Perhaps on account of the restrictions placed upon alien stationers by the act of 1534, we find among others taking out letters of denization in 1535 “John Gachet, alias Frenchman, of the city of York bookbinder, from the dominion of the King of France,” but we find no further mention of him as dealing in books, nor do we know anything of his later career. We meet, however, with other members of the family. In 1543 John Gachet, Frenchman, of the parish of St Michael le Belfry, occurs in a list of soldiers sent from York to Newcastle. If this was a son of our stationer, he died shortly afterwards, as in 1551 administration of the effects of John Gachet, son of John Gachet of York, stationer, dying at Rawcliffe, was granted to George Gachet, his brother. A William Gachet, stationer, was admitted to the freedom of the city in 1549-50, and the will of another William Gachet of York is dated 1551.
The books which had been printed specially for York booksellers had consisted entirely of service books, and about 1534 most of these ceased to be printed, being suppressed or falling into disuse. Thus though we afterwards find a continuous succession of stationers at York, no books are known specially printed for them. The enterprising stationers had all been foreigners, and foreigners were not viewed with favour in York or elsewhere at that period. They seem to have absorbed most of the trade to the detriment of the natives, so that we find in 1554 the Company of Bookbinders and Stationers of York passing a bye-law that no stranger or foreigner should sell any book or books within the city, except freemen of the same city. Earlier acts had prohibited the taking of foreign apprentices, so that the acts and this bye-law combined absolutely prohibited any foreigner engaging in the book trade in the city. The later stationers were all natives; and if they had energy they did not show it in the form of commissioning books. When the service books began to be reissued in Mary’s reign, no York stationer’s name is connected with them. Of those that were issued all were printed in London and sold by London booksellers. Then came the Stationers’ Charter of 1557 and with it the extinction of the provincial trade.
From the Fabric rolls of York Minster, from the registers of freemen, and from various other sources, we obtain the names of a number of bookbinders who worked at York during the latter half of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries. A Thomas Messingham bound books for the Minster in red leather, probably the bright red deer skin often found at that period. Frederick Freez is called bookbinder, and about 1494 Peter Moreaux, another bookbinder, was made a freeman. John Welles, John Meltynbe and John Gowthwaite took up their freedom as bookbinders before 1557, and others, Thomas Newell and Edward Huby, who were not freemen, are mentioned in accounts as binders. Unfortunately we cannot point to any definite bindings as produced by these men, but it is not improbable that a full and careful examination of the old bindings preserved in the Minster Library might produce some good results, at any rate this source of information still remains to be worked. A late writer on bookbinding, with more daring than discretion, ascribes one or two marks found on bindings to York binders. He writes as follows: “G. W., whose trade-mark occurs on the covers of many books bound in England, exercised his craft between 1489 and 1510. Either he or his son was probably associated later on with another stationer, I. G.; an elegantly designed stamp bearing both cyphers adorns many bindings executed between 1512 and 1535. These may perhaps be the trade-marks of Gerard Freez or Wandsforth, brother of Frederick, bookseller and binder of York, 1507-10, and of John Gachet, stationer and bookseller of Hereford and York, who was still carrying on business in 1535.” This is all futile suggestion. Gerard Wandsforth, who died in 1510, left no children, and John Gachet did not come to York until after Wandsforth was dead. Moreover the mark assigned by this authority to G. Wandsforth and read as G. W. is by all rules of traders’ marks W. G. If anything is discovered about York bookbinding, it will not be by this class of idle speculation. All that can be said is that we know of numerous York bookbinders, so that very many bindings were produced there, and no doubt numbers still remain awaiting identification.
In Gachet’s career as a stationer, a long period, the nine years between 1517 and 1526, remains unaccounted for. He had published a series of York service books in 1516 and 1517, the last, a Hymnal, being dated February 5, 1517. For some reason he became dissatisfied with York, and moved to seek business elsewhere, and in May 1517 he appears to have been living in Hereford, where he issued an edition of the Ortus Vocabulorum with his name in the colophon.
Though printing was not actually practised in Hereford, three books at least are known which were printed for sale there. In 1502 the very beautiful Hereford Missal was printed at Rouen by Pierre Olivier and Jean Mauditier for a Rouen stationer, Jean Richard. We know accidentally that about the time this Missal was printed Richard was in England, for he was party to a lawsuit at Oxford, and he may have journeyed to Hereford to dispose of this book. But though intended for sale in the diocese, the imprint contains no mention of any local stationer. In 1505 a Hereford Breviary was issued by a stationer named Ingelbert Haghe, who was under the patronage, as he expressly tells us in the preface, of that “illustrissima virago” Margaret, countess of Richmond and Derby, a generous patroness of printers. Haghe was himself originally a Rouen stationer, but had come over and settled in England. On some loose leaves in the Bodleian originally forming the lining of the binding of a bible is an inscription stating that the book was bought from Ingelbert the Hereford bookseller in 1510 about the day of the Lichfield fair. The Hereford Breviary is a very rare book. The Bodleian has the Pars Estivalis which came from the Colbert sale. A copy was in Richard Smith’s sale in 1682, when it was sold for three shillings and eightpence. This may be the copy given at the end of the seventeenth century to Worcester Cathedral Library by Dr George Benson, prebendary of Worcester and dean of Hereford. The third copy known is in private hands. It would seem that Ingelbert and his patroness Margaret quarrelled over the production of this book, for in the plea-rolls of 1505, the year in which it was issued, he is cited as defendant in a suit brought by Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the King’s mother, to recover the sum of one hundred shillings. He is there called stationer and bookseller of London, so that he may have had a shop in both places. Unfortunately we have only the mere mention of the case without any reference to its purpose, but the coincidence of the date and the known connexion of the Lady Margaret with the issue of the Breviary make it probable that it formed the subject of the dispute.
The only other Hereford book known is an edition of the Ortus Vocabulorum, of which the only known copy, once in the magnificent collection of Richard Vaughan of Hengwrt, is now in the Rylands Library, Manchester. The colophon states that it was printed in 1517 at Rouen by Eustace Hardy at the costs of Jean Caillard, a stationer in business at Rouen, and John Gachet living at Hereford. The copy is quite perfect and in good condition, and has the further interest of being in its original stamped binding. After this single venture we hear no more of Gachet at Hereford, or of anything being published there.
LECTURE III.
OXFORD SECOND PRESS AND CAMBRIDGE.
After an interval of about thirty years the Oxford press restarted on a brief career, this time apparently with the official sanction of the University. The first book issued was a commentary by W. Burley Super libros posteriorum Aristotelis. It is a small tract of ten leaves, and was finished on December 4, 1517. The printer, John Scolar, lived in St John’s Street, near Merton College. Nothing is known of him before he appears at Oxford as a printer, and nothing of his career in the University. Mr Madan remarks, “Although Scolar uses the arms of the University (their earliest occurrence in print), yet the registers of the University almost ignore the fact that for the second time the greatest literary invention since speech and writing were known was silently at work in its midst.” The expression “almost ignore” is rather disingenuous. Whether the registers did or did not ignore John Scolar we shall never know, since the volume covering the years from 1515 to 1526 is lost.
The text and notes of this volume are printed in two sizes of black-letter type, apparently identical with that used by Wynkyn de Worde. Some of the initials and the woodcut at the end are certainly his, and it would appear as though Scolar had obtained from him the type which had been used for printing the work of Sirectus, published a year or two earlier at Oxford by Jacobi.