London City

by Walter Besant

THE STATIONERS COMPANY

The Company was incorporated in 1557, but it is believed that a brotherhood or society existed upwards of a century and a half previously, called the Brotherhood or Society of Text-writers.

There was a Gild of Stationers as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century. It appears to have been a branch of the Scriveners, and to have left them to carry on the preparation of legal documents while they themselves took over the production of books. The charter of the Company shows that it was regarded as a company of printers, and that Queen Mary intended it to be especially a guard against the issue of heretical doctrines.

Drawn by Thos. H Shepherd.
STATIONERS’ HALL IN 1830

The original charter was destroyed in the Fire of London, but the Company have a copy of it; also of the charter granted by William and Mary, confirming the privileges granted by the charter of 1556.

The Company has continued ever since its incorporation, and still is, a trade guild consisting exclusively of members of the trade of a stationer, printer, publisher, or bookmaker, and their children, and descendants born free. The greater number of printers’ apprentices in the City of London are bound at Stationers’ Hall, and the Company’s pensioners, and the recipients of the charities under their control, are principally journeymen printers, compositors, and pressmen.

The Company was originally established for the purpose of fostering and encouraging the trade of a printer, publisher, and stationer, and from the time of its original foundation to this date a limited number of liverymen of the Company have carried on at Stationers’ Hall the trade of a publisher for their own benefit, and a division of profits has been annually made amongst the partners. Other portion of the profits has been distributed annually amongst poor freemen of the Company, applied towards the necessary expenses of the Company, and invested in the purchase of the hall and premises adjoining. The capital for this trade was originally subscribed by the members of the Company in certain proportions or shares, and these shares have been regularly transmitted from time to time since 1605, as in the case of shares of trade companies.

The copyright registry was first established by the Company at the commencement of the sixteenth century or even earlier. It would appear from the ancient records that a register of copies had existed previous to the incorporation. In 1565 rules were made by the Company regulating the transmission of copies upon the decease of the owner, and requiring them to be entered in the books of the Company. In 1584 the Privy Council (through the Lord Mayor) ordered that all copies should be entered in the Company’s register, and copyrights were from time to time transferred by entries in these registers. Between 1580 and 1615, there are letters from the Lords of the Council and the Lord Mayor calling attention to the publication of certain books of a traitorous or mischievous tendency. There is no mention of any power or authority belonging to the Stationers Company for the suppression of these books. On one occasion the Wardens of that Company are ordered to produce the printer of a certain pamphlet with the person who was circulating it. Various orders were from time to time issued by the Lords of the Privy Council and High Commissioners, regulating printing. In 1660 a committee of the House of Commons was appointed to prepare a Bill regulating printing, and in 1662 the Bill was passed, and was known as the Licensing Act. It required all printed works to be registered at Stationers’ Hall. This Act expired in 1681, and in 1710 the first copyright Act was passed, which has been superseded by the Act of 1842. The Act of 1710 required copies to be entered at Stationers’ Hall before publication, and the Act of 1842 makes entry at Stationers’ Hall a condition precedent to the title to sue for protection against infringements. As a printer, not as a novelist, Samuel Richardson was a member.

The most ancient hall stood in Milk Street, Cheapside, but in 1553 the Company moved to St. Peter’s College, near the Deanery of St. Paul’s, and in 1611 they purchased Abergavenny House in Stationers’ Court. This was burnt in the Great Fire. The present building was erected in 1670, and in 1805 the exterior was cased in Portland stone, according to a design by the Company’s architect, Robert Mylne, F.R.S.

The present livery is 284; the Corporate Income is but small, and the Trust Income £1200.

The Company formerly published almanacks, primers, “A.B.C.’s,” psalters, and school books, in which they maintained a valuable monopoly until the middle of the eighteenth century, when it was declared illegal.

The Company established a school at Bolt Court, Fleet Street, in 1861; this is now at Ridge Road, Hornsey. The school has accommodation for more than three hundred boys.

This corner of London to the south of Ludgate Hill was covered with narrow lanes and courts into which light was admitted by the construction of Queen Victoria Street. It is the site of the Blackfriars’ Precinct. This house was in the hands of the Dominicans. See Mediæval London, vol. ii. p. 354.

Church Entry marks the site of

St. Anne, Blackfriars, standing adjacent to the walls of Blackfriars’ Monastery; it was consecrated in 1597 by Edmund Stanhope, Doctor of Laws, by virtue of a commission from the Bishop of London. It was enlarged on the south side in 1613, which was consecrated by the Bishop of London in 1617. The church was burnt down in the Great Fire and not rebuilt, but the parish was annexed to St. Andrew by the Wardrobe. The earliest date of an incumbent is 1597.

The patronage was in the hands of the Crown and parishioners alternately, since the Great Fire when it was burnt down, and the parish was annexed to St. Andrew by the Wardrobe; before this the parishioners presented.

Isaac Oliver, miniature painter, was buried here.

STATIONERS’ HALL (INTERIOR)

The charities and reliefs recorded in this parish were few. John Bobhurst was a donor of £2 per annum, also Edward Corbet and Mrs. Miller. The greatest benefactor was Peter Jorge, who founded a free school, appointing Sion College trustees.

Forty boys and thirty girls were to be taught reading and writing, and some useful work besides. All were to be given clothing once a year and two to be put out as apprentices. The school was endowed with £150 a year, and salaries for teachers. As there were many tailors among the foundation, the children of such were to have preference of admission (Stow and Strype).

St. Anne’s had some notable vicars, among them William Gouge (or Goughe), D.D., forty-six years minister of the parish. In November 1633 “Mr. William Goughe, Doctor of Divinity, prayed to be admitted freeman of the Society of Apothecaries, and was so.”

On the west is an open space fairly wide, with asphalt centre and scrubby bushes round. This is jealously guarded by iron rails and wall from all intruders. It was sacred ground, the churchyard, though there are no monuments or stones left to bear testimony. Close beside the churchyard in a carpenter’s shop are certain old arches belonging to the Dominicans’ Buildings.

Westward there is a small court, called Fleur-de-Lys, on the west side of St. Anne’s churchyard, which escaped the Fire, though here the Fire had raged most hotly. A little consideration will show the reason. An open space called Church Entry lay between the backs of the Fleur-de-Lys Houses and St. Anne’s Church and churchyard. Now the church stood high, and during the continuance of the Fire the wind blew steadily from the east. The view of the City after the Fire shows that the walls of the churches and of many houses were still standing. Therefore, even though the roof was burned, the flames blew over this court, while, when the roof had fallen, the walls of the church sheltered the little court on the other side. I dare say that, had we a more exact account of the Fire, it would be found that many houses or courts escaped in the same way.

“Eminent inhabitants—(of Blackfriars), Isaac Oliver, the miniature-painter. He died here in 1617, and was buried in St. Anne’s, Blackfriars. Lady Ayres, wishing to have a copy of Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s picture to wear in her bosom, went ‘to Mr. Isaac the painter in Blackfriars, and desired him to draw it in little after his manner.’—Cornelius Jansen, the painter (d. 1665). He lived in the Blackfriars for several years, and had much business, but left it a little before Van Dyck’s arrival. Sir Anthony Van Dyck, from his settlement in England in 1632, to his death in 1641. The rent of his house, ‘at a moderate value,’ was estimated, in 1638, at £20, and the tithe paid £1 : 6 : 8. His daughter Justina was born here December 1, 1641, and baptised in St. Anne’s, Blackfriars, December 9, 1641, the day of her father’s death. Ben Jonson, who dates his dedication of Volpone or The Fox ‘from my house in the Blackfriars, this 11th day of February, 1607.’ Here he has laid the scene of The Alchemist. The Earl and Countess of Somerset were living in the Blackfriars when Overbury was murdered. The precinct no longer exists, but is now a part of the ward of Farringdon Within. I have not been able to trace any attempt to assert its privileges later than 1735, when in the July of that year the Court of Common Council brought an action against Daniel Watson, for opening a shop and vending shoes in the Blackfriars without being free of the City. The court of King’s Bench gave it in favour of the City. The sheriffs could arrest here many years before” (Cunningham).

Note that the Earl of Northumberland had a town house in 1612 in the unfashionable precinct of Blackfriars.

FLEUR-DE-LYS COURT

Within the precinct were—and are—several places of interest. The Blackfriars Theatre was built in 1576. It was rebuilt or extensively repaired in 1596 when Shakespeare and Richard Burbage were sharers. In 1633 it was let by Cuthbert and William Burbage for a rent of £50. The building was pulled down in 1655 and tenements put up in its place. Playhouse Yard preserves the memory of the theatre.

Standing at the western end of Queen Victoria Street and taking a general view we see St. Paul’s Station of the L.B. and S.C. Railway. Water Lane runs by the railway. Here is the Apothecaries’ Hall.