LECTURE VIII.
THE STATIONERS FROM ANTWERP AND THE
BOOKBINDERS.
Though in regard to books printed for the English market France is most important in numerical strength, it ranks far below the Low Countries in point of interest. The productions of Paris and Rouen consisted almost entirely of liturgical books and a few dictionaries and grammars. From Antwerp on the other hand from the time of Gerard Leeu in the fifteenth century onwards there was an almost unbroken output of books in the English language. Leeu began with reprints of some of Caxton’s books, Adrian van Berghen, the printer of Arnold’s Chronicle, followed, then came Jan van Doesborch with his many curious little English books, and then, most interesting of all, the various editions of the English Testament and the multitude of controversial works caused by the religious dissensions in England.
Of Gerard Leeu, “an exceedingly pleasant person” as Erasmus called him, and his English books, I gave some account in an earlier Lecture; so I must begin the account of the sixteenth century with Adrian van Berghen, Adryan of Barrowe as he calls himself in his English imprints. He apparently began to print about the close of the fifteenth century, living in a shop with the sign of the Great Golden Mortar in the Market; in 1507 he had moved to the Corn Market behind the Town Hall, and at a later date he settled in a house by the Cammerpoort Bridge with the sign of the Golden Missal. In 1535 like many another stationer he got into trouble in religious matters and was accused of keeping and selling Lutheran books, of which a number had been found in his house. In vain he protested that he knew nothing about them and that they had been secretly put there by some enemy, for after a lengthy trial he was found guilty and on January 3, 1536, was sentenced to leave the state of Antwerp within three days, and perform a pilgrimage to, of all places in the world, Nicosia in Cyprus. Nothing further is known of him. But Adrian of Barrowe will ever be had in grateful remembrance as the printer of Arnold’s Chronicle, for in this he first published to the world the beautiful ballad of the “Nut-browne Maid.”
A description of Arnold’s Chronicle is a difficult matter to undertake. It was one of the books which served as weapons to the late Professor Chandler in his campaign against the subject catalogue of the Bodleian. It contains a list of the London sheriffs, and a guide to writing business letters, a list of the London churches, recipes for making ink, and a variety of other miscellaneous information. And in the middle, apropos of nothing, “The Nut-browne Maid.” Chronicle is a misleading title, for the work is really a commonplace book and a very interesting one. Fortunately this and the later edition printed about 1520 by Peter Treveris are fairly common books and available in a considerable number of libraries. There is a copy in the Parker collection in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, interesting to the typographer from an accidental cause. The printer when inking the forme accidentally pulled out a type which has fallen sideways upon the top of the rest and impressed on the page an exact full-length image of itself. From the few early examples of such faults as are known it has been possible to obtain a good deal of information as to the sizes and shapes of early types.
Adrian van Berghen printed also an English Almanack for 1529 and an edition of Holt’s Lac Puerorum. This latter is known only from fragments, and some of these have a curious connexion with Cambridge. Among a parcel of unidentified fragments in the Bodleian I came across some pieces of this book which had at one time formed the pad or boards of a binding. From the well indented marks on the paper it was easy to identify the panel which had been stamped upon the binding as the picture of St Nicholas raising the three children, with the name underneath, Nicolas Spiernick, used by Nicolas Speryng, the Cambridge stationer. But the interesting point about the fragments was that on one of them was written the name of N. Speyrinck, thus connecting the Spiernick of the binding with the name as used at Cambridge, Speryng. It is perhaps not strictly right to have included Adrian van Berghen, since he had not so far as we know any personal connexion with England; but the interest of one at least of the English books which he printed must serve as an excuse.
The next printer to be considered is Francis Birckman, the first of the numerous bookselling family of that name, and himself a very important stationer. He was a native of Cologne, who had his headquarters at Antwerp while he carried on business in several other towns, and a great part of his trade was with England. Panzer in his Annales Typographici does not mention him before the year 1513, but at an earlier date he was issuing books for the English market and had a shop in St Paul’s Churchyard. He is first mentioned in 1504, when in partnership with a certain Gerard Cluen of Amersfoordt in Utrecht he issued a Sarum Missal. Beyond the mention of his name in this one book we know nothing of Gerard Cluen, but I think we may take for granted that he was a relation of Birckman’s wife, Gertrude van Amersfoordt. Of the Missal but two copies are known, one in Trinity College, Dublin, and the other, recently acquired, in the British Museum. Between 1504 and 1510 Birckman’s name is not found, but after that date he issued books continuously until about 1528. The history of the Birckman family is very confused, but I cannot help thinking that there were two branches both using the same Christian names. It seems impossible otherwise to account for the large number of books printed in various places almost at the same time, unless they were merely commissioned and Birckman’s name put in the imprint. The Birckmans were certainly always travelling about; at a little later date I find one of them within three months at Antwerp, Cologne, London, Oxford, and Cambridge. It is interesting to notice that he had combined his business in Oxford with a visit to young Christopher Froschover, nephew of the printer of the first English Bible of 1535, who was then an undergraduate there.
All the authorities I have been able to consult are unanimous in disagreeing on the history of the family of Birckman, but fortunately at the moment we are only concerned with two, Francis the elder and younger. The elder, whose place of business was in St Paul’s Churchyard, must have been an important and rich man and seems to have spared no expense in ornamenting his books. As an example I may mention the great Sarum Antiphoner in two folio volumes, of which there is a copy in the Cambridge University Library. The fine title-pages were not the stock-in-trade of the printer Hopyl, but were specially engraved for Birckman, whose mark occurs in them. His Missals also were profusely illustrated, which was not the general rule with such service books.
Francis Birckman was dead before the year 1531, as we learn from the sentence delivered in a lawsuit on April 4, 1531, and registered in the sentence book of the Alderman’s Court at Antwerp. A certain John Silverlink had delivered to Birckman a large consignment, over 700 copies, of English New Testaments, for which he was to be paid £28. 17s. 3d. and had only received £3. 7s. 3d. The action was brought by the plaintiff against the guardians of Birckman’s children to recover the remainder, which was ordered to be paid minus a sum advanced by Francis Birckman to John van Remonde. His last book appears to have been dated 1529. In 1530 an edition of the Sarum Processional, printed at Paris by Prevost, was published in London with the following colophon, “Venundatur Londonii in edibus junioris Francisci Byrckman apud cimiterium divi Pauli.” This Francis was no doubt a son of the earlier Francis, for though his device is different his mark is the same. The device in the Processional is the Hen with her Chickens, no doubt referring to the sign of the Birckmans at Cologne and Antwerp of the Fat Hen. This is the only book which I can trace as having been sold in England by the younger Francis Birckman, who probably returned abroad. He does not appear to have printed much, for the business was mainly carried on by Arnold. At a little later date there were certainly two Arnold Birckmans flourishing, one who dealt principally in London, and who had a brother there also in business named John. The other Arnold whose headquarters were at Cologne was dead before 1541, in which year a work of Rupertus, De victoria verbi Dei was printed at Louvain for the widow of Arnold Birckman.
John and Arnold were certainly very important stationers in London. John Reynes was the only foreigner who surpassed them in wealth, and when his stock was valued at £100, each of theirs was valued at 100 marks, that is, £66. 13s. 4d. They appear to have acted as foreign agents for many of the London booksellers and to have travelled a great deal from place to place. They did not however always bear the best of characters, for Johann Ulmer writes to Bullinger, “The Byrckmans are careless and by no means to be depended upon, therefore beware”; and in another letter he complains, “The book has not yet reached me, the Byrckmans are not at all to be trusted.” Erasmus was even more abusive on the subject.
Jan van Doesborch, a printer of Antwerp who commenced business some time shortly before 1508, carried on the tradition of printing English books. Of some thirty-two books which he issued more than half are in English and many of them of a very curious nature. He appears to have inherited the business of Roland van den Dorp and his widow, and to have taken on their premises with the sign of the Iron Balance near the Cammerpoort. He is entered in the books of the St Lucas Gilde in 1508, the date of his first dated book, as an illuminator, and this taste is shown in the lavish, if careless, way in which he illustrated his books. Probably the first book he issued was the Fifteen Tokens, a little tract describing the signs coming before the Judgement and which he had himself translated from the Dutch. This was followed by three grammars, one of which, Holt’s Lac Puerorum, has but lately been discovered and is in a private collection. Then come an edition of Robin Hood, known from an imperfect copy in Edinburgh, and a fragment of Eurialus and Lucrece also at Edinburgh. To the year 1518 may be ascribed the Life of Virgilius and a dated book of that year, beginning “This mater treateth of a merchauntes wife that afterwarde went lyke a man and becam a great lorde and was called Frederyke of Jennen.” Then we have the History of Mary of Nemmegen, an edition of Tyl Howleglas, and the story of the Parson of Kalenborowe. A last book worthy of mention is one beginning “Of the newe landes and of ye people found by the messengers of the kynge of portyngale named Emanuel.” Though naturally a much spoken of book as being about the earliest of English books relating to America, really only one leaf of the book is devoted to that subject.
Who the translator of these various books may have been is uncertain. Two were definitely stated to have been done by Lawrence Andrewe, the London printer, and Douce without any apparent reason suggested that others might be the work of Richard Arnold. I think that perhaps several were translated by Andrewe. In some verses appended to his translation of the Book of Dystyllacyon he writes,
After sondry volumes that I dyd deuyse
As tryfels of myrthe, which were laudable
Now mynded agayn, my pene to exercyse
In other maters to the reder more profitable
And thus abydynge pacyently, for a time seasonable
My mynde longe vexing with ymaginacyons
That my work before shold apere more comendable
Now have I performed a boke of dystyllacyons.
The “sundry trifles of mirth” might well be such books as Frederick of Jennen, The Life of Virgilius, or The Parson of Kalenborowe. The only two books to which he put his name as translator, The wonderful shape and nature that our Saviour Christ Jesu hath created in beasts, serpents, fowles, etc., and the Valuation of gold and silver, hardly come under the head of “trifles of mirth.”
No doubt this large production of English books must have entailed frequent visits to England and a shop or agent there, but the only clue we have to John of Doesborch’s residence in this country is afforded by the entry in the lists made for the subsidy of 1523, “De Johanne van Dwysborow, extraneo, pro xls per annum ijs.,” and he is entered in the parish of St Martin in the Fields.
I now come to two printers of Antwerp, in many ways the most interesting of all, but of whom little is known and less has been written. These are Christopher and Hans van Ruremond or Rémonde, who were concerned very specially with the printing and dispersal of the first English New Testaments. Whether or not these two men were related is not very clear, but from the way they were connected in business it seems very probable. Christopher, the more important of the two, was known also as Christopher van Endhoven, which is the name used on his device and under which he is entered in 1524 in the registers of the St Lucas Gilde at Antwerp. Many have thought that Christopher van Ruremond and Christopher van Endhoven were two persons, but as all the books in the two names have the same type and woodcuts, and as in three cases at least we find the device of Christopher van Endhoven and the name of Christopher van Ruremond together, we may take them to be the same. Besides if they were different persons it would be a very marvellous coincidence that they should die on the same date, and their widows simultaneously begin to carry on their businesses.
Christopher began to print in 1523, issuing a Sarum Manual and Processional; this was followed by four more Sarum service books in 1524 and five in 1525. Until after February 6, 1525, all were printed for Peter Kaetz, the later ones for Francis Birckman. In 1526 he entered on a task which was destined to bring him into considerable trouble, the printing of the New Testament in English. In the beginning of the year he printed a Sarum Breviary, but for the next year we have nothing else from his press, for a reason to be noted shortly. In 1527 he printed three Missals, one of Sarum use, and in 1528 three Sarum service books and a New Testament in Dutch. For 1529 we have no books, and 1530 is represented by an English Almanack and two editions of the Sarum Horae.
In 1525 Christopher and Hans had printed a Bible in Dutch, Hans printing the greater part of the Old Testament and Christopher the remainder and the New Testament. On October 30, 1525, Hans was summoned before the town council of Antwerp for printing a book tainted with Lutheran heresies, was ordered to leave the town and district immediately, and go on pilgrimage to the Holy Blood at Wilsenaken in Prussia, and was further forbidden to return to the town or neighbourhood until he could produce a certificate that the pilgrimage had been carried out. This he apparently objected to do and crossed over to England.
Christopher, left in Antwerp, soon afterwards started on the very dangerous undertaking of printing English New Testaments, which were sent into England and sold there by Hans. In 1528 in the table of certain persons abjured within the diocese of London we find “John Raimund a Dutchman, for causing fifteen hundred of Tyndale’s New Testaments to be printed at Antwerp and for bringing five hundred into England.” John Raimund is clearly the English form of Jan Roemundt and is probably identical with the Dutchman who earlier in the year was in the Fleet for having sold to Robert Necton some 200 or 300 copies of the Testament. At the end of 1526 when these Antwerp printed Testaments had found their way into England, a strong effort was made by the English authorities to have them suppressed and the printer punished. On November 24 John Hackett wrote to Wolsey saying there were two printers in Antwerp who printed these books but that a proclamation would soon be issued against them. On the 12th January, 1527, Hackett again wrote that the Margrave had declared that according to the Emperor’s last mandment these English books must be condemned to be burnt, the printer Christopher Endhoven banished, and the third part of his goods confiscated. The prisoner’s counsel however protested against this judgement, saying that the Emperor’s subjects ought not to be judged by the laws of other countries, and his plea seems to have been successful, for Christopher does not appear to have been banished, and continued to print at Antwerp. About the end of 1530 he appears to have crossed over to England in connexion with the sale of English Testaments, and the last act of the drama is tersely stated by Foxe under the year 1531. An Antwerp bookseller named Christopher for selling certain New Testaments in English to John Row, bookbinder, was thrown into prison at Westminster and there died.
On the death of Christopher, Hans wished to return to Antwerp, but in order to do so a certificate of his pilgrimage had to be obtained. In the archives of the city there is an entry dated March 29, 1531, that letters of the pilgrimage having been presented he was free to reenter the city and district. He did not stay long abroad but returned to London, and as an assistant to his fellow-countryman John Nicholson, the printer of Southwark, has been the source of much puzzle to commentators on the English New Testament; for I believe him to be no other than John Hollybush, the so-called reviser of the edition of 1538. The name John Hollybush has generally been considered a pseudonym, and most modern authorities consider the person so designated to have been Miles Coverdale. But Hollybush was a real person, and in the troubled times of 1535, when inhabitants of the Low Countries dwelling in England were forced to become denizened, we find entered amongst others, “John Holibusche alias Holybusche of London, Stationer otherwise bookbinder, born in Ruremund, under the obedience of the Emperor.”
Now considering the prominent part that Hans van Ruremond, otherwise John Raimund, had taken in the production and dispersal of the New Testament, he is just the man to be identical with a stationer who revised for the press a new edition. The whole family was identified with the issue of English Testaments. Christopher printed them at Antwerp, and after he had died in England for selling them, his widow continued to print further editions. John had suffered penance for selling them and was now, in more peaceable times, helping to print them. Christopher’s son, also named John, became a printer in Antwerp and printed Dutch Bibles and Testaments. One of the very last Sarum service books printed, the Processional of 1558, again links Christopher van Endhoven and Christopher van Ruremond together. Upon the title-page is the device with mark and initials, C. E. of Christopher van Endhoven, while the colophon runs “Finit Processionale ad usum Sarum Antverpie impressum per Melchiorem Endovianum, typis Christophori Ruremunden. Anno m.c.lviii. mensis xxiii. Junii.”
Another stationer connected with Christopher and Hans van Ruremond was a young man named Peter Kaetz, who acted for a while as their agent in London and had a shop in St Paul’s Churchyard. The seven Sarum service books, two Manuals, two Processionals, a Horae, a Psalter, and a Hymni cum notis, which Christopher van Ruremond printed before February 6, 1525, were all to be sold in London by Kaetz; after this date his place was taken by Birckman. In the spring of 1525 Kaetz returned to Antwerp and carried on business at the sign of the House of Delft in the Cammerstraete, a house formerly occupied by Henri Eckert van Homberg. Here he issued an edition of the Bible in Dutch printed by Hans van Ruremond. After this date we hear no more of him. Perhaps like Hans van Ruremond he was involved in the religious troubles, and, banished from Antwerp, found refuge in England. He was in communication with Siberch, the first Cambridge printer, and amongst some fragments rescued from a binding of Siberch’s in Westminster Abbey library was a letter addressed to him by Peter Kaetz. In it Kaetz says he is waiting in London for his master, on whose arrival he intends to cross over. He also says, “I send you 25 prognostications and three New Testaments, small size. The prognostications cost one shilling sterling the 25, and the three New Testaments cost 2s. and 6d. sterling.” The puzzling part about the letter is the date to which it should be assigned. Many things point to its being before 1523 and yet the references to the New Testament are not easily explained. The price is that at which the English New Testament printed at Antwerp in 1526 by Christopher van Ruremond was sold, and Hans van Ruremond had come into England about this time to sell it. We know also that Christopher van Ruremond printed prognostications in English. I should have been inclined to put the letter down to some time in or after 1526, and to suppose that the master for whom Kaetz waited was Hans van Ruremond. A person named “Gibkerken” is mentioned in the letter, who may perhaps be a Dutch stationer, John Gybken, who was first an assistant to John Cockes and who afterwards rose to considerable eminence and was admitted as a member of the Stationers’ Company. His son was also admitted a member of the Company, although he was deaf and dumb.
The history of the printing and dispersal of the early editions of the English Testament and the various prohibited controversial books offers a very fascinating subject of study, and it is extraordinary, considering the amount that has been written on the question, how little is really known. I suppose the reason is that it has usually been taken up from the theological rather than the bibliographical side, and that writers on the subject though well versed in the history of the Reformation knew nothing of scientific bibliography.
It is obvious that where the printer by his work placed himself in very considerable danger, he would not be anxious to advertise himself and would therefore let his books go out without any imprint or with a fictitious one. Then comes in the study of type. It affords a far more conclusive argument than any theories drawn from where the author was living or where he would probably like to have his book printed. Then again there is the common danger of taking for an early or original edition what is merely a reprint with the original colophon unaltered. An important English library purchased not very long ago at a high price, a so-called first edition of Tindale’s Parable of the Wicked Mammon, printed at Marlborowe in the land of Hesse by Hans Luft, 1528. But in spite of its having this information emblazoned in gold upon its morocco cover, it is a reprint made about twenty years later by Berthelet, a fact that should have been patent to anyone at all conversant with English printing, seeing that the title-page is within one of Berthelet’s best-known border frames.
Then, again, many of the books with foreign imprints were certainly printed in this country. Upright Hoff of Leipsic and Ian Troost of Aurich are both names assumed by John Oswen, the printer of Ipswich.
Cambridge has made an important start towards a real bibliography of this subject by the publication of the third volume of Mr Sayle’s most admirable Catalogue of the Early English Books in the University Library. Only those who have worked on the subject can understand how much patience, how much untiring labour, and how many often disappointing searches must have been expended on every small fact chronicled in the volume.
To return to these Early English Testaments printed in Antwerp. It is quite clear that as soon as the edition printed by Schoeffer in 1525 had been issued and found a ready sale, the Antwerp printers set to work to print rival editions. Fortunately we have a very clear and contemporary account which there seems no reason for doubting. It occurs in Joye’s Apology, written about 1534, and I will abbreviate it as far as possible. “Thou shalt know that Tyndale translated and printed the New Testament in a mean great volume but yet without Kalendar, Concordances in the margin, and Table in the end. And anon, after, the Dutchmen got a copy and printed it again in a small volume adding the Kalendar in the beginning, Concordances in the margin, and the Table in the end.” After speaking of the many faults in it he continues: “After this they printed it again also without a corrector in a greater letter and volume with the figures in the Apocalypse which was therefore much falser than their first. When these two prints (there were of them both about five thousand printed) were all sold more than a twelvemonth ago [that is about the middle of 1533] Tyndale was pricked forth to take the Testament in hand. But Tyndale prolonged and deferred in so much that in the mean season the Dutchmen printed it again the third time in a small volume like their first print, but much more false than ever it was before.” Before this edition was put in hand Joye had been asked to correct it, but refused, saying that Tindale was about to bring out a revised edition: however two thousand copies were printed and sold almost at once. A fourth edition was then put in hand and Joye was again asked to correct it. He continues: “I answered as before that if Tyndale amend it, with so great diligence as he promiseth yours will be never sold. Yes, quod they, for if he print two thousand and we as many, what is so little a number for all England? and we will sell ours better cheap and therefore we doubt not of the sale.” Joye seeing clearly that they were determined to print whether he corrected or not, and seeing he was more qualified than a native, undertook the task, and for the modest remuneration of fourpence halfpenny for every sheet of sixteen leaves corrected the edition published by the widow of Christopher van Endhoven in August, 1534. According to this statement, which is a very lucid one, between the issue of Tindale’s octavo version in 1525 and Joye’s revision in 1534, three other Antwerp editions had been issued. The first in a very small volume with a Kalendar, marginal notes, and a table. This must be the edition printed by Christopher van Endhoven in 1526 for which he was prosecuted. The second was of a larger size and had woodcuts to the Apocalypse. The third was similar to the first, but much more incorrectly printed. Here then are three editions as yet entirely unidentified, and there are most probably more. The late Dr Angus possessed the title-page of an edition of 1532 which from the tracing reproduced in Demaus’ book on Tindale must have been a quarto.
Antwerp continued to print Testaments in increasing numbers. In 1534 and 1535 four editions were issued, and in 1536 when they were more freely circulated, no less than seven. These are beyond our period, but I cannot resist chronicling a fact lately come to light, which gives the solution of a long-standing puzzle. In all the three quarto editions of 1536, none of which has a printer’s name, is a woodcut of St Paul with his foot resting on a stone. These cuts though almost exactly similar are not identical. In one cut nothing is engraved on the stone, and the edition containing it is known as the “blank stone” edition. In another cut a mole is engraved on the stone, and the edition is known as the “mole” edition. In the third there is what is called an engraver’s mark, with the initials A. K. B., and that issue is called the “engraver’s mark” edition. Now about this engraver’s mark nothing was known. Not long ago, however, in turning over a large volume of miscellaneous woodcuts in the Bodleian I came across an example of this cut on what was manifestly the last leaf of a book. Below the cut was this colophon, “Antwerp. Mattheus Cromme voor Adriaen Kempe van Bouckhout, 1537.” Between 1537 and 1539 Crom printed for Kempe several editions of Branteghem’s Vita Jesu Christi. In 1536 the cut occurs in the Storys and prophesis out of the holy scriptur printed by Simon Cock. It would thus seem that Kempe first employed Cock as his printer, but left him for Crom when the latter began printing about 1537.
The specimens of bookbinding of this period, the best so far as stamped bindings are concerned, offer a very difficult problem to the student. What are English bindings and what are not, and how are they to be distinguished? The more the subject is studied, the more difficult these questions appear. There are bindings which are obviously English just as there are others obviously foreign, but the great majority are doubtful. It must be remembered that a very large number of binders in England were foreigners, who would very likely bring their dies and stamps with them from abroad, and finish their work in a foreign manner. As their bindings were produced in England, they must be called English bindings though in a foreign style, for we would not call the Berthelet bindings, produced for Henry VIII in London by foreign workmen with foreign dies, anything but English.
As an example of this confusion I would mention the binding on a copy of the Horae ad usum Sarum of 1506, printed for Pelgrim and Jacobi, and now in the Bodleian. In the centre of the cover are two purely Netherlandish panels, while round these runs a frame composed of two dies which had belonged to Caxton. We know that the partners owned several of Caxton’s dies, because they are found in conjunction with Jacobi’s signed panels. As the Horae was printed for them and has their dies on the binding, it is clear they are the binders, but had the Caxton dies been absent, no one could have put down the binding as anything but Netherlandish.
The favourite English binding of this time consisted of two panel stamps, one having the Royal Arms, the other the Tudor Rose with mottoes, which I described before. In the base of these panels the binder’s initials and mark generally occur. In some cases these initials can with certainty be ascribed, because they occur with the mark and full name in some printed book. Thus there is no mistake about the bindings of Pynson, Notary, Jacobi, or Reynes. But in a large number of cases there are merely initials, or initials with a mark which has not been identified. Here the imagination steps in with usually fatal results.
One set of these panels is signed R. O., and as O is an uncommon initial for a surname the natural inclination is to attribute the binding to Reginald Oliver. Another set has the initials R. L.: who more likely than Richard Lant? All such suggestions are worthless without proof, and until proved are not worth setting down. Other binders using these panels were H. N. and G. G.
A binder whose initials were G. R. had two very handsome pairs of panels. One panel contains the Royal Arms surrounded by the verse beginning, “Confitemini dominum quoniam bonus,” while the corresponding panel contains figures of four saints. The first of the second pair is also the Royal Arms with the verse beginning “Laudate Dominum de terra,” and the other has the figures of the four saints, George, Barbara, Michael, and Katherine.
The Annunciation was a very favourite subject with bookbinders. One of the handsomest panels of this kind was used by a binder, A. H., who used also a panel with the Tudor Rose. Though this shows that the bindings were produced for the English market, the leather employed, apparently sheepskin, suggests that they were executed abroad, perhaps at Rouen.
Two other panels were in common use containing figures of St Sebastian and St Roche. These were extremely popular, for at that time the country was periodically visited with outbreaks of the plague, against which these two saints were considered the guardians. Very often the saint chosen for the binder’s panel had reference to his own Christian name. John Reynes has a panel with St John Baptist. St George as the patron saint of England was naturally popular. One beautiful binding has on one side St George and the Dragon, and on the other St Michael with the binder’s devices, a maiden’s head on a shield. This might be the work of Richard Faques, who lived at the sign of the Maiden’s Head.
The roll binding, as apart from the panel binding, was ornamented by means of a rolling tool, and at first these were large and ornamental, but they gradually narrowed, and so became meagre or weak in detail.
Those in use at Cambridge are perhaps the finest of all, but this is not the time to speak of them. Among London binders John Reynes produced the best known roll, containing figures of a hound, a falcon, and a bee with flowers and foliage. Another with an unknown binder’s mark, contains a hound, a falcon, and a double-headed eagle on a shield. The roll of another unknown binder bears a Tudor Rose, a pomegranate, a shield with the arms of France and England, a turreted gateway, a portcullis, a fleur-de-lys, and the binder’s mark.
Another handsome roll has the initials of I. G. and W. G. with figures of a dragon, a gryphon, and foliage, and is not at all uncommon. In Archbishop Marsh’s library at Dublin there is an example of such a binding, tooled entirely in gold, the only example I have ever seen of such work.
In the main design of all these English rolls there is very little variation, the various royal emblems amidst foliage and flowers.
It is unfortunate that while we have so many initialled bindings which cannot be definitely ascribed to particular binders, so also we have the names of plenty of binders to whom we cannot allot bindings; Alard and Noel Havy, De Worde’s binders, Giles Lauret, who lived close to Havy in Shoe Lane, and John Rouse, who lived next door. John Richardson, and John Row who was punished for buying Testaments. John Pollard and Thomas Stoke who received pardon for some unknown offence in 1533. Martin Dotier, the third offender, we do find afterwards, for he commissioned one edition of a Sarum Manual in 1543, and ended his days as a brother of the Stationers’ Company.
Few binders or stationers of the time have left any definite record. I have notes of at least four hundred persons connected with the English book-trade between the years 1500 and 1535, but of very few is anything known beyond the name. A mention in a will, an entry in a record or tax-roll, or a mention in church or municipal accounts, is all that remains to tell us of their existence.
I have referred before to the various difficulties with which the foreign stationer had to contend, and year by year these difficulties grew worse. The educated man was still entirely dependent on the Continent for such books as he required, for before 1535 the literature of the Renaissance was untouched by the native printers. Wynkyn de Worde from start to finish, roughly speaking, never printed a classic, but was content to turn out rhymes and romances to catch the popular taste. Pynson, the more scholarly worker, was engaged on official or semi-official publications. There was no press that could print in any but ordinary type; even the most learned printer had not sufficient Greek letters to print quotations; and this when foreigners came to England to learn Greek.
No doubt the large importation of books was galling to the native printers, but they do not seem to have lacked work, or if they did it was only through their own want of energy. The bookbinders were in a much worse case, because so many binders in this country were foreigners, and no doubt large consignments of books came over ready bound. The probability is that the foreigners had been better trained, and could turn out cheaper and better work, and though that might appeal to the purchaser, it would certainly injure their native rivals. While for forty years the Italians had been issuing beautiful little volumes in gilt bindings, the use of gilding on bindings was almost unknown in England. It was not as though English printing was improving as time went on. Indeed it became more and more careless and slovenly. A printer here and there who had a subsidy and was sure of work, such as Pynson and Berthelet, cast fine type and produced handsome books. But the majority lagged far behind, and worn-out type and broken cuts were the stock-in-trade of the ordinary printer. Then was passed the Act of 1534, which declared the English printers to be at least the equals of any foreign competitors, and restricted the importation of foreign books. With the removal of the foreign competition native work sank to its lowest level, and it was only when the religious persecutions abroad drove numbers of refugee foreign printers to England that English printing began to revive—for the time.
On Christmas Day, 1534, probably but a few days before the death of Wynkyn de Worde, the famous Act of 25 Henry VIII concerning printers and binders of books came into operation. The preamble is extremely clear and interesting: “Whereas by the provision of a statute made in the first year of the reign of king Richard III [1484] it was provided in the same Act, that all strangers repairing into this realm, might lawfully bring into the said realm printed and written books to sell at their liberty and pleasure. By force of which provision there hath come into this realm sithen the making of the same a marvellous number of printed books, and daily doth; and the cause of making of the same provision seemeth to be, for that there were but few books, and few printers, within this realm at that time, which could well exercise and occupy the said science and craft of printing; nevertheless, sithen the making of the said provision, many of this realm, being the king’s natural subjects, have given themselves so diligently to learn and exercise the said craft of printing, that at this day there be within this realm a great number of cunning and expert in the said science or craft of printing, as able to exercise the said craft in all points, as any stranger in any other realm or country. And furthermore, where there be a great number of the king’s subjects within this realm, which live by the craft and mystery of binding of books, and that there be a great multitude well expert in the same, yet all this notwithstanding there are divers persons, that bring from beyond the sea great plenty of printed books, not only in the Latin tongue, but also in our maternal English tongue, some bound in boards, some in leather, and some in parchment, and them sell by retail, whereby many of the king’s subjects, being binders of books, and having no other faculty, wherewith to get their living, be destitute of work, and like to be undone, except some reformation be herein had. Be it therefore enacted by the king our sovereign lord, the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons in this present parliament assembled, and by authority of the same, that the said proviso, made the first year of the said king Richard III, from the feast of the nativity of our Lord God next coming, shall be void and of none effect.”
This part of the Act, which seems to me essentially fair, simply removed special privileges and put the foreign printers and stationers on an equal footing with all other aliens. Then come two special new enactments.
“And further, be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that no persons resiant or inhabitant within this realm, after the said feast of Christmas next coming, shall buy to sell again, any printed books, brought from any parts out of the king’s obeysance, ready bound in boards, leather or parchment, upon pain to lose and forfeit for every book bound out of the said king’s obeysance, and brought into this realm and bought by any person or persons within the same to sell again contrary to this Act, 6s. 8d.”
This enactment was a great protection to native binders as prohibiting all dealing in foreign bound books. The next paragraph was for the benefit of the printers. “And be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, that no person or persons inhabitant or resiant within this realm after the said feast of Christmas shall buy within this realm of any stranger born out of the king’s obedience, other than of denizens, any manner of printed books brought from any the parts beyond the sea, except only by engross and not by retail upon pain of forfeiture of 6s. 8d. for every book so bought by retail contrary to the form and effect of this estature.”
The remainder of the Act treats only of penalties and restrictions as to the price of books and bindings.
The clause about printing amounts to this, that no person not a native or denizen could retail foreign printed books, and it seems pretty clear that it was not so much intended for the advantage of printers, as for giving fuller power to suppress the importation and surreptitious sale of controversial books.
The alien printer, stationer, or binder, when denizened, was in this position. He paid double subsidies and taxes, he could have none but English-born apprentices and only two foreign workmen. He was under the rule of the Warden of the Craft. He could not deal in foreign bound books, nor buy books from foreigners except by engross. The alien not denizened had the further restrictions that unless he had been a householder before February 1528, he could not keep any house or shop in which to exercise any handicraft, nor could he sell any foreign printed books by retail.
Weighed down by these various disabilities the small foreign stationers rapidly disappeared. A certain number who had lived here for some time took out letters of denization and stayed on, but it was only to struggle on.
If you wish to have a practical idea of what foreign work meant to England, just glance at the list of Contents in Mr Sayle’s admirable Catalogue of the Early English books in the University Library. Taking all the persons given in the list, from the earliest printing to 1510 connected with English books, we have the astonishing result of three Englishmen, Caxton, a printer, Hunte, the Oxford stationer, and W. Bretton, merely a patron of printing. The foreigners on the other hand number forty-two. After 1510 the relative numbers rapidly alter, and by 1535 the great majority were English. The hatred of the natives, and the various Acts levelled against him, compelled the foreign workman to disappear, and I am afraid that with his disappearance the necessary competition which produced good printing disappeared also.
The fifty years of freedom from 1484 to 1534 not only brought us the finest specimens of printing we possess, but compelled the native workman, in self-protection, to learn, and when competition was done away with his ambition rapidly died also. Once our English printing was protected, it sank to a level of badness which has lasted, with the exception of a few brilliant experiments, almost down to our own day.