Erasmus begins about this time to be represented amongst De Worde’s books by his Colloquiorum formulae, De copia verborum, Good manners for children, and a few others, but the printer does not seem to have printed many editions, which is the more remarkable as the booksellers’ accounts of the time point to a large demand for Erasmus’ books.
In 1530 appeared the Book of Songs, of which there is a copy in the British Museum, and it is the first genuine music-book printed by De Worde. The book contained songs for four and three parts, but the one volume known contains the bass only. From this time onwards most of the printer’s work was confined to reprinting earlier editions, and only about one in twenty were new books; a good deal of his work was done by other printers, as can be seen from the type, and in the last few years we find him printing books for other people. For his old apprentice John Byddell he printed four or five books in 1533 and 1534, two editions of Erasmus’ Enchiridion Militis Christiani, a Life of Hyldebrande, and another work.
His last book was curiously enough a little poem, The Complaint of the too soon maryed. I do not know whether he considered it applicable to his own case, but his own marriage had taken place more than 55 years before.
De Worde died apparently at the very beginning of 1535, for his will dated June 5, 1534, was proved on the 19th January following. It is much to be regretted that this most valuable document has never been reprinted in full, for both the published abstracts (Herbert’s Ames, 119, 120, and Plomer’s Abstract of Wills, 3, 4) omit important names. To each of his apprentices, who are not named, he leaves books to the value of three pounds. To Robert Darby, Robert Maas, John Barbanson, Hector, Simon [Simon Martynson?], John Wislyn, and Alard, a bookbinder, bequests are left, and they are described as servants, that is people who were then working for him, either apprentices who had served their full time or journeymen. John Butler, James Gaver, and John Byddell are each described as “late my servant.” Besides these, legacies were left to Henry Pepwell, John Gowghe, and Robert Copland, and “Nowell the bokebinder in Shoo lane.” This latter was a certain Noël Havy, a Frenchman who came to England in 1523, married an English wife, became a denizen, and continued in business until after 1550. John Byddell and James Gaver were made executors and continued to live and carry on business in his house.
De Worde’s wife had long been dead, and no children, if he had any, seem to have survived him. He ordered his executors to purchase land in or near London which should produce at least twenty shillings a year to be given to St Bride’s Church to keep an obit for his soul, and we learn from the Survey of Chantries made in February 1547 that the sum thus expended was thirty-six pounds. Of De Worde’s work as a bookbinder we know little. He inherited the binding tools which had belonged to Caxton, and there are several bindings on which these are used, notably, a very fine example in the library of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, which can with certainty be ascribed to him. Early in the sixteenth century, when panel stamps were generally used, Caxton’s dies seem to have been parted with, but we cannot at present point to any panel as having been used by De Worde. It will be noticed, however, that the three binders mentioned in the will, Alard, who was then in his employment, James Gaver, a former assistant, and the independent workman Noël Havy of Shoe Lane were all foreigners, and therefore most probably used their own panels of foreign design.
James Gaver belonged to a well-known family of Low Country binders and would doubtless use panels similar to theirs. When we find early printed English books in their original bindings it is fairly safe to assume these bindings to have been executed in England, for there could have been practically no exportation of such books, and we know of a considerable number stamped with distinctly Netherlandish panels. This James Gaver continued to live with Byddell after De Worde’s death at the sign of the Sun and issued one book with his name, an edition of Stanbrydge’s Accidence from that address in 1539. Whether or no this book was really printed by him is uncertain; for it is identical, with the exception of the colophon, with an edition printed nominally by Nicolas Bourman. At the end of Gaver’s edition is a very rude woodcut of the Sun (used as a printer’s device and referring to the sign of the shop), which had been used previously by Lawrence Andrewe in his edition of the Mirrour of the World.
Gaver had taken out letters of denization on March 2, 1535 in which he is described as James Gaver, stationer, from the dominion of the Emperor. In 1541 he is entered in the Returns of Aliens and pays a tax of £1. 7s. He died in 1545 and his will was proved on June 15. He there calls himself a bookseller and requested that he might be buried in St Bride’s Church, before the altar of St Catherine, “neare unto Wynkyn de Worde sometyme my master.” The overseer to the will was William Stewarde, a stationer, his son-in-law.
Julian Notary, who had been printing in Westminster since 1497, moved soon after 1500 into St Clement’s parish, just outside Temple Bar. He appears to have taken possession of the shop lately vacated by Pynson, which during the latter’s tenancy seems to have had no sign. By Notary it was given the sign of the Three Kings. The first dated book from this new address was an edition of the Golden Legend issued in February 1504. Just as from the very full colophon of the preceding edition issued by W. de Worde in 1498 it is clearly proved that De Worde began his year on the first of January, so from the colophon of this edition we can prove that Notary did the opposite and began his year on the twenty-fifth of March. It runs as follows. “Whyche werke I dyde accomplysshe and fynysshe at Tempell barr the xvi daye of Feverer. The yere of oure lorde a Thousande ccccciii. And in the xix yere of the reygne of kynge Henry the vii. By me Julyan Notary. Thys emprynted at Temple Barre by me Julyan Notary.” Now the 16th of February 19 Henry VII was 1504 in our ordinary computation, so that Notary clearly did not end his year until March 24. This Golden Legend contains a very curious and mixed collection of illustrations. Some had belonged to W. de Worde and some to Caxton. There are besides five metal engravings in the “manière criblée,” obtained doubtless from abroad, and some curious engraved initial letters which had apparently belonged to André Bocard. It would be exceedingly interesting could we trace the history of these criblée cuts and discover whence Notary obtained them. The designs were clearly taken from a set of compositions the work of a Lower Rhine engraver about 1450-60, known as the “master of St Erasmus,” of which a complete set may be found in the British Museum. Notary’s, however, are not direct copies but probably imitations of some criblée prints copied from the original designs. Such sets are at Munich and Berlin, and another of a similar class may be found in the editions of the Horologium Devotionis, printed at Cologne by Ulric Zel about 1490, and John Landen, a few years later. Notary’s are very exact copies from these, but engraved the reverse way, a common occurrence in copies.
In 1507 Notary issued a very curious book, the first edition of Nicodemus Gospel, which I mention here slightly out of its turn as it contains three more criblée cuts and is the only other book except the Chronicles of England in which they are found. Only one copy of the book is known and its history is interesting. It appeared in the auction catalogue (p. 354) of Richard Smith’s books, sold in 1682, bound up in a volume of tracts, and after the sale it disappeared. On the authority of the catalogue it was mentioned by successive bibliographers, but no one had seen it and its whereabouts was unknown. I was beginning to think that it never existed and that the entry in Smith’s catalogue was founded on a mistake, when to my delight, on a recent visit to Dublin, I found the identical volume in Archbp. Marsh’s library. It had been bought at Smith’s sale in 1682 by Bishop Stillingfleet, and the whole of his library of printed books was bought at his death by Marsh and transported to Dublin. As Marsh’s library has never had a printed catalogue and has not been much used, its contents are very little known, though I am glad to say a catalogue of the Early English books is about to be printed. Besides the Golden Legend, Notary printed in 1504 an edition of the Chronicles of England, and a now lost edition of the Sarum Hymns and Sequences of which he issued another edition in the following year.
At the beginning of 1508 an edition of the Scala Perfectionis appeared, and the copy described by Herbert is similar to the one which came to the University Library with Mr Sandars’s collection. Herbert describes his as in an original binding with Notary’s mark, and the one bequeathed by Mr Sandars is similarly bound.