The last group of books, which number fourteen, are called the Holbom type books, because, in the imprint of one of the two books that contain them we find the words, “Enprente per moy william Maclyn en Holborn.” The general type used for the text of these books is very remarkably like that used by Veldener at Utrecht and by John Brito at Bruges, and may, perhaps, have been obtained by Machlinia from abroad, though it is of the same school of type as several used in England.
The most important book issued in this series is an edition of the Chronicles of England. It is a very rare book, but there is an imperfect copy in Cambridge in the Barham collection in Pembroke College. The space for the initial letters, as is usually the case with early books, has been left blank to be filled in by the rubricator, but in one copy that I have seen, the initials have been filled in in gold, not gold leaf, but gold paint, and this is the only example of its use that I have found in an early English book. Another curious point about the book is that though it is a folio, a folio of 238 leaves, yet in all copies leaves 59 and 66, the first and last leaves of a quire, are printed on quarto paper. I thought once that perhaps for some reason these leaves had been cancelled and reprinted, but it seems more probable that the printer had for the moment run out of his supply of ordinary-sized paper, and had to use some of a much larger size cut in half. A similar case of mixed papers is found in the Nova Rhetorica printed at St Albans in 1480, which is partly quarto and partly octavo.
Three editions were published by Machlinia of the curious Treatise of the Pestilence by Canutus or Kamitus, Bishop of Westeraes in Sweden, and of each edition only one copy is known, one in the British Museum, one in the University Library, and one sold lately in the sale of the Ashbumham Library and now at Manchester. I must warn anyone who uses Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities, that the facsimile page of the book which he gives is made up from the upper part of the first leaf of the Cambridge copy and the lower part of the same leaf of the Manchester copy, which he must have seen when it was in the possession of Triphook, the bookseller, so that the resulting facsimile is rather puzzling. The fact that one of these editions, that in the British Museum, has a title-page, makes us inclined to put it to rather a late date, but at any rate it is the earliest title-page in an English printed book.
Another book in this group, by far the commonest and best known, is the Speculum Christiani, ascribed to a writer named John Watton, a curious medley of theological matter interspersed with pieces of English poetry. The colophon states that the book was printed for and at the expense of a merchant named Henry Vrankenbergh. About this merchant I could find out nothing until, curiously enough, on my last visit to Cambridge a fortnight ago, my attention was drawn by a friend to a note in the Descriptive Catalogue of ancient deeds in the Record Office, where is a note of a “Demise to Henry Frankenbergk and Barnard van Stondo, merchants of printed books, of an alley in St Clement’s Lane, called St Mark’s Alley, 10th May, 1482.”
This is, I believe, the earliest note relating to foreign stationers or merchants of printed books in England, but I hope from the same source we may expect to obtain many more as soon as the endless series of documents in the Record Office are calendared.
An edition of the Vulgaria Terentii was also printed in this type. An almost perfect copy was added to the British Museum Library some years ago, and a considerable portion of another copy is in the library of Caius College.
Machlinia also printed two of the Nova Festa, the Festum visitationis beate Marie virginis and the Festum transfigurationis Jesu Christi. The first of these is only known from two leaves which had been used to line the boards of the binding of Pynson’s Dives and Pauper. Of the second a beautiful and perfect copy is in the library of the Marquis of Bath. It is curious to notice that it contains not only the feast according to the Sarum use, but also according to the Roman use.
The last three of Machlinia’s books to be noticed are the three which, though undated themselves, contain certain evidences of date. The first of these contains the statutes made in the first year of Richard III, and, as this first year ran from June 26, 1483, to June 25, 1484, the book cannot be earlier than the second half of the latter year.
The second book is one about which I am very much inclined to doubt whether it was printed by Machlinia at all, but rather by Veldener, who used apparently identical type; and though I have had for several years under my charge at Manchester the only copy of the book known I cannot make up my mind about it. It is an edition of the Regulae et ordinationes of Innocent VIII, and could not at any rate have been printed before the very end of 1484. The type seems newer in appearance than any of Machlinia’s, though to all appearance identical. Dibdin, with his usual readiness, helps us by remarking, “It presents us with the same character or general appearance of type as that which Caxton and Machlinia occasionally used. It is not much unlike the St Alban’s type.”
The last production is a Bull of Innocent VIII confirming the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. It was reissued in 1494 by Alexander VI, and there the date is given as 27th March, 1486.