A little over thirty years ago a most preposterous attempt was made in a series of letters published in the Athenæum to prove that the schoolmaster printer of St Alban’s was the real printer of many of the books attributed to Caxton at Westminster. A number of quite irrelevant assertions were made and vague arguments brought forward of which the following is apparently the strongest. Because Caxton’s edition of the Description of Britain, printed in 1480, has not the place of printing mentioned in the colophon, while some of the later editions speak of the Chronicles and Description of Britain as printed by the schoolmaster of St Alban’s, therefore Caxton’s edition was printed at St Alban’s. This is surely a quite unwarranted argument from the fact that W. de Worde preferred to reprint the St Alban’s edition rather than Caxton’s. The writer sums up as follows. “Putting all these facts together they form very strong circumstantial evidence that Caxton had two presses at work at one and the same time, at Westminster and St Alban’s; that what he could not print at Westminster, for lack of time and space, he had printed for him by this schoolmaster at St Alban’s, and that all the books of Caxton’s which bear no date or place come from St Alban’s.” The writer also asserts that all Caxton’s early books were printed by him at St Alban’s before he moved his press to Westminster. One other strange assertion about the St Alban’s press remains to be noticed. It is both the newest and the most absurd. Under the article, St Alban’s, in the latest edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the history of the early press is summed up in these few lines. “On a printing press, one of the earliest in the kingdom, set up in the Abbey, the first English translation of the Bible was printed.”
As at Oxford, the St Alban’s press ceased its work in 1486 for no reason that we can explain, but most probably owing to competition. The Oxford and St Alban’s printers must both have seen that in Latin books they could not hope to compete with their foreign rivals, either in excellence of workmanship or in cheapness, and each made a final effort by the production of books in English where foreign rivalry would not be felt.
Just as at Oxford, too, a second press was at work for a few years in the sixteenth century, which will be noticed later; but a period of nearly fifty years elapsed between the stopping of the first, and the beginning of the second.
York, both as the leading city in the North of England and from its ecclesiastical importance, was from very early times an important centre of book production. The text writers and illuminators of manuscripts had formed themselves into a guild as early as the time of Edward III., while the bookbinders became a separate company in 1476. Like most of the leading provincial towns, York was very jealous of its privileges and made stringent regulations as regards its trade and business. In 1488 the various crafts connected with books passed a bye-law enacting that no person, secular or religious, not franchised or allowed by the craft, should bring in or set out any work. Poor priests were allowed to augment their salaries by the practice of text writing and illumination, and any priest might write and illuminate books provided they were for his own use, or to be given away in charity.
York books may be divided into three groups. 1. Those actually printed in York. 2. Those printed elsewhere but containing a York stationer’s name. 3. Those printed elsewhere, without a stationer’s name, but obviously intended for sale in the city.
The earliest book connected with York belongs to the last group. It is a Breviary for York use, and was printed at Venice by a well-known printer of such books, Johann Hamman or Hertzog of Landau in 1493, at the costs of Frederick Egmont, an English bookseller. The book is a beautifully printed octavo of 478 leaves, printed in double columns in red and black. One copy only is known, now in the Bodleian. It belonged at one time to Ralph Thoresby, the Yorkshire antiquary, then to Marmaduke Fothergill, whose widow presented his library to the Dean and Chapter of York in 1731. This volume, however, did not reach the Minster library, but passed into the collection of Edward Jacob, the antiquary, who died in 1788. At his sale it was bought by Richard Gough. Gough in his will bequeathed his topographical collections to the Bodleian, and English service books being connected with the uses of Salisbury, York, and Hereford were fortunately classed as topography. By this means the liturgical collections of the Bodleian were increased with thirty-nine Missals, twenty-one Breviaries, twenty-five Horæ and twenty-one Manuals and Processionals besides Psalters, Hymnals, Graduals, and other books.
This Breviary is the only book printed for York in the fifteenth century, yet though text writing seems to have flourished well up to 1500, the importation of printed books soon showed the advantage of printing over writing, and the stationers began to commission service books.
The first York stationer was Frederick Freez, who was admitted a freeman of the city of York in 1497 as a bookbinder and stationer. He may also have been a printer, for in the records of a lawsuit held at York in 1510 he is styled “buke-prynter,” and fellow-townsmen would hardly have called him this without reason. Nothing printed by him is known, though Herbert suggests that a proclamation on vellum of the time of Henry VII. issued at York, mentioned by Bagford, might have been printed by him. In 1500 he and his wife, Joanna, were admitted members of the Corpus Christi Guild. In March 1506 the Corporation passed an order “that Frederick Freez, a Dutchman and an alien enfranchised, should dwell and inhabit upon the common ground at the Rose, otherwise the Bull in Conyngestrete, for ten years, at three pounds yearly rent.” Freez is spoken of as a Dutchman, and his proper name was no doubt Vries or De Vries. For some reason, perhaps through marriage, the name, Freez, was changed to Wandsforth, a not uncommon Yorkshire name, and, though Frederick does not seem to have used it himself, his brother, Gerard, certainly assumed it, and in his will calls both himself and his brother Wandsforth, making no reference to his original name, Freez.
Frederick is but a shadowy person. His name is found in no colophon, and the only definite connexion with book-selling of which we have evidence, is the inevitable lawsuit, for Pynson brought an action against him in 1505. He was certainly still alive in 1515, when he is mentioned as living in the parish of St Helen on the Walls. He is known to have had two sons, Valentine and Edward. The first took up his freedom by patrimony in 1539, but he appears soon after to have fallen a victim, with his wife, to religious persecution. Fuller writes of them, “They were both of them born in the city and both gave their lives therein at one stake for the testimony of Jesus Christ, probably by order from Edward Lee, the cruel Archbishop.” Though Fuller, relying on Foxe, assigns this event to the impossible date of 1531, the account may be taken as founded on fact.
The other son, Edward, who, according to Foxe, had been apprenticed at York to be a painter and was afterwards a novice monk, was convicted of heresy at Colchester through painting texts upon the walls of the inn which he was decorating. He was imprisoned in London, his wife and child were cruelly killed, and he himself so barbarously treated that he never afterwards recovered his wits.