No book was actually printed at York till 1509, but for many years before that date there had been stationers in the city who imported foreign books for sale. Frederick Frees, who was enrolled as a free-man in 1497, is spoken of as a book printer, but no specimen of his work exists. His brother Gerard, who assumed the surname of Wanseford, imported in 1507 an edition of the Sarum Hymns and Sequences, printed for him at Rouen by P. Violette. Of this book only two copies are known. Shortly after Gerard Wanseford’s death, an action was brought against his executor, Ralph Pulleyn, by Frederick Frees, the brother, about the stock of books which had been left, and which consisted mostly of service-books, bound and unbound, with some alphabeta and others in Latin and English.
In 1509 a certain Hugo Goes printed an edition of the Directorium Sacerdotum, the first dated book printed at York. Two copies are known, one in the Chapter Library at York, and the other in the library of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Davies[38] incorrectly states that both copies are imperfect, and want the leaf upon which the colophon was printed; but it is certainly in the Cambridge copy, for this wants only the last leaf, which would either be blank or with a printer’s mark. The book is for the most part printed in the type which W. de Worde used at Westminster just before 1500. Goes printed also editions of the Donatus and Accidence, but no copies are now known, though in 1667 copies were in possession of a Mr. Hildyard, a York historian. Bagford, among his notes on printing [Harl. MS. 5974, 95], mentions a Donatus cum Remigio, ‘impressus Londiniis juxta Charing Cross per me Hugonem Goes and Henery Watson’—with the printer’s device H. G. This book also is unknown, but may perhaps be the Grammar mentioned by Ames as being among Lord Oxford’s books. If the copy of the colophon is correct, it shows that Goes was at some time printing in London. He is said to have also printed at Beverley.
[38] Davies’ Memoir of the York Press, 1868, 8vo, pp. 16-18.
In 1516, ‘Ursyn Milner, prynter,’ was admitted to the freedom of the city. He was born in 1481, and by 1511 was living in York, when he gave evidence in the suit between Ralph Pulleyn and Frederick Frees. He printed only two books, a Festum visitationis Beate Marie Virginis, and a Grammar of Whittington’s.
The Festum was issued doubtless between 1513 and 1515, for in 1513 the Convocation of York ordered the feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to be kept as a ‘Festum principale.’ It is quoted by Ames, p. 468, and has the following colophon: ‘Feliciter finiunt (?) festum visitationis beate Marie virginis secundum usum ebor. Noviter impressum per Ursyn Milner commorantem in cimiterio Minsterii Sancti Petri.’ It is in 8vo, and a copy formerly belonged to Thomas Rawlinson.
The second book, the Grammar, is a quarto of twenty-four leaves, made up in quires of eight and four leaves alternately, a peculiar system of quiring much affected by Wynkyn de Worde. Below the title is a cut of a schoolmaster with three pupils, which was used by Wynkyn de Worde in 1499, and which he in turn had obtained from Govaert van Ghemen about 1490. (The cut was first used in the Opusculum Grammaticale, Gouda, 13th November 1486.) Below the colophon, which tells us that the book was printed in ‘blake-strete’ on the 20th December 1516, is the printer’s device, consisting of a shield hanging on a tree supported by a bear and an ass, the bear being an allusion to his name Ursyn. On the shield are a sun and a windmill, the latter referring to his surname Milner. Below this device is an oblong cut containing his name in full on a ribbon, his trade-mark being in the centre.
The connexion between the early York stationers and Wynkyn de Worde is very striking, and has yet to be explained. Gerard Wanseford in his will, dated 1510, leaves forty shillings to Wynkyn de Worde, which he (the testator) owed him. The next stationer and printer, Hugo Goes, was in possession of some of De Worde’s type; and Milner, the last of the early York printers, used one of his cuts, and copies his peculiar habit of quiring. Perhaps the type and cuts were originally bought by Wanseford and obtained successively by the others; at any rate, both the type and cut were out of W. de Worde’s hands at an early date.
The most important of the York stationers remains still to be noticed, though he was unfortunately only a stationer and not a printer. John Gachet appears at York in 1517, and in the same year is mentioned as a stationer at Hereford. He was in business in the former town at least as late as 1533, when the last book printed at his expense was issued.
Printing was introduced into Cambridge in 1521, when John Lair de Siberch, perhaps at the instigation of Richard Croke, who from 1522 was professor of Greek and public orator, set up his press at the sign of the Arma Regia. In 1521 he printed six books, and of these the Oratio Henrici Bulloci is the first. The five other books follow in the following order: Augustini Sermo, Luciani περἰ ὁιψἀὁων, Balduini sermo de altaris sacramento, Erasmus de conscribendis epistolis, and Galeni de Temperamentis. In the next year Siberch printed only two books, Joannis Roffensis episcopi contio, and Papyrii Gemini Eleatis Hermathena. It is needless to describe these books more fully here, for an extremely good and full bibliography of them was compiled by Bradshaw, and published as an introduction to one of the Cambridge facsimiles in 1886.[39]