The English provincial printers, stationers and bookbinders to 1557

by E. Gordon Duff

The nine undated books which he issued were mainly theological and controversial. One of these, entitled Newes from Rome concerning the blasphemous sacrifice of the papisticall Masse, was printed for E. Campion. It is curious, considering the title of the book, that this E. Campion was in all probability the London bookseller of the time, Edmund Campion, the father of the celebrated Jesuit martyr.

Two others are quoted by Herbert, A short epistle to all such as do contempne the marriage of us poor preestes and The spirituall matrimonye betweene Chryste, and the Soul, no copies of either being at present known, though a title-page of the second is among the Bagford fragments.

Mychell printed also an edition of Stanbridge’s Accidence, of Lidgate’s Churl and Bird, and of Robert Saltwood’s Comparison between four birds. Saltwood was keeper of the chapel of the Virgin Mary at Canterbury when on December 4, 1539, he signed the surrender. His name is not found after this nor does he appear in the list of pensioners. He seems to have taken an interest in poetry, and it was for him that the Boccus and Sydracke was printed, so perhaps we may trace to his instigation the separate works of Lidgate which Mychell printed. In the colophon to his own book Saltwood is described only as monk, with no mention of Canterbury, and the place of printing is not stated, so that it may have been issued by Mychell at London.

Mary’s succession seems to have caused the cessation of the press, and certainly the class of theological works, which had been its main output, was not such as would be received with favour under the changed conditions.

Mychell, however, still remained at Canterbury, though his press was idle. The only piece of printing that can be assigned to him after Mary’s accession is a semi-official tract of four leaves. Articles to be enquyred in thordinary visitacion of the most reverende father in God, the Lorde Cardinall Pooles grace Archebyshop of Caunterbury wythin hys Dioces of Cantorbury. In the yeare of our Lorde God M. V. C. Lvi. Pole was only consecrated Archbishop in March 1556, so that the pamphlet must have been printed after that date. No perfect copy is known, but the first and last leaves, which belonged to Herbert and which he described in his Typographical Antiquities, are now in the Douce Collection in the Bodleian. The pamphlet is unique in another respect, as it is the only piece of provincial printing in England issued during Mary’s reign.

Ames in his History of Printing, published in 1749, mentions two books printed for Martin Coffin, a stationer living at Exeter. The first, an edition of Stanbridge’s Vocabula, was printed at Rouen by Lawrence Hostingue and Jamet Loys. This would put the date about 1505 when these two printers were in partnership and before 1508 when Hostingue left Rouen.

The other book is an edition of Catho cum commento, also printed at Rouen by Richard Goupil who was at work about 1510. This is also mentioned in Bagford’s notes. The first of these books was sold in Thomas Rawlinson’s sale where Ames probably saw it, and the second may perhaps have been bound up with it, but since that sale in 1727 all traces of them have disappeared.

Martin Coffin remained some time longer in England, for we find him taking out letters of denization in the year 1524 on April 28, and in these he is described as a bookbinder.

Lastly we may notice two books printed abroad which, by having the names of English towns printed in their colophons, have sometimes been considered as the productions of English provincial presses. The earlier of the two is The Rescuyinge of the Romish Fox written by William Turner under the pseudonym of William Wraghton. The book is a violent attack on Stephen Gardiner, then Bishop of Winchester, and ends with the colophon: “Imprinted have at Winchester. Anno Domini, 1545. By me Hanse Hit Prik.” The obvious meaning is that the fictitious Hans Hitprik has imprinted the book against the bishop, not at the town, of Winchester. Nevertheless the book has been quoted over and over again as a Winchester printed book.

The second book is Luther’s Faythfull admonycion of a certen true pastor, with the colophon, “Imprinted at Grenewych by Conrade Freeman in the month of May 1554. With the most gracious licence and privilege of God almighty, King of heaven and earth.” This last sentence is quite enough to show the nature of the work, and that the name of the place and printer are alike fictitious.