These nine books comprise the whole output of the early Cambridge press. Though Cambridge obtained a special privilege shortly afterwards giving the right to print, the right was never exercised, and nothing was produced in the town until the two Universities restarted their presses towards the end of the sixteenth century.
The bookbindings that can definitely be assigned to Siberch are at present few in number. He used one fine roll divided into four rectangular compartments, containing a pomegranate, a turretted gateway with portcullis, a Tudor rose, and three fleurs-de-lys, all surmounted by a royal crown and within canopied archways. Below the fleurs-de-lys are his initials. This is a purely English design, and the tool was no doubt made for him after his arrival in Cambridge. Immediately Siberch gave up work, about 1523-24, the tool passed to Speryng, who mutilated it, so that we know fairly well the period during which it was used when undamaged. Its use in conjunction with other tools enables more of Siberch’s material to be identified. In the University Library is a copy of the Epistolæ of Paulinus, bishop of Nola, printed at Paris in 1516, whose binding is impressed with two well-executed panel stamps separated from each other by this roll. On one is depicted St Roche tended by an angel for the plague and a dog bringing him food, on the other St John Baptist, standing on a mound and preaching to four persons seated below him. These two saints were popular subjects for binding panels, and a number of varieties, mostly copied one from another, are known, but this particular pair are especially well designed and engraved, and were chosen by Dibdin to reproduce in his Bibliographical Decameron.
On a folio in the library of Clare College, Siberch’s signed roll is found used with another roll or band containing figures of seven peasants, one piping, the rest dancing with hands joined, a very favourite design with Netherlandish binders.
The two panel stamps and this second roll are all foreign in appearance, and were no doubt brought by Siberch from abroad. After he gave up work they remained in England. I have a work of Erasmus, printed in 1532, certainly bound in this country, which has the two panels on the binding, while the roll with dancing figures occurs on a binding in St Paul’s Cathedral Library, lined with waste leaves of an Almanac for 1544. It is not improbable that Siberch had other panels, for we find, soon after he ceased to bind, stamps which were certainly his used in conjunction with others exactly similar in style. I saw lately a work of Erasmus, dated 1524, on which this St Roche panel was used, and with it was a panel with St Michael, and these two occur together elsewhere. One point, however, must certainly be noticed. The one panel binding that we can with certainty attribute to Siberch has three bands on the back, as was usual in the case of English bindings. Every other binding with his stamps which I have seen has four bands, and a binder would be most unlikely to change his habits on such a point.
The letter of Peter Kaetz to Siberch, referred to earlier, is of the greatest interest. It is written on one side of an oblong piece of paper, with the address on the other side. Unfortunately parts of the ends of some of the lines are missing, making parts of certain sentences vague, especially at the beginning, but generally the meaning is fairly clear. It has been translated by Mr Hessels as follows: “Know, Jan Siborch, that I have received your letter as [well as specimens] of your type, and it is very good; if you can otherwise ... and conduct yourself well then you will get enough to print. So I remain still in London because my master comes; I expect him from day to day, therefore I cannot even know when I cross, but so soon as I cross I shall do the best that is in my power. Item, I have told Peter Rinck three or four times of the Pater noster, but he tells me that he cannot find it; and Gibkerken has not yet given Jacob Pastor the ring, but he carries it every day on his hand and he will not give it to Jacob Pastor. Item, I send you 25 prognostications and 3 New Testaments small. The prognostications cost one shilling sterling the 25, and the 3 New Testaments cost 2 shillings and 6 pence sterling, so there is still due to you, which I remain in your debt. I have no more New Testaments, otherwise I should have sent you more. I have nothing else to write except [to ask you to] deliver the accompanying parcel to Niclas, and greet Baetzken for me with your whole family, and do not forget yourself. Petrus Kaetz.”
Among the fragments found with it was part of the manuscript copy of Croke’s book printed in May 1520, a sheet of the Papyrius Geminus printed in 1522, and two leaves of the Lily’s Grammar. The book in which they were found must have been bound after December 1522, but the tools on the binding are not those known to have been used by Siberch, and the book may have been bound after Siberch ceased work by someone occupying his old workshop or who had obtained his waste material. From internal evidence the letter would appear to have been written in 1521 just after Siberch had started printing, the reference to the excellence of the type, of which proofs had apparently been sent, and the remark by Kaetz that if Siberch conducted himself well he would get enough to print, both pointing to this conclusion. One small point may be noticed here in passing. The tone of the letter is that of an older to a younger man, or at any rate, of a man to one of his own age. Now in the colophons of books printed for Kaetz between 1523 and 1525 he is spoken of as “juvenis” and this may be taken as a slight argument for believing that in 1521 Siberch was a young man also.
The master to whom Kaetz referred was very possibly Christopher Endoviensis or Van Ruremond, who, when Kaetz set up in business on his own account, printed books for him. Van Ruremond we know printed English prognostications, single folio broadsides such as would be sold at a penny a piece, which as we know from Dorne’s day-book was the usual price of a single sheet, so that he may have been the printer of these supplied to Siberch at twenty-five for a shilling. The New Testaments were probably of a Latin version since they are called Nova Testamenta in the letter. Nicholas, to whom a packet was sent, was, we may suppose, Speryng.
After 1522 Siberch seems to have relinquished his business as a printer and stationer. We have no reference to him in accounts, and as his name does not occur in the Subsidy Rolls of 1523-24 it may be considered as fairly certain that he was not then in Cambridge. That he had definitely given up work is clearly shown by the dispersal of his material. The smaller neatly-executed cut of the Royal arms went to his friend Peter Kaetz, who, taking it with him on his return to Antwerp, used it in the edition of the Dutch Bible printed for him there in 1525 by Hans Van Ruremonde. Apparently the same block appears in an edition of Erasmus and Lily’s Grammar published at Antwerp by Godfried van der Haeghen in 1527 for sale in St Paul’s Churchyard. The fine border of the Galen also went to Antwerp and is found eventually on the title-page of a Dutch Prognostication of 1536 printed by Hendrick Pietersen van Middleburch. From a comparison of a recently-issued facsimile of the Dutch book with the original Cambridge book, it is clear the border is identical in both. What has now to be done is to trace it between 1522 and 1536. Lastly, the fine binding roll which he possessed passed into the hands of Nicholas Speryng who attempted to obliterate the initial I upon it and substitute an N. The latest binding on which it is found in an unmutilated state is on a book printed at Venice and finished on November 10, 1522, so that the binding cannot be earlier than 1523. The mutilated tool is found used with others belonging to Speryng on the binding of a book printed in 1524.
For a considerable time after 1522 we have no information. The debt of twenty pounds continued to be entered in the proctor’s accounts up to the year 1524-25, after which it dropped out. In 1538-39 the debt is re-entered in a most interesting memorandum which may be translated thus: “Note; that twenty pounds sterling are owing to the university by ‘Dominus’ John Lair, an alien priest, and Doctors Rydley, Bullock, Wakefelde, and Maundefelde, and it has their bond signed by all their hands, and sealed with their seals.” After several entries of a similar tenor we come to the final one in the Audit book under the year 1553. “John Syberche owes out of the money advanced to him [xx. li.], as is evidenced by his bond contained in the common chest, and his guarantors are Doctors Rydley, Bullocke, and Manfyld, together with Mr Wakfyld.” It would thus appear that like many another, Siberch was so influenced by the religious movements of the time, that he forsook his business in order to serve the Church, and it is therefore in this sphere that we should seek for further information about him. He seems also to have made use of his proper name Lair, sometimes corrupted into Law, rather than the name Siberch he had used as a printer.
Perhaps further search in this new direction may result in fresh discoveries.