LECTURE I.
OXFORD.
In the two series of lectures that I had the pleasure of delivering in Cambridge as Sandars Reader in 1899 and 1904, I dealt with the printers, stationers, and bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535, the period from the introduction of printing into England by William Caxton to the death of his successor, Wynkyn de Worde. In the present series I propose to turn to the provincial towns and trace the history of the printers, stationers, and bookbinders who worked in them from 1478, when printing was introduced into Oxford, up to 1557.
I have extended the period to 1557, because in that year a charter was granted to the re-formed Company of Stationers, and in this charter was one very important clause, “Moreover we will, grant, ordain, and constitute for ourselves, and the successors of our foresaid queen, that no person within this our kingdom of England, or dominions thereof, either by himself, or by his journeymen, servants, or by any other person, shall practise or exercise the art or mystery of printing, or stamping any book, or any thing to be sold, or to be bargained for within this our kingdom of England, or the dominions thereof, unless the same person is, or shall be, one of the society of the foresaid mystery, or art of a stationer of the city aforesaid, at the time of his foresaid printing or stamping, or has for that purpose obtained our licence, or the licence of the heirs and successors of our foresaid queen.”
The effect of this enactment was virtually to put an end to all provincial printing, and with the exception of a few Dutch books, printed under a special privilege at Norwich between 1566 and 1579, and a doubtful York book of 1579, no printing was done outside London until 1584-5, when the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford once more started their presses.
Within the period I have chosen, printing was exercised in ten towns, and the presses fall roughly into three groups. The first contains Oxford, St Alban’s, and York, the second Oxford’s revived press, Cambridge, Tavistock, Abingdon, and the second St Alban’s press, and the last group Ipswich, Worcester, and Canterbury. Besides these there are one or two towns which, while not having presses of their own, had books specially printed for sale in them, as for example Hereford and Exeter, where the resident stationer commissioned books from foreign printers. And lastly, there must be noticed the places which have been claimed as possessing a press on account of false or misleading imprints, such as Winchester and Greenwich.
The first book issued from the Oxford press, the Expositio in symbolum apostolorum, a treatise by Tyrannius Rufinus on the Apostles’ Creed, was finished on the 17th of December 1478. By an error of the printer an x was omitted from the figures forming the date in the colophon, and thus the year was printed as m.cccc.lxviii. [1468] in place of m.cccc.lxxviii. [1478], and round this false date a wonderful legendary story was woven some two hundred and fifty years ago.
In 1664 a certain Richard Atkyns published a tract, entitled The Original and growth of Printing, written to prove that printing was a prerogative of the Crown. To strengthen his case he quoted this Oxford book, produced, as he claimed, much earlier than anything by Caxton, and also told a wonderful story of the introduction of printing into England, said to have been derived from a manuscript in the archives at Lambeth Palace.
According to this account, Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, having heard of the invention of printing at Haarlem, where John Gutenberg was then at work (a strange fact which might simplify the researches on early printing!), persuaded Henry VI. to endeavour to introduce the art into England. For this purpose, Robert Turner, an officer of the Robes, taking Caxton as an assistant, set out for Haarlem, where, after infinite trouble and considerable bribery, a workman named Frederick Corsellis was persuaded to return with them to England. On his arrival he was sent under a strong guard to Oxford, and there set up his press, under the protection of the King.
It is needless to say that the whole story is a fabrication, and a curiously clumsy one. At the beginning of 1461 Henry VI. was deposed by Edward, so that these events must have taken place in or before 1460, and it is strange, with all the materials ready, nothing should be done for nearly ten years. The information about Gutenberg, who invented printing at Mainz and was never outside Germany, being engaged at printing in Haarlem, is preposterous. Lastly, no trace of the documents has ever been found. It is strange how Atkyns should have fixed on the name Corsellis for his mythical printer, for this uncommon name was that of a family of wealthy Dutch merchants settled in London at the time. Just ten years after the publication of Atkyns’ book, a Nicholas Corsellis, lord of the manor of Lower Marney, Essex, was buried in the church there, and on his tomb are some verses beginning,
“Artem typographi miratam Belgicus Anglis
Corsellis docuit.”
Are we to infer from this that the family was a party to the fraud?
The story, however, was revived about the middle of the eighteenth century, when Osborne, the bookseller, in his catalogue of June 1756 offered for sale an edition of Pliny’s Letters, printed by Corsellis at Oxford in 1469. In his note he added that the printer had produced other works in 1470, and that fragments of a Lystrius of this date were known. Herbert continues the story as follows: “This raised the curiosity of the book collectors, who considered this article as a confirmation of what R. Atkins had asserted about printing at Oxford. They all flocked to Osborne’s shop, who instead of the book, produced a letter from a man of Amsterdam filled with frivolous excuses for not sending them to him. They were disappointed, and looked on the whole as a Hum; however, the Plinii Epistolæ and G. Lystrii Oratio afterwards appeared at an auction at Amsterdam and were bought for the late Dr Ant. Askew, and were sold again at an auction of his books by Baker and Leigh in Feb. 1775.”
These two books passed apparently to Denis Daly, then to Stanesby Alchorne, afterwards to Lord Spencer, and are now in the Rylands Library. The forgeries were made by a certain George Smith, much given to that class of work, and passed on to Van Damme, a bookseller of Amsterdam, who sold the Pliny to Askew for fifteen guineas. The inscriptions in the books are the clumsiest forgeries, which could not deceive anyone, while the books themselves were apparently printed at Deventer, early in the sixteenth century, by a well-known printer, Richard Paffroet. Listen now to the remarks of the erudite Dr Dibdin in the Bibliotheca Spenceriana. “Meerman has a long and amusing note concerning Van Damme and George Smith, from which it would appear that the latter had imposed upon the bookseller, Van Damme, in the annexed subscription to the volume, and that Van Damme acknowledged the imposition to one Richard Paffraet of Deventer. If this be true, the Dutch bibliopole acted a very dishonest part in selling the volume to Dr Askew for fifteen guineas!” If instead of long arguments about the types of the books or the probabilities of the dates, they had considered the books themselves, it might surely have occurred to them that it was at least unlikely that the physician, Gerard Lystrius, a friend and contemporary of Erasmus, should have published a work in 1470, while the next work issued by him did not appear until 1516. Besides the forged imprint, the Lystrius has at the end a long spurious note in Dutch purporting to be written by J. Korsellis in 1471, stating that the book had been sent him by his brother, Frederic Corsellis, from England. In order to kill two birds with one stone, the writer drags into the note the mythical inventor of printing, Laurens Janszoon Coster.
Oxford’s claim to having introduced printing into England was first disputed by the Cambridge University librarian, Dr Conyers Middleton, in his Dissertation on the Origin of Printing, published in 1735. He originated the theory that a numeral x had fallen out of the date or been accidentally omitted, and, after citing several early examples of such a mistake, continued: “But whilst I am now writing, an unexpected Instance is fallen into my hands, to the support of my Opinion; an Inauguration Speech of the Woodwardian Professor, Mr Mason, just fresh from our Press, with its Date given ten years earlier than it should have been, by the omission of an x, viz. MDccxxiv., and the very blunder exemplified in the last piece printed at Cambridge, which I suppose to have happen’d in the first from Oxford.” Middleton also brought forward what has remained the strongest argument against the authenticity of the date, the occurrence in the book of ordinary printed signatures, which are found in no other book until several years later. Finally, he pointed out the very great improbability of the interval of eleven years between the book of 1468 and the two books of 1479. The last person to cling to the 1468 date, doubtless from a sense of duty, is Mr Madan of the Bodleian. In his exhaustive work on the early Oxford press, after having fully put forward the arguments for and against, he sums up the situation as follows: “The ground has been slowly and surely giving way beneath the defenders of the Oxford date, in proportion to the advance of our knowledge of early printing, and all that can be said is that it has not yet entirely slipped away. It is still allowable to assert that the destructive arguments, even if we admit their cumulative cogency, do not at the present time amount to proof.”
Another earlier writer on this question ought to be mentioned, Samuel Weller Singer, since he wrote a small book entirely confined to the question of the authenticity of the date. It was entitled “Some account of the book printed at Oxford in 1468. In which is examined its claim to be considered the first book printed in England.” A small number of copies were privately printed; and the author came to the conclusion that, in his own words, “The book stands firm as a monument of the exercise of printing in Oxford, six years older than any book of Caxton’s with date.” Singer is said to have changed his views on the subject later on, and to have called in and destroyed as many copies as possible. His book may be classed as a curiosity for another reason. The original issue was said to consist of fifty copies privately printed, and as many copies as possible were afterwards destroyed by the author, yet it is a book of the commonest occurrence in secondhand catalogues.
The researches of later years, carried out more scientifically, have produced some definite information. In the first place, the source of the type in which the book is printed has been ascertained. It was used in 1477 and 1478 at Cologne by a printer named Gerard ten Raem, who printed five books with it; a Vocabularius Ex quo issued in October 1477, two issues of a Modus Confitendi published in January and October 1478 and a Donatus and Æsopus moralizatus, both without date. These books are very rare; the only one in the British Museum or Bodleian being the Donatus. The Rylands Library contains the Modus Confitendi with the October date. The University Library possesses the Modus of January and the unique copy of the Æsop.
Now not only are the types of the Oxford and Cologne printers identical, but both men made similar mistakes in the use of certain capitals, and we find both in the Modus Confitendi and in the Expositio a capital H frequently used in place of a capital P. This must be regarded as more than a mere coincidence and strong evidence of a connexion between the two presses. The Oxford printer also printed his capital Q sideways in his earliest book.
The printing of the Cologne Modus Confitendi was finished “in profesto undecim millium virginum,” that is on October 20; that of the Oxford Expositio on December 17. This gives an interval of eight weeks between the issue of the two books, a time much too short to allow of the same printer having produced both books, even if there were not other reasons against it. Who then was the printer from Cologne who introduced printing into Oxford? I think we are quite justified in believing that he was the Theodoric Rood de Colonia, whose name is first found in an Oxford book of 1481. Mr Madan considers it would be unsafe to assume that Rood was the printer of the first three books, no doubt because the type in which they are printed disappeared absolutely and was never used again. But analogous cases are not unknown. For his first book the St Alban’s printer used a beautiful type which, except as signatures in two other books, never appeared again.
It is extremely unfortunate that a source from which we might no doubt have learnt something about the introduction of printing into Oxford, and some details about the first printer, seems irrevocably lost. This is the volume of the registers of the Chancellor’s court covering the period between 1470 and 1497. In the volumes that remain, which contain records of all proceedings brought before the court, there are numerous references to stationers, and it may be taken as another piece of evidence against the 1468 date that there is no reference whatever to printing or printers between the years 1468 and 1470.
The two books which followed the Expositio are a Latin translation of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle by Leonardus Brunus Aretinus, and a treatise on original sin by Ægidius de Columna. The first, a quarto of one hundred and seventy-four leaves, is dated 1479, but no month is mentioned. By this date the printer had discovered which way up a capital Q should stand, and we find it always correctly printed, though some minor mistakes of the Expositio are continued, such as using a broken lower-case h sometimes for a b and sometimes, upside down, for a q. The general printing of the book was however improved, and the lines more evenly spaced out to the right-hand edge.
The second book, the treatise of Ægidius, De peccato originali, is dated March 14, 1479, but this date may be taken as 1479-80. In this book we find red printing introduced for the first and last time in an Oxford book. It is by far the rarest of the early Oxford books, perhaps on account of its small size, for it contains only twenty-four leaves, and the three copies known were all bound up in volumes with other tracts. The Bodleian copy belonged to Robert Burton and came to the library with his books; that in Oriel College Library was in a volume with the Expositio and some foreign printed quartos, which, though kept together, was rebound in the eighteenth century. The third copy, now in the Rylands Library at Manchester, was, until about thirty years ago, in a volume with the Expositio and three foreign printed tracts, including an edition of Michael de Hungaria’s Tredecim sermones, a book which has at the end a curious sermon containing a notice of the ceremony of incepting in theology at Oxford and Cambridge, with a few sentences in English. The volume had belonged to a certain A. Hylton in the fifteenth century, and was in its original stamped binding, a very fine specimen of contemporary Oxford work. The volume was sold in an auction about 1883, and the purchaser ruthlessly split up the volume and disposed of the contents. The two Oxford books found their way into Mr Quaritch’s hands, who sold the Expositio to an American collector, while the Ægidius was bought by Lord Spencer to add to the fine series of Oxford books at Althorp.
These first three Oxford books form a perfectly distinct group. In them but one fount of type is used, and they are without any kind of ornament. It is, however, quite impossible to suppose that an interval of eleven years separated the printing of the first and second books. The press-work of the second shows a slight improvement on the first, but only what the experience gained in printing a first book would enable the printer to carry out on a second attempt.
The next group of books, four in number, centring round the dates 1481 and 1482, are the Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima by Alexander of Hales, dated October 1481, the Commentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah by John Lathbury, a Franciscan and D.D., of Oxford, dated July 31, 1482, and two books known only from fragments, an edition of Cicero Pro Milone, and a grammar in English and Latin.
These books are mostly printed in a new type, a peculiarly narrow gothic, of the Cologne school, and curiously resembling some used a little later by another Theodoricus at Cologne.
The Alexander of Hales is a folio of two hundred and forty leaves printed in double columns, and some copies have a woodcut border round the first page of text. This was probably an afterthought of the printer, for he has made no allowance for it in the size of the page, and the border extends out over two inches beyond the text, with the inevitable result that no copy, even in the original binding, has escaped being cut down. This is the first occurrence of a border in an English book. The design consists of elaborate spirals of flowers and foliage, amid which are a number of birds; it is a very well-designed piece of work, but it was probably obtained from abroad. At least sixteen copies of this book are known, and one, in the library of Brasenose College, is printed upon vellum, but is unfortunately imperfect. A copy purchased for Magdalen College, Oxford, at the time of its issue, cost thirty-three shillings and fourpence.
The Lathbury, like the Alexander, contains the printed border only in certain copies. Altogether about twenty copies are known, of which four are in Cambridge. Those in Westminster Abbey and All Souls College, Oxford, are printed upon vellum, and the latter is a particularly fine copy in the original stamped binding. A curious point about it is that four names occur, signed at the bottom of the leaves in various parts of the volume. It was considered at one time that these might be the names of press correcters, but from comparison with similar sets of markings in other books, Mr Madan came to the conclusion that they were those of the persons who supplied the vellum. It is clear that more copies on vellum than are known must have been printed, since a number of fragments have been found in bindings.
The Alexander contains a full colophon stating that it was printed in the University of Oxford by Theodoric Rood of Cologne on the 11th of October 1481. The Lathbury has nothing but the date, the last day of July 1482.
The Cicero Pro Milone is known only from two sets of fragments rescued from the bindings of books. Four leaves were presented to the Bodleian in 1872, and four other leaves were found later in the library of Merton College, where perhaps more may still be discovered. The book was a quarto and was made up in gatherings of six leaves and probably consisted of about thirty leaves. A page contains only nineteen lines which are widely leaded. Though not found in other Oxford books, this spacing was not uncommon in editions of texts without notes printed abroad, and was intended to afford space to the student to write glosses over the words.
This edition of the Pro Milone is further interesting as being the first classic printed in England, the next being an edition of Terence issued in separate plays by Pynson between the years 1495 and 1497, followed after a considerable interval by an edition of Virgil from the same press. The English printers no doubt saw that it was quite hopeless to compete with the cheap and well-printed foreign editions.
The Latin Grammar is known only from two leaves found in a book-binding, and they were acquired by the British Museum in 1872. What book they came from is not known, but in 1871 they were in the hands of Messrs Ellis & Green, and were described in the Athenæum. From the frequent references to Oxford in the text, it has been supposed that the work was compiled in Oxford. Stanbridge was spoken of as a probable author, but Bradshaw suggested John Anwykyll, first master of Magdalen School, who had been recommended to the founder for his skill in a new style of grammatical teaching which had met with general approbation.
After the publication of these four books, the type with which their text was printed disappears altogether, but is replaced by one of very similar appearance, and besides this, two other new founts came into use. This activity may perhaps be explained by the theory that Thomas Hunte, the Oxford stationer, had entered into partnership with Rood. In the Alexander de Hales of 1481 we find Rood’s name alone, while in the only book of the last group which contains a full colophon, the Phalaris of 1485, the names of both are given. To Hunte’s influence may perhaps be traced the acquisition of a fount of type of much more English appearance, and probably, since it contained a w, intended for use in English books.
To the years 1483 and 1484 six books may be ascribed. Two editions of Anwykyll’s grammar, Hampole on Job, a work on Logic, the Provincial Constitutions of England with the commentary of William Lyndewode, and a sermon by Augustine on almsgiving.
The editions of Anwykyll’s grammar may be taken first, since in one copy we find an inscription showing that it was bought in 1483. The book consists of two parts, the Latin grammar, and a supplement containing sentences of Terence with English translations, known as the Vulgaria Terentii. The part containing the grammar is excessively rare. Of one issue one fragment is known, consisting roughly of half the book, now in the Bodleian Library. It was originally bound up with other tracts, and the volume was found along with some other old books in an attic at Condover Hall, Shropshire, by Mr Alfred Horwood when engaged in an examination of family archives for the Historical Manuscripts Commission.
The other issue is known only from six leaves, all in Cambridge, three in the University Library, two in Corpus, and one in Trinity libraries. Two reprints of the grammar were issued on the Continent, one by Richard Paffroet at Deventer in 1489, consisting of seventy-six leaves, and another at Cologne by Henry Quentell about 1492, containing sixty leaves. From a comparison of the various fragments with these foreign editions certain conclusions may be drawn. Anwykyll had divided his grammar into four parts, and in the edition represented by the six Cambridge leaves these parts were arranged in their proper sequence, one, two, three, and four. In the edition, however, represented by the Bodleian fragment, and in both foreign editions, the parts are arranged, one, three two, four. The last quire of the Bodleian edition was signed m, and it was followed by the Vulgaria Terentii signed n to q. The Cambridge edition of the grammar extended at any rate to signature n.
Since in reprints the tendency is generally to compress, it is most probable that the Cambridge edition was the earlier, a conclusion rendered more likely from the arrangement of the books in their correct order. For some reason this order was altered in the fresh issue, the printing was compressed, and the Vulgaria printed to go at the end. It would be natural for the foreign printers to take the most recent issue as their model, in this case the edition represented by the Bodleian fragment.
We may conclude then that the first Oxford issue consisted of Anwykyll’s grammar alone, the second the grammar re-arranged and compressed, with the Vulgaria Terentii added as a supplement.
The Vulgaria was, however, certainly sold alone, for two of the five copies known were bound up with other tracts and without the grammar in original bindings. A copy in the Bodleian has an interesting inscription stating it was bought in 1483 by John Green out of gifts made by his friends.
The work of Richard Rolle of Hampole on Job is known from four copies, three of which were until quite recently in the University Library. One of these was parted with as a duplicate in 1893, and is now in the Rylands Library at Manchester. The fourth copy, up to the time unnoticed, appeared in the auction of Mr Inglis’s books in 1900, when it was bought by Mr Bennett of Manchester, and passed with his whole library into the wonderful collection of Mr Pierpont Morgan of New York. The volume consists of sixty-four leaves, and the last few pages are taken up with a sermon of Augustine, De misericordia.
The separately printed Excitatio ad elemosinam faciendam of Augustine was probably issued about the same time. Only one copy is known and it was originally bound in a volume with other fifteenth-century tracts, two of which are dated 1482 and 1484. This volume was at one time in the Colbert collection, which was finally dispersed by auction in 1728, when the volume was Lot 4912 and sold for one livre ten sous. It ultimately came to the British Museum, where it lay for long unnoticed, having been entered in the catalogue as printed by A. Ther Hoernen at Cologne, but in 1891 it was recognised as a product of the early Oxford press, and transferred to the select cases.
The next book in this group is a work on Logic, or rather a collection of nineteen logical treatises strung together to form a systematic work. It is generally associated with the name of Richard Swineshede from the occurrence of his name at the end of the seventeenth treatise. He was a monk of the Cistercian abbey of Swineshead in Lincolnshire, and a fellow of Merton College, Oxford, so that, as is fitting, one of the two known copies of the book is in Merton Library. The other copy is in the library of New College. A considerable number of fragments of this book have been found used in bindings, and there are odd leaves in the University Library and in the libraries of Trinity and St John’s, Cambridge.
The Constitutiones Provinciales with the commentary of William Lyndewode, Wilhelmus de Tylia nemore, as he is called in the text, is by far the largest and most important book issued by the Oxford press, and the first edition of Lyndewode’s great work. It is a large folio of three hundred and fifty leaves, printed in double columns, with forty-six lines of text, or sixty of commentary, to the column. On the verso of the first leaf, missing in the majority of copies, is a woodcut of a doctor seated writing at a desk under a canopy, with a tree on either side. This represents, however, not Lyndewode compiling his commentary, but Jacobus de Voragine at work on the Golden Legend, a book which the Oxford press appears to have made some preparations for publishing.
This is the most common of the early Oxford books. Mr Madan enumerates twenty copies, but others have since come to light. One copy is known printed upon vellum. It was purchased at the M’Carthy sale for one hundred francs, and is now in the Bibliothèque Nationale. The vellum copy, quoted by Hartshorne, as in the library of St John’s College, does not exist, though that library possesses two on paper. One copy in Cambridge, that in the library at Corpus, is worthy of special mention, as its handsome stamped binding bears every mark of being the work of Caxton.
In 1485 the Phalaris was issued. This is a Latin translation by Franciscus Aretinus of the spurious Letters of Phalaris. At the commencement are some verses by Petrus Carmelianus, the Court poet, and at the end an interesting colophon in twelve lines of Latin verse setting forth that the book was printed by Theodoric Rood of Cologne in partnership with the Englishman, Thomas Hunte. It continues that Jenson taught the Venetians, but Britain has learnt the art for itself and that in future the Venetians may cease from sending their books to us since we are now selling books to others.
It is a curious and amusing coincidence that Jenson should here be mentioned as introducing printing into Venice in place of the real first printer, John of Spire, for Jenson’s often repeated claim to be the first printer of Venice rests upon exactly the same grounds as the Oxford printer’s claim to be the first printer in England, a date in a colophon with a numeral, x, accidentally omitted.
The Decor Puellarum printed at Venice by Jenson, with the date printed 1461 in place of 1471, led many early writers to consider him the first printer of Venice and of Italy, and it is possible that a copy of the book, having found its way to Oxford, deceived the writer of the verses in the Phalaris. If in return a copy of the Expositio could have reached Venice, its “1468” would have just given it the lead of the first Venice book, the Cicero of 1469, by one year.
Another grammar was printed about this time, the Doctrinale of Alexander de Villa Dei, with a commentary. Probably what the Oxford printer issued was not the complete work but the section De nominum generibus. Of this book two leaves only are known, preserved in a binding in St John’s College, Cambridge. These were first noticed by Henry Bradshaw, who found also some leaves of the Oxford Anwykyll in a similar binding in Corpus. When the two books, Hollen’s Præceptorium printed by Koburger at Nuremberg in 1505, from St John’s, and the Fortalitium fidei printed at Lyons in 1511, from Corpus, were compared, it was clear that they must have been bound by the same binder almost at the same time, for, besides the fragments of Oxford books found in both, the binder had used in each fragments of one and the same vellum manuscript. From the occurrence of these fragments Mr Gibson has claimed the binding as Oxford work, but as the fragments were binder’s, not printer’s waste, that is they were from books that had been in circulation, no very strong argument can be deduced from them. I have in my own collection a book bound at Cambridge by Garrat Godfrey, with his signed roll, of which the boards are entirely made of fragments of the Oxford Lyndewode.
After 1485 we hear no more of Rood, but it was for a time considered possible, if not probable, that he was identical with another printer named Theodoric, who printed some books at Cologne in 1485 and 1486 in a distinctive type remarkably resembling that used by Rood in the Hales and Lathbury. The supposition had much in its favour; the types were undeniably alike, both being of the same class as that used by Ther Hoernen, another Cologne printer. The name Theodoricus again was extremely uncommon. Panzer gives only three in the fifteenth century, the Oxford and Cologne printers, and the well-known Thierry Martens, the printer of the Low Countries. There was no proof, and there was no direct evidence of any kind, but the hypothesis was not quite groundless. For some reason, in a review of Vouillième’s work on Cologne printing, Proctor fell upon this “myth formed without a particle of evidence,” as he called it, though it was only from information in the book reviewed that any new facts about Theodoric were derived. Vouillième discovered documents showing that the Cologne Theodoric was a son of Gertrude Molner, who subsequently married Arnold Ther Hoernen, and after his death in 1483 or 1484, Conrad von Boppard.
The last book from the early Oxford press was an edition of the Liber Festivalis or Festial, consisting of sermons for holy days and certain Sundays of the year, compiled by John Mirk, prior of Lilleshall in Shropshire. Though generally spoken of as a mere reprint of Caxton’s edition, it varies very considerably in the text, and when Caxton issued a new edition he copied from this rather than his own earlier version.
This is the only Oxford book which was illustrated, and the illustrations are very interesting. A series of eleven large oblong woodcuts occur, and all have been mutilated by having some two inches cut off the blocks to allow of their being used on a small folio page. No other editions of the Festial are illustrated, and Bradshaw pointed out that these cuts were really part of a set intended to illustrate an edition of the Golden Legend. In the Lyndewode, issued about 1483, the printer had used one of these cuts in a complete state, so that as early as 1483 he had evidently been considering the issue of a Golden Legend and had begun to make preparations. But Caxton in London was at work on the same book, and, finishing his translation in November 1483, no doubt issued his volume early in 1484. From his prologue we learn that the labour and expense of production were so heavy that he was “halfe desperate to have accomplissed it”; and we can quite understand the Oxford printer hesitating to embark upon a rival edition of a book so expensive to produce, and with which the market had just been supplied. The smaller illustrations belong to a set made for a Book of Hours, but no edition containing them is known to exist.
In this book occurs also the only woodcut initial letter used at the press, a very roughly cut G without any ornament. Though of the very poorest appearance, it was used with considerable frequency; for it is found between fifty and sixty times at the usual commencement of the sermons “Good men and women.”
Four copies of the book are known. Two in the Bodleian, very imperfect, and one in the Rylands Library wanting the first two leaves. The finest is at Lambeth, which wants only the last, blank, leaf.
The printing of the book was finished in 1486, “on the day after Saint Edward the King,” presumably March 19; but there is nothing to show whether this would be the year 1486 or 1487 of our reckoning. The only other provincial press of the fifteenth century, that of St Alban’s, stopped also in 1486, but so far no good reason has been suggested for this simultaneous cessation. That it was due to any political or religious motive, as is sometimes stated, is very improbable; the growing foreign competition seems a more reasonable cause.
From the very earliest times there appear to have been two classes of stationers in Oxford, those who were sworn servants of the University, and those who worked independently. A deed of 1290 shows that the parchment makers, illuminators, and text writers were in the jurisdiction of the Chancellor of the University, and in 1345 the Chancellor was acknowledged to have jurisdiction over four official stationers. A most interesting deed of 1373 sets forth that “There are a great many booksellers in Oxford who are not sworn to the University; the consequence of which is, that books of great value are sold and carried away from Oxford, the owners of them are cheated, and the sworn stationers are deprived of their lawful business. It is therefore enacted that no bookseller, except the sworn stationers or their deputies, shall sell any book, being either his own property or that of another, exceeding half a mark in value, under pain of, for the first offence, imprisonment, for the second, a fine of half a mark, for the third, abjuring his trade within the precincts of the University.” The university stationers in their official capacity had to value manuscripts offered as pledges for money advanced, they seem also to have supplied books to the students at a fixed tariff, and acted as intermediaries between buyer and seller when a student had a book to sell. For these duties they received an occasional fee from the University.
At the time when printing was introduced, we find the same two classes, the University stationers, almost always Englishmen, and the unofficial booksellers and bookbinders, mainly foreigners.
The most important stationer in the fifteenth century was Thomas Hunte, who, we have seen, was for a time a partner with Theodoric Rood the printer. His name first appears in 1473, in which year he sold a Latin Bible, now in the British Museum, and he was then one of the official University stationers. Between 1477 and 1479 he was living in Haberdasher Hall in the parish of St Mary the Virgin. These premises in Cat Street belonged to Oseney Abbey and seem to have been a favourite situation with stationers. In 1479, besides Hunte, a bookbinder, Thomas Uffyngton, who bound for Magdalen College, also resided there. After the appearance of Hunte’s name in the Phalaris of 1485 we find no further mention of him, but his widow was occupying the same premises in 1498.
Another stationer who visited Oxford and was apparently connected with it was Peter Actors, a native of Savoy. On a leaf used in the binding of a French translation of Livy in the Bodleian is a list of books which he and his partner, John of Aix-la-Chapelle, left with Thomas Hunte on sale or return in 1483. His headquarters, however, must have been in London, for in 1485 he was appointed Stationer to the King. It is thus mentioned in the Materials for a history of Henry VII., “Grant for life to Peter Actoris, born in Savoy, of the office of stationer to the King; also licence to import, so often as he likes, from parts beyond the sea, books printed and not printed into the port of the city of London, and other ports and places within the kingdom of England, and to dispose of the same by sale or otherwise, without paying customs, etc., thereon and without rendering any account thereof.” Richard III., in an act of 1484, had given special encouragement to foreigners for bringing books into this country or for settling here as booksellers, binders or printers, and there is every evidence that this facility was freely taken advantage of. From the two or three rather conflicting entries relating to the grant to Peter Actors, it is not quite clear whether his appointment was made originally by Richard III. and confirmed by Henry VII. after his accession, or whether it originated with the latter. At any rate from the act and from this appointment we have definite evidence that both kings looked with favour on the book-trade and encouraged it by all means in their power.
The son of Peter Actors, Sebastian, certainly lived in Oxford in the parish of St Mary the Virgin, and was a stationer and bookbinder. In the University archives is the record of a grant of administration after his death dated April 23, 1501. In this a claim is made by a John Hewtee, who had married his sister Margaret, on behalf of her father, Peter Actors, for the tools used in binding.
Among the binding material belonging to the father we may probably include three panel stamps of which impressions are known. Two of them are ornamented with spirals of foliage and flowers enclosing fabulous animals in the curves, while in the centre are two dragons with their necks entwined. Round one of these panels runs the inscription, “Ho mater dei memento Maistre Pierre Auctorre,” while the other has an inscription in French, but no binder’s name. The third panel has a conventional acorn design upon it without any inscription. So far we have not traced these panels to a date early enough for them to have been used by Sebastian Actors, but about 1520 they are used in conjunction with other tools found on Oxford work.
Another stationer, George Chastelain, is first mentioned in the imprint of a grammar printed by Pynson about 1499, “Here endeth the Accidence made at the instance of George Chastelayn and John Bars.” There is no indication where he was then at work, but in 1502 he was admitted as a servant to the liberties of the University. About 1507 Pynson printed for him an edition of the Principia of Peregrinus de Lugo, an extremely rare book, of which, however, there is a copy in the University Library. In this his address is given as the sign of St John Evangelist in the street of St Mary the Virgin. He was a bookbinder as well as a stationer, and in the registers of Magdalen College frequent mention is made of him between 1507 and 1513 as binding books for their library. He died in 1513, and his will was administered by Mr. Wutton and Henry Jacobi, a stationer. An inventory of his goods was made by Howberch, a University stationer, and Richard Pate, and the value returned at £24.
Some time between 1512 and 1514 a stationer named Henry Jacobi migrated from London to Oxford. From 1506 to 1508 he had been in partnership with another bookseller named Joyce Pelgrim, and assisted by a wealthy London merchant named Bretton they issued several books together. Between 1509 and 1512 Jacobi published books alone, though he appears to have still been helped by Bretton.
One book is known printed for Jacobi at Oxford, an edition of the Formalitates of Antonius Sirectus. An imperfect title-page and a few leaves were found by Proctor in the binding of a book in New College Library, and shortly afterwards a copy of the book, wanting a greater part of the title, was identified in the British Museum. It is a quarto of twenty-two leaves, and was printed in London by W. de Worde. On the title-page is the very finely engraved device of Jacobi, probably newly cut, and found in no other of his books, though it was used again in a mutilated state by his successor; and below the device an imprint stating that the book was to be sold in the University of Oxford at the sign of the Trinity, by Henry Jacobi, a London bookseller. His shop in London in St Paul’s Churchyard had also the sign of the Trinity. Jacobi made his will on September 8, 1514, and died shortly after. On November 9 his wife renounced her executorship, and administration was granted to William Bretton, the rich merchant who had assisted him throughout his career. On December 11 administration of the effects of Jacobi was granted at Oxford also to Bretton through his agent, Joyce Pelgrim, Jacobi’s former partner.
Title-page of the Antonius Sirectus, Printed for H. Jacobi.
The most interesting figure among the early Oxford stationers is undoubtedly John Dorne or Thorne. In 1507 he was a printer at Brunswick, and printed an edition of the grammar of Remigius entitled Dominus que pars, the first book to be printed in that town. In 1509 he printed an edition of the Regimen Sanitatis, and with this second book his career as a printer seems to have ended. Later he moved as a bookseller to Oxford, and a valuable memorial of his stay there is preserved in the shape of his day-book or ledger for the whole year 1520. This curious little manuscript is in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and was for long erroneously catalogued as a catalogue of books in the monastery of St Frideswide. Its great interest remained unrecognised. Dibdin was shown it on a visit to Oxford, but as might be expected failed to see its value and took no further notice of it. Coxe, in his catalogue of manuscripts preserved in college libraries, gave a correct account of it in 1852, and finally in 1885 it was admirably edited by Mr Madan and published in the Collectanea of the Oxford Historical Society. At the end of January 1886 a separate copy was sent to Henry Bradshaw, who immediately set to work upon it, and on the 4th of February he sent to Mr Madan a thin bound folio volume of notes, to which he had prefixed a title-page, “A Half-Century of Notes on the Day-book of John Dorne.” This was the last piece of work which Bradshaw finished, and within a week of sending it he was dead.
Dorne’s ledger throws full light on the trade of an unprivileged stationer in a University town. His supply of books necessary for the schools was small. These no doubt would be mostly bought from the licensed University stationer; but all other classes are well represented. Of liturgical books he sold a very large number, and naturally the various works of Erasmus were in great demand. The number of English books sold was relatively small, though there are frequent entries of single sheets, almanacks, and ballads. Such cheaper and popular stock would find a ready sale when he set up his stall at the St Austin’s and St Frideswide’s fairs. Towards the end of May when business was quiet after St Austin’s fair, he went abroad for a couple of months, presumably to arrange for the supply of fresh stock, though his absence did not coincide with the time of the Frankfurt fair. The ledger begins again on August 5, “post recessum meum de ultra mare.” In October came St Frideswide’s fair, when he sold books to the amount of £17, 9s. 6d. as against the £14, 4s. 10d. which he received at the St Austin’s fair in May. Probably during fair time he would have to close his ordinary shop, and transfer his business for the time to a stall in the precincts of the fair itself.
Besides being a bookseller, Dorne was also a publisher on a small scale. An edition of the Opus Insolubilium, a book used in the schools at Oxford, and printed by Peter Treveris at Southwark for I. T., has been known for some time from a copy in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. The I. T. was considered to stand for John Thorne, the English form of Dorne. This has been confirmed by a recent discovery. From the sale in 1906 of the library of the Duke of Sutherland at Trentham Hall, a most interesting volume was secured for the University Library. It contained three tracts connected with Oxford. The first was the Libellus Sophistarum printed at London by Wynkyn de Worde, of which there were several editions. The second was another copy of the Opus Insolubilium mentioned above; but the third was an entirely unknown book, an edition of the Tractatus secundarum intentionum logicalium. This has a clear imprint starting that the book was to be sold by John Thorne in the year 1527. At the end of the last two pieces is the device of the printer, Peter Treveris. We find frequent entries of these two books in Dorne’s ledger of 1520, so that evidently, finding the sale so good, he determined to have editions printed for himself. It is only from this recent discovery that we are able to attach the date of 1527 to these books printed at Oxford, but this fits in most curiously with an assertion made by the Oxford antiquary, Anthony a Wood. Herbert, in his account of Treveris, wrote: “Mr Wood thought he had printed a Latin grammar of Whitinton’s at Oxford in 1527 as also books about and before that time, but we have not met with any such.” Wood does not speak of any other books except the edition of Whitinton’s grammar, and from his giving the exact date we must either conclude that he was referring to a genuine book which he had seen, or else had seen a copy of this book printed for Dorne and had confused it with some other tract. Wood is also responsible for the assertion that Wynkyn de Worde printed for a while in Oxford, and asserts that a lane called Grope Lane had its name altered to Wynkyn Lane as a memorial of his work there. For this statement there seems no foundation, but it is quite probable that W. de Worde had more considerable dealings with the Oxford stationers than we know at present. He printed a book for Jacobi, to which I have already referred, and when the press was restarted at Oxford in 1517 he supplied some of the material. So much new information has come to light recently about the Oxford book-trade, that we may fairly hope for more, and perhaps discover further dealings there of De Worde.
From the twelfth century onward Oxford appears to have been a great centre of book-binding, not only as the seat of a University, but from the number and importance of the religious houses in its immediate neighbourhood. From various records and registers we get the names of individual binders in an unbroken series. While we can point to exquisite bindings produced at London, Durham, and Winchester as early as the twelfth century, and while doubtless similar fine bindings were produced in Oxford, yet strangely enough and very unfortunately we cannot point to any definite specimen of a decorated Oxford binding earlier than the second half of the fifteenth century. From about 1460 to the end of the century, on the other hand, examples are plentiful, and the bindings of this period have a very distinctive style of their own. The old styles of binding seem to have lingered on in Oxford and even some of the old tools.
The earliest binding which we can definitely point to as executed there is on a volume of sermons written in 1460. The decoration consists of stamps arranged as parallelograms one inside the other and covering the main part of the side. One of the stamps used on this binding, depicting a strange bird, is the identical stamp found on a twelfth-century binding in the British Museum. On the back are found small roundels arranged in sets of three, an ornament very common on all early Oxford bindings, and a single stamp on which the three roundels are engraved seems peculiar to Oxford work. Three manuscripts in Magdalen College, Oxford, written and bound between 1462 and 1470, are of similar early style, and might from their appearance and dies be considered two centuries older. The advent of Rood in Oxford agrees in point of time with the introduction of a class of binding very distinctive in style. The centre of the side contains a panel composed of horizontal rows of stamps and enclosed by a frame formed with an oblong stamp of foliage twined round a staff. On spaces outside the frame are stamped roses and roundels in sets of three. The stamps employed on these bindings show a distinct foreign influence, and many of them are almost identical with those used by foreign binders notably of the Low Countries. Some bindings, certainly produced in Oxford about this time, have not only foreign dies upon them but have them disposed in quite a foreign style, and are probably the work of foreign binders settled in the town. The number of different dies used on Oxford bindings, between 1480 and 1500, is very large. Gibson, in his work on the subject, gives drawings of nearly a hundred; and though some of these are of the simplest character and in no way distinctive, many of them are both clever in design and extremely well engraved.
One or two Oxford bindings of the time show a curious return to another early English style in which the ornament was disposed in circles or part of circles. The finest example is on the Lathbury in the University Library. The centre of each side is ornamented with a circle formed by the repetition of a die depicting two birds drinking from a cup. This die was evidently cut for use in this special way, for the top is wider than the bottom, like the stones of the arch of a bridge, so that when stamped side by side they would work round into a circular form. Another binding of the same style is in the library of St John’s College, Cambridge, and both bear the most extraordinary resemblance, allowing for the different shape and style of the dies, to the covers of the Winchester Domesday book written in 1148 and bound about the same time.
Early bindings fall into three classes, those ornamented with small dies, in vogue until about the end of the fifteenth century, panel stamped bindings used in the early part of the sixteenth, and, finally, the bindings decorated by a roll tool which begin about 1520. We cannot suppose that the Oxford stationers did not use panel stamps, but so far none can be identified as peculiar to Oxford. The panels of Peter Actoris have been already spoken of, but it is not certain they were ever used in Oxford. Henry Jacobi, who came to Oxford from London about 1512 and died in 1514, had certainly various panels which he had used in London, but he may not have transferred them to Oxford. Of stationers or binders who lived and worked in Oxford alone no single panel has yet been identified. Unfortunately, not a single book printed for or at Oxford in the early sixteenth century is known in an original binding.
In good specimens of roll-tooled bindings again Oxford is singularly deficient, in curious contrast to Cambridge, which rivals if not surpasses London in this class of work. There are no fine broad rolls, and only one bearing initials. This is a roll engraved with a waving spray of foliage containing in the curves the initials R. H. M. I. What these initials stand for is unknown, and the roll is only claimed as an Oxford one from its use on the covers of a Brasenose College register. For the rest of the century Oxford binding is entirely uninteresting.