Si bon vui fort a trente deux
A seize, a douze, a six, a huiet."
In England also the crier was an early institution, for we find one Edmund le Criour mentioned in a document dated 1299. Even when the crier was the pre-eminent advertiser, the poster, or at least the handbill, had its place. At first the bills were written, but almost as soon as Caxton introduced the newly-discovered art of printing they were produced by that method. Perhaps the earliest English poster is that by which Caxton, about the year 1480, announced the "Pyes of Salisbury Use," at the Red Pole in the Almonry at Westminster. The size of this broadside is five inches by seven, and the text runs as follows:
"If it please any man spirituel or temporel to bye our pyes of two or thre comemo-racio's of Salisburi use, emprunted after the form of this prese't lettre, which ben wel and truly correct, late hym come to West-monster, into the almonestrye at the reed pole ane he shall have them good and chepe.
"Supplico stet cedula."
The "pyes" in question, it may be noted, were a series of diocesan rules.
It is in the sixteenth century that we meet with the poster properly so called. For example, we have a royal proclamation of François I relating to the police of the city of Paris, which runs: "Nous voulons que ces présentes ordonnances soient publiées tous les moys de l'an, par tous les quarrefours de cette ville de Paris et faux bourgs d'icelle, à son de trompe et cry public. Et néantmoins quelles soient attachées a un tableau, escriptes en parche-main et en grosse lettre, en tous les seize quartiers de ladite ville de Paris es esdiétz faux bourgs, et lieux les plus éminents et apparens d'iceulx, afin qu'elles soient cognues et entendues parfun chacun. Et qu'il ne soit loysible oster les dictz tableaux, sur peine de punition corporelle, dont les dictz commissaires auront la charge chacun en son quartier."
The words "attachées a un tableau, escriptes en parchemain et en grosse lettre" leave no doubt that the poster as we now know it was a usual method of advertisement in the reign of François Ier. The affiche soon after received the attention of the French legislature, for the production and exhibition of posters of certain kinds in France, was expressly forbidden by "un arrêt du Parlement" dated the 7th of February, 1652. To publishers and booksellers, however, the privilege of posting the titles of their new books was specially reserved.
As printing became less expensive and methods for the mechanical reproduction of pictures and designs were discovered, it needed no great ingenuity to add emphasis to the poster by means of pictorial illustration. Acrobats, the stall-keepers at fairs on the ice, and the like, were speedily induced to adorn their advertisements with rude drawings, while Royal proclamations were usually decorated heraldically. Early in the eighteenth century, the bills announcing the departure and arrival of coaches were headed by pictures, as for example the one which related to the Birmingham coach in 1731.
Even earlier in date, there are illustrated advertisements relating to the Roman Catholic church. One of these, produced in France, dated 1602, is very curious and elaborate in design. While, however, many posters such as this are profoundly interesting to the archaeologist, they can hardly be considered works of art. It is not until the middle of the present century is reached that we find important examples of pictorial poster deliberately planned by an artist. The modern artistic poster movement, as we shall see in the next chapter, had its origin in Paris some fifty years ago.