Information on the French merchants in England is scanty. They did not care to draw attention upon business transactions which a sudden declaration of war might at any time render illicit. But something is known about the printers.
About 1488, Richard Pynson, a native of Normandy and a pupil of the Paris University, settled in England. He became printer to Henry vii. and published some French translations. From the few extant specimens we may conclude that Pynson hardly knew how to write English. But he was the first of a line of French printers in England, the most famous of whom were Thomas Berthelet and the Huguenot Thomas Vautrollier.
As in 1912 an English firm print in England for sale on the Continent our French authors, so in 1503 Antoine Vérard, a Paris printer, published English books. When Coverdale had finished his translation of the Bible, he carried the manuscript over to France and entrusted it to François Regnault. This printer seems to have been an enterprising man, having in London an agency for the sale of the English books that he set up in type in Paris. The printing of the "Great Bible" was a lengthy task. In spite of the French king and the English ambassador Bonner, Regnault got into trouble with the authorities and the clergy. The "lieutenant-criminel" seized the sheets, but, instead of having them burnt by the hangman, as it was his duty to do, the greedy official sold them to a mercer who restored them to Regnault for a consideration. In the meantime presses and type and even workmen had been hurried to London, where the work was completed (1539). Nor must the provincial printers be forgotten, thus from 1516 to 1533 almost the whole York book-trade was in the hands of the Frenchman Jean Gachet.[94] Many books sold by English booksellers came from the presses of Goupil of Rouen or Regnault of Paris.
THE FORTUNE-TELLER
after Arnoult
The tradition of French printers in England was continued in the following century by Du Gard, the printer of certain Milton pamphlets and of the Nouvelles ordinaires de Londres, and Bureau, "marchand libraire dans le Middle Exchange, dans le Strand," most obnoxious to the French ambassador because a determined opponent of the French Court.
About French artisans and servants the information is, of course, of the most meagre description. There are merely allusions by the contemporary playwrights to the French dancing-master, fencer, or sweep, equally unable to pronounce English correctly, to the great merriment of the "groundlings."[95] However, a French valet, Jean Abbadie, who served many noblemen at the close of the seventeenth century, took the trouble to learn and could even write English.[96]
Now and then a name emerges from the obscure crowd. That, for instance, of "John Puncteus, a Frenchman, professing physick, with ten in his company," licensed "to exercise the quality of playing, for a year, and to sell his drugs";[97] or of Madame Le Croy (De La Croix), the notorious fortune-teller,
"Who draws from lines the calculations,
Instead of squares for demonstrations,"