5. THE STATE CONTROL OF ENGLISH LETTER-FOUNDING

[203] The reader is referred to the concise summary given under the title “Parliamentary Papers,” in Bigmore and Wyman’s Bibliography of Printing, also to the Abridgments of Specifications relating to Printing, 1617 to 1857, published by the Commissioners of Patents in 1859, and for more minute particulars to Mr. Arber’s Transcript of the Registers of the Stationers’ Company, and the Calendars of Domestic State Papers.

[204] Notwithstanding this flattering announcement, we find that five years later Grafton and Whitchurch, who held the King’s Bible patent, received the royal permission to print the revised edition of Matthews’s Bible in Paris, “because at that time there were in France better printers and paper than could be had here in England.” The project, as history records, was cut short by the Inquisition; but the presses, types, and workmen were with great difficulty brought over from Paris to London, where the Bible was finished in 1539.

[205] A brotherhood of Stationers, consisting of “writers of text letter,” “lymners of bokes,” and subsequently admitting printers to its fellowship, had existed since 1403. The term Stationer, at the time of the incorporation, included booksellers, printers, bookbinders, publishers, type-founders, makers of writing-tables, and other trades, amongst which were “joiners and chandlers.”

[206] Arber’s Transcripts, ii, 753–69.

[207] This unruly printer troubled the Company’s peace for eleven years, and demonstrated, by his persistent defiance of their authority, the insufficiency of their powers to execute the control they nominally possessed. John Wolfe, the City printer, distinguished himself in a similar way.

[208] Arber’s Transcripts, ii, 22.

[209] A commission appointed to inquire into the disputes at that time agitating the Company, gave as one of its chief reasons why the monopolies should be sustained, that if anyone were to print any book he chose, this inconvenience would follow, viz., “want of provisions of good letters,” in other words, the quality both of type and printing would degenerate.

[210] Arber’s Transcripts, i, 114, 144.

[211] A return of presses and printers made in the same year to the Master and Wardens of the Company after the publication of the decree, shows that this provision had reduced the number to twenty-five printers, with fifty-three presses. A list of these is given in Mr. C. R. Rivington’s Records of the Company of Stationers (London, 1883, 8vo), p. 28.

[212] The provisions of this decree were commended in The London Printer his Lamentation, published in 1660, and reprinted in the third volume of the Harleian Miscellany. The writer contrasts it favourably with subsequent decrees.

[213] Arber’s Transcripts, ii, 816.

[214] A licensed stationer might, with the leave of the Company, employ an unlicensed stationer to reprint a work of his own, on payment of a fine. (Ibid., ii, 19.)

[215] In France, as early as 1539, typefounding had been legally recognised as a distinct trade. The edict of 1539 contains the following clause, applying the provisions and penalties of the decree to typefounders: “Et pour ce que le métier des fondeurs de lettres est connexe à l’art de l’imprimeur, et que les fondeurs ne se disent imprimeurs, ne les imprimeurs ne se disent fondeurs, lesdicts articles et ordonnances auront lieu . . . aux compagnons et apprentifs fondeurs, ainsi qu’en compagnons et apprentifs imprimeurs, lesquels oultre les choses dessus dictes seront tenus d’achever la fonte des lettres par eux commencée et les rendre bonnes et valables.” The whole decree is in curious contrast with the Acts regulating English printing and founding. The French “compagnons” are forbidden to band together for military, festive, or religious purposes, to carry arms, to beat and neglect their apprentices, to leave any work incomplete, to use any printer’s marks but their own; and so great is the fatherly solicitude of the Crown for the honour of the press, that printers are made amenable to law for typographical errors in their books. (Lacroix, Histoire de l’Imprimerie. Paris, 8vo, pp. 124–8.)

[216] In 1635 the journeymen printers presented a petition to the Stationers’ Company respecting certain abuses which they desired to have reformed. The report of the referees appointed to inquire into the matter, with their recommendations, is still preserved. Amongst other things is a provision against standing formes; also that no books printed in Nonpareil should exceed 5,000 copies, in Brevier 3,000 (except the privileged books); and further, that compositors should keep their cases clean, and dispose of “all wooden letters, and two-line letters, and keep their letter whole while work is doing, and after bind it up in good order.” The Company approved of the report, and ordered it to be entered on the books. (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1635. London, 8vo, 1865, p. 484.)

[217] A Decree of Starre-Chamber, concerning Printing. Made the eleventh day of July last past, 1637. London, 1637, 4to. The “London Printer,” previously quoted, writing in 1660, styles this decree “the best and most exquisite form and constitution for the good government and regulation of the press that ever was pronounced, or can reasonably be contrived to keep it in due order and regular exercise.” It was the lapse of its authority in 1640 which led to the abuses over which he lamented.

[218] This famous speech has been reprinted by Mr. Arber among his English Reprints, together with a verbatim copy of the decrees which evoked it. London, 1868, 12mo.

[219] That is, the Master and Wardens are obliged to find employment for all honest journeymen out of work, the master-printers and founders being bound to give work to anyone thus brought to them. Masters requiring additional hands can compel the services of any journeyman out of work, who can only refuse the summons at his peril.

[220] In a rare tract entitled An Exact Narrative of the Tryal and Condemnation of John Twyn, for Printing and Dispersing of a Treasonable Book, etc. (London, 1664, 4to), several curious particulars are given as to the operation and enforcement of this Act as regards printers. But although a bookseller and bookbinder were arraigned at the same time, no reference was made to the founder of the types, who was apparently not held responsible for a share in the offence. In the evidence given by L’Estrange, however, as to Dover, one of the prisoners, we have a curious glimpse of the technical duties devolving on the Surveyor of the Imprimery and Printing Presses under this Act. He states, “I was at his (Dover’s) house to compare a Flower which I found in the Panther (a dangerous Pamphlet), that flower, that is, the very same border, I found in his house, the same mixture of Letter, great and small in the same Case; and I took a Copy off the Press.” The sentence passed upon the unfortunate John Twyn gives a vivid idea of the amenities of a printer at that period: “That you be led back to the place from whence you came, and from thence to be drawn upon an Hurdle to the place of Execution, and there you shall be hanged by the Neck, and being alive shall be cut down, and your privy Members shall be cut off, your Entrails shall be taken out of your body, and you living, the same to be burnt before your eyes: your head to be cut off, your body to be divided into four quarters, and your head and quarters to be disposed of at the pleasure of the King’s Majesty. And the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”

[221] Printers were ordered to enter into a bond of £300 to the Crown not to misconduct themselves, but no bond appears to have been exacted by this Act from letter-founders.

[222] The Act of 1662 was a probationary Act for two years. In 1664 it was continued till the end of the next session, and again until the end of the session following; and in 1666 again until the end of the first session of the next Parliament. In 1685 it was revived for seven years, at the end of which, in 1692, it was continued for one year more, after which it dropped. According to this account, it must have been dormant at any rate between 1679 and 1685.

[223] In 1724, according to the list presented by Samuel Negus to Lord Townsend, the number of printers in London had increased to seventy-five, and in the provinces to twenty-eight. There were also at that time eighteen newspapers.

[224] A Proposal for Restraining the great Licentiousness of the Press throughout Great Britain, etc. No date.

[225] An Act for the more effectual Suppression of Societies established for Seditious and Treasonable Purposes; and for better preventing Treasonable and Seditious Practices. [12 July, 1799.]

[226] “VI. FORM of Notice to the Clerk of the Peace that any person carries on the Business of a Letter Founder, or Maker or Seller of Types for Printing, or of Printing Presses.—To the Clerk of the Peace for (as the case may be) or his Deputy.—I, A. B., of ———— do hereby declare, That I intend to carry on the Business of a Letter Founder, or Maker or Seller of Types for Printing, or of Printing Presses (as the case may be), at ———— and I hereby require this Notice to be entered in pursuance of an Act passed in the 39th Year of the Reign of His Majesty, King George the Third.”

[227] “VII. FORM of Certificate that the above Notice has been given.—I, G. H., Clerk (or Deputy Clerk) of the Peace for ———— do hereby certify that A. B. of ———— hath delivered to me a Notice in Writing, appearing to be signed by him, and attested by E. F. as a Witness to his signing the same, that he intends to carry on the Business of a Letter Founder, or Maker or Seller of Types for Printing or of Printing Presses, at ———— and which Notice he has required to be entered in pursuance of an Act of the 39th Year of His Majesty, King George the Third.”

[228] The clauses relating to printers and typefounders were repealed by the 32 and 33 Vict., cap. 24: An Act to Repeal certain enactments relating to Newspapers, Pamphlets, and other Publications, and to Printers, Type-founders, and Reading Rooms. [12 July, 1869.]

[229]

(McCreery, The Press, p. 25.)