Mylner moved to Blake Street in the parish of St Helen. It seems probable that his earlier shop, within the precincts of the minster, would be in the liberties, and outside the jurisdiction of the municipal authorities, but Blake Street was another matter, and he would not be allowed to carry on his business as a printer without having been admitted to the freedom of the city. In 1515-16, therefore, we find the name Ursyn Mylner, prynter, entered on the roll of freemen. He did not obtain his freedom by patrimony, so that he had probably served his full term of apprenticeship.
In December 1516 he issued a Grammar of Whitinton. It is a small quarto of twenty-four leaves and only one copy is known. It was sold in Thomas Rawlinson’s sale in 1727 for one shilling, being bought by his brother Richard, and at the latter’s sale it was bought by M. C. Tutet; it is now in the British Museum. On the title-page is a woodcut of a schoolmaster with three pupils seated on a bench before him. This woodcut originally belonged to Govaert van Ghemen, who used it at Gouda in an Opusculum grammaticale printed there in 1486. About 1490, when he moved to Copenhagen, he parted with some of his material, and this cut, with a fount of type and some woodcut initials, passed into the hands of Wynkyn de Worde, who used it in several grammars issued about 1500. At the end of the book, below the colophon, is the printer’s device. This consists of a shield hanging from a tree supported by a bear, an allusion to the name Ursyn, and an ass. The shield is divided per pale, and bears on the one half a windmill, on the other a sun. The mill is obviously for Mylner, but what the sun is for is not clear. We see that Mylner had some connexion with Wynkyn de Worde, whose sign was the sun; and it is perhaps just possible that this might refer to some trade partnership between the two men. Below the device is an oblong cut containing a ribbon in which the name Ursin Mylner is printed in full. In the centre is his trade-mark.
In this same year we find him mentioned as a bookbinder, entered in the accounts of the minster as paid for binding books for the choir.
After 1516 we find no further mention of Mylner. He was then only about thirty-five years old and may possibly have moved elsewhere; but no trace of him is found. From this time onwards to 1533 almost the whole York book-trade was in the hands of John Gachet, a stationer from France. Gachet’s name is first found in 1509, when, in partnership with another stationer, Jacques Ferrebouc, he commissioned Wynkyn de Worde to print for him an edition of the York Manual. This Manual is a very curious book. The colophon states clearly that it was printed in London by Wynkyn de Worde dwelling in the street called Fleet Street at the sign of the Sun, or in St Paul’s Churchyard under the image of Our Lady of Pity, for John Gachet and James Ferrebouc, partners. In spite of this assertion it is plain that the book was printed abroad. The paper, the type of the text and music staves, the illustrations, all are obviously foreign, and the particular device of De Worde on the title-page is only found in books printed for him in Paris. The colophon unfortunately does not state where Gachet and Ferrebouc were living, but the latter was certainly just before and after 1509 in Paris. Perhaps Gachet may have been the travelling member of the firm and have journeyed as far as York on his business tours. By 1514 he was certainly settled there, for in that year he was admitted a brother of the Corpus Christi Guild. In 1516 and 1517 he published a series of service books, a Missal, a Processional, a Manual, a Hymnal, and a Book of Hours.
The Missal is a fine folio of 200 leaves, and there is a perfect copy with two leaves printed on vellum, which formerly belonged to Bishop Moore, in the University Library. Another copy, slightly imperfect, was given to Pembroke College Library by the Master, Bishop Launcelot Andrews, in 1589. Besides these, five other copies are known. The initial M of the word Missale on the title-page is a very large and elaborate letter, having a scroll up the centre limb on which is engraved the printer’s name M. P. Holivier. Similar ornamental letters containing their names were used by other Rouen printers, such as Morin.
The Processional is without date, and the colophon states that it was printed at Rouen by Olivier for John Gachet, alias de France. A copy of this edition is at Ripon, and there are perhaps others; but both Dr Henderson, in his list of York service books, and Davies have mixed up this edition with the later dated edition of 1530.
Of the Manual, also undated, only one copy is known, in the library bequeathed to Dublin by Narcissus Marsh, the Archbishop. It has no name of printer, but only the statement on the title that it was printed for Gachet. The Hymnal is known from two copies, one in the British Museum, and another in the library of St John’s College, Cambridge. It fortunately has a full imprint and colophon stating that it was printed for Gachet by Olivier and finished on the 5th of February 1517. By an oversight in the printing of the Museum copy, four pages have been left quite blank.
After issuing this series of service books Gachet left York and moved to Hereford, where he published a book in May, but of his movements during the next few years we know nothing. Soon after his leaving York, two Rouen booksellers issued a Missal and Book of Hours, but in the interval between 1517 and 1526 no York books were issued. In this latter year Gachet once more appeared at York and published a Breviary, printed for him at Paris by François Regnault, the first York book printed at a Paris press, most of the previous service books having been printed at Rouen.
Between 1530 and 1533 Gachet issued another series of service books, two Missals, a Processional, and a Breviary. A Missal and a Processional were issued in 1530, and, though neither contains a printer’s name, they were certainly printed at Rouen. On the title-page of the Missal is the large M with the name Holivier engraved upon it, but by 1530 Olivier had ceased to print, and the book may be ascribed to his successor, Nicholas le Roux. Three copies are known of this Missal, two in Oxford and one in Marsh’s Library, Dublin. One of the Oxford copies was, sometime in the seventeenth century, bound in two volumes, with most disastrous results, for now one volume is in the Bodleian, the other in the library of Queen’s College. The Processional is an octavo of ninety-six leaves. Both Dr Henderson and Davies have in their descriptions confused this edition with the earlier undated one issued about 1516. The present has the date 1530 upon the title-page, but contains no name of printer or place; the colophon merely states that it was printed for Gachet. The copy in the Bodleian is a very fine one and contains the signature J. Brooke, probably Sir John Brooke, the Yorkshire Royalist. It is in its original binding apparently executed in York, as the boards are lined with unused sheets of the York Breviary printed for Gachet in 1526. The British Museum copy has four quires, that signed F and the last three, printed in a different type, though the text agrees page for page with the ordinary copies. In them the colophon ends, “Impressum expensis honesti viri Johannis Gachet, in eadem civitate commorantis,” but in the Museum impression the final words, “in eadem civitate commorantis,” have been omitted. No edition is known from which these four quires in the Museum copy could have been taken. It may be that the original stock of these sheets was damaged in some way and reprints made to supply their place, an occurrence of which several examples are known, otherwise they are the only remains of an edition now lost.
The last book with a York stationer’s name in the colophon was a Breviary printed in August 1533 by Regnault at Paris for Gachet. In the same year Regnault printed a Missal. This has not Gachet’s name in the colophon, but was to be sold at Paris in the Rue St Jacques at the sign of the Elephant, Regnault’s own address. Regnault had been the most important printer of English service books, and we know from a letter written by him to Cromwell in 1536, that he had a place of business in London from which he supplied the booksellers. By that time, however, his trade in such books had almost altogether disappeared.