that year, printed by Henry Denham, but as the cuts look like a “job” lot, possibly of German origin, and are only placed at the beginnings of sections in the short first book, while all the history from 1066 onwards is left unillustrated, this speaks rather of decadence than progress.
In 1581, towards the close of his career, Day was employed to print John Derrick’sImage of Ireland,giving an account of Sir Henry Sidney’s campaign against the Irish “wood-karnes.” In some few copies this work is illustrated with eight very large woodcuts, the most ambitious in some respects that had ever been attempted in England. The first four are wretchedly cut; the last four, showing Sir Henry’s battle with the rebels and his triumphal return, are both well designed and well executed.
Meanwhile, other printers and publishers had produced a few more illustrated books in the ’seventies. Thus in 1575 Henry Bynneman had printed Turberville’sBooke of Faulconriefor Christopher Barker. The numerous excellent illustrations of hawks (and probably those of dogs also) are taken from French books, but there is a fairly vigorous picture of Queen Elizabeth hawking attended by her suite, badged, back and front, with large Tudor roses, and this (see Plate XXXIII) looks like English work. In a much later edition—that of 1611—it is curious to note that the portrait of the Queen was cut out and one of James I substituted.
In 1576 a rather forbidding woodcut portrait of George Gascoigne was printed (by R. Smith) in that worthy’sSteele Glas. In 1577 came a very important work, the famousChronicle, begun on a vast scale by Reyner Wolfe and completed for England, Scotland, and Ireland by Raphael Holinshed, now published by John Harrison the elder. This has the appearance of being much more profusely illustrated than theBook of Martyrsor any other English folio, but as the cuts of battles, riots, executions, etc., which form the staple illustrations, are freely repeated, the profusion is far less than it seems. The cuts, moreover, are much smaller than those in Foxe’sMartyrs. As a rule they are vigorously designed and fairly well cut, and if it had come fifty years earlier the book would have been full of promise. But, as far as pictorial cuts in important books are concerned, we are nearing the end. In 1579 H. Singleton published Spenser’sShepheardes Calenderwith a small cut of no great merit at the headof each “æglogue,” and in the same year Vautrollier illustrated North’sPlutarchwith insignificant little busts which derive importance only from the large ornamental frames, stretching across the folio page, in which they are set. Woodcuts did not cease to be used after this date. They will be found in herbals (but these were mainly foreign blocks), military works, and all books for which diagrams were needed. They continued fashionable for some time for the architectural or other forms of borders to titlepages, some of them very graceful, as, for instance, that to the early folio editions of Sidney’sArcadia; also for the coats of arms of the great men to whom books were dedicated. They are found also at haphazard in the sixpenny and fourpenny quartos of plays and romances, and many of the old blocks gradually drifted into the hands of the printers of ballads and chapbooks, and appear in incongruous surroundings after a century of service. But I cannot myself call to mind any important English book after 1580 for which a publisher thought it worth his while to commission a new set of imaginative pictures cut on wood, and that means that woodcut illustration as a vital force in the making of books had ceased to exist. They needed good paper and careful presswork, and all over Europe paper and presswork were rapidly deteriorating. They cost money, and book-buyers apparently did not care enough for them to make them a good investment. The rising popularity of copper engravings for book-illustration on the Continent probably influenced the judgment of English book-lovers, and although, as we shall see, copper engraving was for many years very sparingly used in England save for portraits, frontispieces, and titlepages, woodcuts went clean out of fashion for some two centuries.