Another result of the new movement was the banishment of woodcuts from the title-page. Those to Pynson's books have already been noticed, but lesser printers like Scot, Godfrey, Rastell, and Treveris also made use of borders of classical design, and gave up the use of woodcuts. It is extremely curious to notice what excellent effects on a title-page the printers at this time produced from the poorest materials. They seem to have understood much better than those of a later date how to use different sized type with effect, and to make the whole page pleasing, without attracting too much attention to one particular part.
Before leaving this early period it will be as well to return a little, and briefly notice some of
the more marked illustrated books produced by printers other than Pynson and De Worde. The two printers of the name of Faques, Guillam and Richard, produced a few most interesting books, and the device of the last named, founded on that of the Paris printer, Thielman Kerver, is a fine piece of engraving. The name was originally cut
upon the block as Faques, and was so used in his two first books; but in order to make the name appear more English in form, the 'ques' was cut out and 'kes' inserted in type. The last dated book which he printed, the Mirrour of Our Lady of 1530, contains several fine illustrations; that on the reverse of the title-page depicting a woman of some religious order writing a book, has at the bottom the letters E. G. joined by a knot, which may be the initials of the engraver.
The Cambridge press of 1521-1522, from the scholastic nature of its books, required no illustrations, but it used for the title-page of the Galen a woodcut border, rather in the manner of Holbein, but evidently of native production. In 1536 this border reappears in a Dutch Prognostication printed at Antwerp. The Oxford press of the early sixteenth century borrowed some of its cuts from De Worde, but a few, such as the ambitious frontispiece and the four diagrams in the Compotus of 1519, were original.
John Rastell in his Pastyme of People used a number of full-page illustrations of the kings of England, coarse in design and execution, and very remarkable in appearance. Peter Treveris issued a number of books with illustrations, some of which are well worthy of notice. The Grete Herbal, first published in 1516, contained a large number of cuts. Jerome of Bruynswyke's Worke of Surgeri has some curious plates of surgical operations, and
though the subjects are rather repulsive, they are excellent specimens of the wood-cutting of the period. Treveris' best known book is the Policronicon of 1527, printed for John Reynes, whose mark in red generally occurs on the title-page. This title-page is a fine piece of work, and has been facsimiled by Dibdin in his Typographical Antiquities. Some of the cuts and ornaments used by Treveris passed after his death into the hands of the Edinburgh printer, Thomas Davidson.
Lawrence Andrewe of Calais, who printed shortly before 1530, also issued some curious illustrated books. Before coming to England he had translated the extraordinary book, The wonderful shape and nature of man, beasts, serpentes, &c., printed by John of Doesborch, whom we have spoken of above. On his own account he issued the Boke of distyllacyon of waters by Jerome of Brunswick, illustrated with pictures of apparatus, and The Mirror of the World. This is founded on Caxton's edition, but is much more fully illustrated, the cuts to the Natural History portion being particularly curious. It is worth noticing that Andrewe, like some other printers at this time, introduced his device into many of the initial letters and borders which were cut for him, so that they can be readily identified when they occur, after his death, in books by other printers.
After the death of Wynkyn de Worde in 1535,