The fourth book, Baldwin’s Sermo de altaris sacramento was issued in the summer, probably August, of 1521. In this is found for the first time the smaller device of the Royal arms. Eight copies of the book are known, two being in the University Library while another has lately been discovered in the library of Magdalene College. One of those in the University Library, which it is suggested may be an early copy sent to Nicholas West, bishop of Ely, to whom the book is dedicated, shows some variations from the ordinary copies. It is clear that it is an early issue, since the border is without a small break noticeable in other copies, and the first word of the title-page, Reverendissimi, has been misprinted Reverndissimi, a mistake almost immediately noticed and corrected. In this book, for the first time, Siberch begins to use one of his ornamental capitals, a fine six-line S.
Siberch’s fifth book, Erasmus De conscribendis epistolis, was issued in October 1521. This is a more important book in point of size than any which preceded it, containing eighty leaves, whereas the largest of the others only ran to twenty. It also shows certain marks of advance. We find for the first time a frequent use of fine initial letters, and it is the first book for which the printer obtained a privilege, unfortunately not printed in full. Four copies of this book are known, two in the British Museum, and two in Cambridge College Libraries, St John’s and Corpus. The last copy has the additional interest of being bound by a contemporary Cambridge stationer, Nicholas Speryng, and bears his mark and initials on the binding.
The Erasmus was followed by Galen De Temperamentis, translated from the Greek by Linacre. This is the commonest of Siberch’s books, at least twelve copies being known, but some of these show important variations. The first intention seems to have been to issue the De Temperamentis alone, and it was so printed off on sixty-six leaves, with the signatures A⁴, Q⁶. Later it was determined to add another small treatise De inequali intemperie, so the last two leaves of the first issue, containing the end of the De Temperamentis were cancelled, and two new sheets R⁴ and S⁶ added. Finally a preliminary quire of eight leaves was printed, making the complete book consist of seventy-four leaves. One copy of the first state is known, first noticed by Mr Bowes in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1894. On the verso of the penultimate leaf is a woodcut of the Adoration of the Shepherds and the colophon, on the verso of the last leaf the small block of the Royal arms and the date 1521. A transitional copy, containing the first issue with the end uncancelled, but the additional sheets added, is in the library of the Royal College of Physicians. All the remaining copies are of the revised issue. In it the last two leaves are mainly occupied with a list of the errata which had been found in the De Temperamentis, and on the verso of the last leaf is the device of the Royal arms. The woodcut of the Shepherds found in the early copies has not as yet been traced to an earlier source. It is apparently Low Country work of the fifteenth century; Sir Martin Conway ascribes it to about the year 1485.
Two copies of the Galen were printed on vellum, both of which are now in Oxford, one in the library of All Souls College, the other in the Bodleian. This latter copy possesses a curious pedigree. It was presented to the Bodleian in 1634 by Thomas Clayton, Regius Professor of Medicine. In a long Latin note which he has written in the volume he states that it was given by Linacre to Henry VIII. who in his turn gave it to Cuthbert Tonstall, and after passing through various hands it had come into his possession, and he finally has deposited it in the Bodleian. It is an interesting copy, but whether it ever belonged to Henry is very doubtful. It is in the original binding, but this is simply an ordinary stationer’s binding impressed in blind with the two panels of the Royal arms and Tudor rose used by many of the London binders of the time. Again one sheet has been incorrectly printed. In printing the reverse side of a sheet in signature S, the workman has laid the sheet the wrong way round on the form and consequently the pages follow one another in the wrong order, a fruitful and common cause of waste sheets. Finally the ornamental initials in the early part of the book have not been printed in, and no attempt has been made to supply them by hand. It does not seem probable that so poor a copy would have been presented to the King. An early inscription shows that it belonged to Tonstall, who gave it to Richard Sparchford, archdeacon of Shropshire, who gave it to the church of Ludlow.
The seventh book is a translation into Latin by Richard Pace of the sermon preached by John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, in London, to an audience said to have numbered thirty thousand, on the occasion of the public burning of Luther’s works. In this book for the first time Siberch made use of the device with his initials and mark within a chain work frame showing white on a black background, an uncommon style of device and one unlike any other used in England at the time. Of this book only four copies are known, two in the Bodleian, one in the library of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and one in the Rylands Library, Manchester.
The last dated of the early Cambridge books is the Hermathena of Papyrius Geminus, issued on December 8, 1522. No less than three different states of the title-page are known. The first is quite free from ornament, in the second an attempt seems to have been made to supply the want of the old border device, and the upper part of the title is enclosed in a frame made by two horizontal border-pieces joined at the sides by a plain fine. In the third state, a third border-piece has been added at the bottom of the page and the black lines extended on either side to join all three. The book contains twenty-six leaves, the last leaf containing on the recto the colophon and printer’s device, on the verso the small arma regia device. Six copies are known. With the title in the first state one copy remains, which formerly belonged to Bradshaw and is now in the University Library. Of the second state there are three copies, in Archbishop Marsh’s Library, in Lincoln Cathedral, and in St John’s College, Cambridge. Of the third state the two copies belong to the British Museum and the Duke of Devonshire. These last two copies are both printed on vellum, but the museum copy wants the last leaf containing the colophon and devices.
Title-page of Fisher’s Sermon, printed at Cambridge
by John Siberch in 1522.
The publication of another Cambridge book, an edition of the Grammar of Lily and Erasmus, was proved by the discovery in 1889 of two leaves, found with some other most interesting fragments in the covers of a book in Westminster Abbey Library.
The Grammar is the De octo orationis partium constructione libellus written for the use of St Paul’s School. It was composed originally by William Lily, and Colet, the founder of the school, sent the work to Erasmus to emend. Erasmus so altered it that Lily would not permit it to be called his work, and as Erasmus for his part refused to put his name to Lily’s work, the book was published anonymously. It became very popular, and many editions were issued abroad for the English market, so that it is just such a book as a Cambridge printer might be expected to print rather than to import.