About the year 1496 three printers started in partnership at the sign of St. Thomas the Apostle in London. They were Julian Notary, Jean Barbier, and a third whose name is not known, but whose initials were I. H., and who may perhaps have been Jean Huvin. The first book which they printed was the Questiones Alberti de modis significandi, a quarto of sixty leaves, printed in a clear, handsome black letter. At the end of the book is a printer’s mark, with the initials of the printers, but there is no colophon to tell us either their names or the date of printing. In 1497 they issued an edition of the Horæ ad usum Sarum, printed, as we learn from the colophon, for Wynkyn de Worde. The same printer’s mark is in this book, but again we have no information about the names of the printers. In 1498 the firm had changed,—I. H. had left, and the two remaining printers, Notary and Barbier, had moved to Westminster, perhaps in order to be nearer the printer for whom they worked. In this year they printed an edition of the Sarum Missal for Wynkyn de Worde, and after this Jean Barbier returns to France, leaving Notary at Westminster by himself. There he continued to print up to some time before 1503, and in that year we find him living ‘without Temple Bar, in St. Clement’s Parish, at the sign of the Three Kings.’ Before moving, he had printed, besides the books mentioned above, a Festial and Quattuor Sermones in 1499, a Horæ ad usum Sarum in 1500, and the Chaucer’s Complaint of Mars and Venus, without date. About this time he obtained some woodcuts from Wynkyn de Worde, and we find them used in the first book he printed at his new address, the Golden Legend of 1503[4], and in it also are to be found some very curious metal cuts in the ‘manière criblée.’ An undated Sarum Horæ, in which the calendar begins with 1503, should most probably be put before the Golden Legend. From 1504 to 1510 Notary printed about thirteen books, and in that latter year (as we learn from the imprint of the Expositio Hymnorum) he had, besides his shop without Temple Bar, another in St. Paul’s Churchyard, of which the sign was also the Three Kings.
PART OF A PAGE FROM GOLDEN LEGEND.
(Printed by Notary, 1503.)
Between 1510 and 1515, Notary issued no dated book, but in the latter year appeared the Chronicles of England, and in the year following two Grammars of Whittington. The old printing-office ‘Extra Temple Bar’ seems to have been given up, for at this time Notary was printing in Paul’s Churchyard, at the sign of St. Mark. After 1518 there is another interval of three years without a dated book; but between 1518 and 1520 several were issued from the sign of the Three Kings in Paul’s Churchyard, and after that Notary printed no more. His movements from place to place are difficult to understand. In 1497 he is in London at the sign of St. Thomas Apostle, in 1498 at Westminster in King Street. About 1502-3, he moves to a house outside Temple Bar, the one probably that Pynson had just vacated. In 1510, while still printing at the same place, he had a shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard at the sign of the Three Kings. In 1515 he is at the sign of St. Mark in Paul’s Churchyard, in 1518 again at the Three Kings. It seems probable that some of his productions must have entirely disappeared, otherwise it is hard to account for the number of blank years.
The latest writer on Julian Notary conjectures that the sign of St. Mark and the sign of the Three Kings were attached to the same house; that Julian Notary, on moving to Paul’s Churchyard, went to a house with the sign of St. Mark, and after printing under that sign for two years, altered it, for commercial reasons, to his old emblem of the Three Kings. This is ingenious, but impossible, for the writer has ignored the fact that Notary had a shop in St. Paul’s Churchyard at the Three Kings five years before we hear of the one with the sign of St. Mark.
CHAPTER IX.
OXFORD AND ST. ALBAN’S.
As early as 1664, when Richard Atkyns issued his Original and Growth of Printing, the assertion was put forward that printing in England was first practised at Oxford. ‘A book came into my hands,’ says Atkyns, ‘printed at Oxon, Anno Dom. 1468, which was three years before any of the recited Authours would allow it to be in England.’