Fine Books

by Alfred W. Pollard

Two printers began to issue books in 1523. Robert Bankes, who turned out a few popular books in his first six years, was then silent for a time, and reappears in the religious controversies of 1539-42, and Robert Redman, who seems to have followed in Pynson’s footsteps both in S. Clement’s Without Temple Bar and at the sign of the George. In his office of Royal Printer Pynson was succeeded by Thomas Berthelet, or Bartlet, who had probably worked with him for upwards of ten years before starting on his own account in Fleet Street at the sign of Lucrece in 1528. We know of altogether about 400 pieces of printing from his press, but a large proportion of these consists of editions of the Statutes and Proclamations. For the Proclamations some of Berthelet’s bills survive, and we learn that he charged a penny a piece for them, and imported his paper from Genoa. With his official printing must be reckoned his editions of the Necessary Doctrine of a Christian Man, issued with the royal sanction on 29 May, 1543. In order to produce sufficient copies of this he printed it simultaneously eight times over, all eight editions bearing the same date. Of the books which he printed on his own account the place of honour must be given to his handsome edition of Gower’s Confessio Amantis in an excellent black-letter type in 1532, and the various works of Sir John Eliot, all of which came from his press.

On the accession of Edward VI Berthelet ceased to be Royal Printer, the post being given to Grafton. Berthelet died in September, 1555, leaving considerable property. He was buried as an Esquire with pennon and coat armour and four dozen scutcheons, and all the craft of printers, stationers, and booksellers followed him to his grave.

Richard Grafton, who succeeded Berthelet as Royal Printer, had a very chequered career. He was originally a member of the Grocers’ Company, and, in conjunction with Edward Whitchurch and Anthony Marler of the Haberdashers’ Company, superintended the printing of the English Bible of 1537, probably at Antwerp, and that of 1539 by François Regnault at Paris. When Bible-printing was permitted in England Grafton and Whitchurch shared between them the printing of the six editions of the Great Bible during 1540 and 1541. But when Cromwell, Earl of Essex, the chief promoter of Bible-printing, was beheaded, Grafton was himself imprisoned. In 1544, on the other hand, he and Whitchurch obtained an exclusive patent for printing Primers, and before Henry VIII’s death Grafton was appointed printer to the Prince of Wales. Thus when Edward became king Grafton displaced Berthelet as Royal Printer, and henceforth had time for little save official work. Five editions of the Homilies and seven of Injunctions, all dated 31 July, 1547, were issued from his presses; in 1548 he published Halle’s Union of Lancaster and York and several editions of the Order of Communion and Statutes; in 1549 came two Bibles and five editions of the first Prayer Book of Edward VI; in 1550 a reprint of Halle and an edition of Marbeck’s Book of Common Prayer noted; in 1551 Wilson’s Rule of Reason; in 1552 six editions of the second Prayer Book of Edward VI, and more Statutes. Proclamation-work, of course, went on steadily throughout the reign, and on Edward’s death Grafton printed the enormously long document by which the adherents of Lady Jane Grey tried to justify her claim to the Crown. He did his work very handsomely, but on the triumph of Mary, though he impartially printed a proclamation for her nine days after “Queen Jane’s,” he naturally lost his post and might easily have lost his head also. For the rest of his life he was mainly occupied in writing his chronicle. But he printed a Book of Common Prayer in 1559, and (according to Herbert) a Bible in 1566. He died in 1573.

While Grafton was the King’s printer for English books, the post of Royal Printer in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew had been conferred in 1547 on Reginald or Reyner Wolfe. Wolfe, who had come to England from Gelderland, was at first a bookseller, and was employed by various distinguished persons as a letter-carrier between England and Germany. When he set up as a printer in 1542, with type which he seems to have obtained from a relative at Frankfort, he was employed by the great antiquary, John Leland, and by John Cheke, Professor of Greek at Cambridge, for whom he printed in 1543 two Homilies of S. Chrysostom in Greek and Latin, this being the first Greek work printed in England. During Edward VI’s reign he does not seem to have been given much to do in Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, but printed Cranmer’s Defence of the Sacrament and Answer unto a Crafty Cavillation. After keeping quiet during Mary’s reign he enjoyed the patronage of Elizabeth and Archbishop Parker, and lived, like Grafton, till 1573.

Though he never worked on a large scale, Wolfe certainly raised the standard of printing in England. In John Day it is pleasant to come to a native Englishman who did equally good work, and that in a larger way of business. Day was a Suffolk man, born in 1522 at Dunwich, a town over which the sea now rolls. He began printing in partnership with William Seres as early as 1546, but, save some fairly good editions of the Bible, produced nothing of importance during this period. His first fine book, published in 1559, is The Cosmographicall Glasse, a work on surveying, by William Cunningham. This has a woodcut allegorical border to the titlepage, a fine portrait of Cunningham, a map of Norwich, and some good heraldic and pictorial capitals. Its text is printed throughout in large italics. The book thus broke away entirely from the old black-letter traditions of English printing, and could compare favourably with the best foreign work. Day printed other folios in this style, and in some of them instead of a device placed a large and striking portrait of himself. In 1563 he printed the first edition of Acts and Monumentes of these latter and perillous days touching matters of the Church, better known as Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. This is a book of over two thousand pages, and is plentifully illustrated with woodcuts of varying degrees of merit. Day by this time had attracted the patronage of Archbishop Parker, and in 1566 printed for him a book called A Testimony of Antiquitie, showing the auncient fayth of the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publikely preached and also receaved in the Saxons tyme, above 600 yeares agoe. For this sermon, attributed to Archbishop Aelfric, some Anglo-Saxon type, the first used in England, was specially cut. Later on Day printed at Lambeth Palace Parker’s De Antiquitate Britannicae Ecclesiae. He also printed Ascham’s Scholemaster and other important works. He appears, moreover, to have possessed a bookbinding business, or at least to have had binders in his employment who invented a very striking and dignified style of binding. Altogether, Day is a man of whom English bookmen may well be proud. He died in 1584.

Richard Tottell was another printer of some importance. The son of an Exeter man, he began printing about 1553, and early in his career received a patent which gave him a monopoly of the publication of law books. These, to do him justice, he printed very well, and he also published a number of works of literary interest. Chief among these, and always associated with his name, is the famous Songs and Sonnets of Wyatt and Surrey and other Tudor poets, edited by Nicholas Grimald, but often quoted, for no very good reason, as Tottell’s Miscellany. To his credit must also be placed editions of Lydgate’s Falles of Princes, Hawes’s Pastime of Pleasure, Tusser’s Five Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry, the works of Sir Thomas More in 1458 folio pages, Gerard Legh’s Accedens of Armoury, numerous editions of Guevara’s Diall of Princes, as translated by Sir Thomas North, and a version of Cicero’s De Officiis, by Nicholas Grimald. In 1573 Tottell petitioned unsuccessfully for a monopoly of paper-making in England for thirty years, in order to encourage him to start a paper-mill. He lived till 1593.

Henry Denham (1564-89), Henry Bynneman (1566-83), and Thomas Vautrollier (1566-88), and the latter’s successor, Richard Field, were the best printers of the rest of the century. Denham was an old apprentice of Tottell’s, who gave him some important books to print for him. Herbert remarks of him: “He was an exceeding neat printer, and the first who used the semicolon with propriety.” Among his more notable books were Grafton’s Chronicle (for Tottell and Toy, 1569), editions of the Olynthiac orations of Demosthenes in English (1570) and Latin (1571), An Alvearie or quadruple dictionarie containing foure sundrie tongues, namelie, English, Latine, Greeke, and French, with a pleasing titlepage showing the royal arms and a beehive (1580), Thomas Bentley’s The Monument of Matrons: containing seuen seuerall Lamps of Virginitie, a work in praise of piety and Queen Elizabeth (1582), Hunnis’s Seuen Sobs of a Sorrowfull Soule for Sinne, a metrical version of the penitential psalms (1585), and the second edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587).

Henry Bynneman, though not so high in Archbishop Parker’s favour as John Day, was yet recommended by him to Burghley in 1569, and deserved his patronage by much good work. He printed an English version of Epictetus, Dr. Caius’s De Antiquitate Cantabrigiensis Academiæ (1568), a handsome book with the text in italics, according to the fashion of the day, Van der Noodt’s Theatre of Voluptuous Worldlings (1569), a Latin text of Virgil believed to be the first printed in England (1570), the Historia Brevis of Thomas Walsingham (1574), a handsome folio, several books by Gascoigne and Turberville, the first edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles (1577, published by John Harrison), and a few books in Greek.

Thomas Vautrollier, a French refugee, set up a press at Blackfriars, at which he printed several editions of the Prayer Book in Latin (Liber Precum Publicarum in Ecclesia Anglicana), and of the New Testament in Beza’s Latin version, for which latter he was granted a ten years’ privilege in 1574. In 1579 he printed two very notable works, Fenton’s translation of the History of Guicciardini and Sir Thomas North’s Plutarch, the latter being one of the handsomest of Elizabethan books. In 1580 and again in 1584 he went to Edinburgh, printing several books there in 1584 and 1585. His second visit is said to have been due to trouble which came upon him for printing the Spaccio della Bestia Triomphante of Giordano Bruno. His press at Blackfriars continued to work during his absence. His daughter Jakin married Richard Field, who succeeded to his house and business in 1588, and continued his excellent traditions.

A company of stationers had existed in London since 1403, and in 1557 this was reconstituted and granted a Royal Charter. The object of the Crown was to secure greater control over printing, so that no inconvenient criticisms on matters of Church or State might be allowed to appear. The object of the leading printers and booksellers, who formed the court of the company, was to diminish competition, both illegitimate and legitimate. Both objects were to a very considerable degree attained. The quarter of a century which followed the grant of a charter witnessed a great improvement in the English standard of book production. Up to this time it seems probable that few English printers, who had not the royal patronage, had found their craft profitable. Caxton no doubt did very well for himself—as he richly deserved. He enjoyed the favour of successive kings, and received good support from other quarters. We may guess, moreover, that both as translator and publisher he kept his finger on the pulse of well-to-do book-buyers to an extent to which there is no parallel for the next two centuries. No one else in England possessed this skill, and certainly no one else enjoyed Caxton’s success. The Act of Richard III permitting unrestricted importation of books quickly killed the presses at Oxford and St. Albans, which could not compete with the publications of the learned printers of Italy, France, and Switzerland. Until more than half-way through the reign of Elizabeth the united output of books from Oxford and Cambridge amounted to less than a couple of score. For more than twenty years after Caxton’s death there was no undoubted Englishman as a master printer. Mr. Gordon Duff has lately published[53] the assessments of some of the chief stationers and printers from the Lay Subsidy Rolls of 1523-4. By far the highest of them is the £307 at which was assessed John Taverner, a stationer who is only otherwise known as having bound some books for the Royal Chapel, and who was wise enough not to meddle with printing. Wynkyn de Worde, most commercial of printers, was assessed at £201 11s. 1d.; a practically unknown stationer named Neale at £100; Pynson, who was Royal Printer and did really good work, at £60; three other stationers, one of whom printed (Henry Pepwell), at £40 apiece; Julyan Notary at £36 6s. 8d.; other printers at £10 (Robert Redman), £6 13s. 4d. (John Rastell), and £4 (Robert Wyer). It is tolerably clear that there was absolutely no inducement to an English stationer to take up printing. In 1534 Henry VIII repealed the Act of 1484, on the plea that native printing was now so good that there was less need to import books from abroad, the King’s real reason, no doubt, being to make it easier to check the importation of heretical works. Mr. Duff has written of the King’s action: