Both books are apparently from the press of Christopher Froschover at Zurich, a prolific printer of controversial books.
In Seyer’s Memoirs of Bristol, published in 1823, the claim was put forward for the existence of an early press at Bristol on the strength of extracts from some manuscript Kalendars to the effect that “In the year 1546 a press for printing was set up in the castle which is used daily to the honour of God.” No trace of anything printed at Bristol in the sixteenth century has been found, and perhaps the date quoted may be an error for 1646, about which time a press was certainly at work in the town issuing sermons and other tracts.
When we consider the places where presses were at work during this period, or where stationers lived who commissioned books, it seems surprising that other towns of equal or greater importance have nothing to show printed or published in them. So much that has come down to us has survived by so slender a chance that there is always the hope that further information may be found and other towns added to our list. Hereford is only represented in a colophon by the unique copy of one book, Exeter by two books which have been lost for over a hundred and fifty years.
Chester, for example, is a town where we might have expected to find books printed or published. The stationers there were certainly important, for they formed themselves along with the heraldic painters and embroiderers into a company which obtained a charter from the Mayor and Aldermen on the feast of St Philip and St James in 1534, formally enrolled in 1536. After some trouble I ran the registers of the Company to earth, but unfortunately the first volume has been lost, so that the records between the years 1536 and 1587 are missing, and any information about the period we are now concerned with, irrecoverable at present.
Chester was the centre of a large and important district, and was also the chief port of embarkation for Ireland (it was from there that Edward King set out on his ill-fated voyage), so that we might well expect its stationers to have published something, or some printer to have set up a press. And there are many other towns in a similar position. We know from records that they supported a number of stationers, and it is hard to believe that nothing was printed for them, even an almanack.
Within the period we have been examining, roughly the hundred years since the invention of printing up to the passing of the Stationers’ Company’s Charter in 1557, printing had been practised in nine provincial towns. The two fifteenth-century presses, Oxford and St Alban’s, ceased simultaneously in 1486. York, away in the north of England, had a press at work between 1509 and 1516. Then comes a curious revival; a second press at Oxford from 1517 to 1519, a press at Cambridge in 1521 and 1522, at Tavistock in 1525 and 1534, at Abingdon in 1528, and a second at St Alban’s from 1534 to 1538. Then came the Reformation and the accompanying changes in the old order of things after which not one of the old presses ventured to start again. The accession of Edward VI. seems to have given a new impetus to book-production, and the remaining three of the early provincial presses were started during his reign, Ipswich working in 1547 and 1548, Worcester from 1548 to 1553, and Canterbury from 1549 to 1556.
When we come to sum up the books produced, it must be admitted that the output was miserably small. Between 1478 and 1556 the provincial presses of England issued about one hundred and eleven books, not three books in two years; twenty-one more books were printed for provincial stationers, bringing up the number to one hundred and thirty-two, not two books a year. Between 1478 and 1516, thirty books were printed in three towns; between 1517 and 1538, twenty-six in five towns; and between 1548 and 1556, fifty-five books in three towns. The output of many foreign provincial towns far surpassed that of all the English put together.
But in looking at the history of the book trade in England during the period, one point is especially striking, the very great disproportion between the numbers of printers and of stationers. The books produced by the English presses formed but an infinitesimal portion of the literature circulated in the country. The number of printers we can reckon fairly accurately, for there must be few, if any, who have left no trace; with stationers it is quite otherwise, for we are almost entirely dependent on records and registers, of which vast numbers have utterly perished. In these early times, fortunately for us, if unfortunately for themselves, people seem to have been continually engaged in lawsuits, and it is from records of law pleas and actions that much of our information is derived, though often it consists of mere names.
It is very difficult for us now to arrive at a clear conception of the position of a stationer or the character of the book trade of that period. Reading and writing were not very common accomplishments, books were relatively expensive and purchasers must have been few, yet in a small town like Bury St Edmund’s we find about the year 1505 no fewer than six stationers. We know the names of six, there may have been more, yet how were even six to earn a livelihood? The trade of a stationer then was more comprehensive than now, for he was a bookseller and a bookbinder, but even then his business cannot have been large and would hardly be sufficient to keep him. It is clear, however, from numerous contemporary references, that stationers often engaged in other business apart from their own. We find them dealing in various things besides books, but by far the most favourite occupation supplementary to selling books was to keep a public-house. Numbers of the early stationers are spoken of also as beer brewers. In the Oxford University Archives we constantly find licences granted to the booksellers to sell wine or beer. The early English printer, Jean Barbier, who had worked at London and Westminster at the end of the fifteenth century, is cited in a London lawsuit as “Johannes Barbour nuper de Coventre, bere brewer, alias dictus Jehanne Berbier nuper de Coventre, prenter.” Anthony de Solen, the first printer at Norwich, was admitted a freeman of that city on the condition “that he shall not occupye eny trade of marchandise eyther from the parts beyonde the seas or from London, but onely his arte of prynting and selling of Renysh wyne.” References to this dual business are very frequent, and it seems to have continued as late as the seventeenth century.
The importation of foreign books into England during the end of the fifteenth and early part of the sixteenth centuries must have been very large. The revival of learning was setting in, the country was gaining a reputation for scholarship and attracting foreign students, and every encouragement was given by the authorities to the book trade. In the grant given to Peter Actors, he was allowed to import books without paying customs, so that there was some tax upon imported books, though it was probably very slight.