John Rastell’s son William was born about 1508 and went to Oxford in 1525, where though according to Wood he studied diligently he took no degree. His first book, issued in 1530, while his father was still printing, was an edition of Caesar’s Commentaries in Latin and English. His books, like his father’s, may be divided into three distinct classes, legal treatises, controversial works mostly by More, and plays and interludes. Amongst the latter are Heywood’s Play of Love, The Pardoner and the Friar, the Play of the Weather, and Johan Johan the husband and Tib the wife, copies of them all being in the library of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Another play, Medwall’s Interlude of Nature, is in the British Museum. While still a printer he appears to have studied law, having been admitted a student in 1532, while he was called to the bar in 1539, where he practised with considerable success. Unlike his father he remained through life a staunch Catholic, and when Edward VI succeeded to the throne, he with many others of his faith sought refuge abroad. He lived in Louvain until Mary came to the throne when he returned to England and was rapidly advanced in his profession, until in 1558 he was made a judge in the Queen’s Bench, a position which he retained until 1563. Shortly afterwards he returned to Louvain, where he died on August 27, 1565. After he had given up printing on his own account William Rastell compiled and edited a considerable number of important law-books which continued to be reprinted for a long period. But the work by which he is best known is the edition of the complete works of his uncle Sir Thomas More, published in two volumes folio in 1557 by Richard Tottell.
LECTURE VII.
THE STATIONERS OF LONDON AND THE
FOREIGN TRADE.
The history of the stationers and the book-trade in England during the period between 1500 and 1535 is very obscure and information is difficult to obtain. That the number of stationers was very considerable we know from incidental references, and though references are fairly numerous it is almost impossible in the present state of our knowledge to combine isolated facts into any connected story. One point is quite clear, and every new discovery only tends to emphasize it, and that is that the book-trade with the Continent and the dealings of foreign stationers in this country were infinitely more extensive and important than is usually supposed. While other countries had a perfectly adequate supply of printers and stationers of their own and imported little from their neighbours and practically nothing from England, here the reverse was the case. In the time of Richard III there were but four printers in England, one in Westminster, one in London, one in Oxford, and one in St Alban’s, so that we can quite understand the Act of 1484, which was so strong an encouragement to foreigners to trade here in books, and the resulting influx of aliens. There were hardly any restrictions upon foreign trade and there was a ready market for foreign printed books, so that it is not surprising that the more important foreign publishers dealt largely with this country. They appear to have set up stalls and shops in the neighbourhood of St Paul’s, where probably the Company of Stationers would not have power to interfere, and to have placed agents in charge of them. Besides this they sent agents round to the various provincial fairs, which at that time were the greatest business centres in the country, with waggon loads of books for sale.
Our sources of information about these stationers are very scattered and also very inadequate. Chief amongst them are of course the vast masses of documents, only partially explored, preserved in the Public Record Office. The list of denizations and the Returns of Aliens have been printed by the Huguenot Society, and these give a little information, though unfortunately the business of the person is often not stated and there is also the further difficulty of his being entered under his correct surname, a name which in the ordinary course of business he rarely made use of himself. The names too are most carelessly spelt and entered. One man for instance occurs under the following names, Frinnorren, Fremorshem, Formishaa, Bringmarshen, and Vrimors. The lists of denizations are of little use as far as our present period is concerned, for from 1509 to 1534 only 240 persons are entered, though in 1535 the large number of 172 was reached owing to pressure being put upon strangers from the Low Countries. In this total of 412 only seven are mentioned as having business connected with the book-trade; in fact in these lists of denizations the occupation of only about one in twenty-five is mentioned. The only returns of aliens before 1535 are the imperfect ones in connexion with the subsidies granted to Henry VIII in 1523-25, and in these the occupations are but very rarely entered. These returns are therefore useless in giving information about otherwise unknown stationers; we can only attempt to trace persons whose names are already known, and this is rendered the more difficult as people are arranged anyhow, according to the ward they inhabited, and there is as yet no index to the book.
Taking all persons residing in England connected with the book-trade, printers, binders, and stationers, from 1476 to 1535, it would not, I think, be far from the mark to state that two-thirds were aliens.
By the Act of 1484 they were exempted from the restrictions imposed on other workmen, and they could by residing close to St Paul’s or in the liberties of St Martin’s or Blackfriars escape from the jurisdiction of the wardens of the Stationers’ Company or the Lord Mayor. Though the immigration of foreigners was always encouraged by Government, it evoked the bitterest hostility from native craftsmen and was the frequent cause of those fights and squabbles which culminated in the famous Mayday riots of 1517. As a case in point may be mentioned the proceedings in the Star Chamber about the end of the fifteenth century, when Richard Pynson sued Harry Squire and others for assaulting and attempting to murder him and his servants. He stated that his assistants were so threatened and assaulted that they had been compelled to leave, and that consequently his business was at a standstill. This perhaps may have been the reason for his leaving St Clement’s parish and settling within the City in 1500.
Many aliens in order to obtain the privileges of a native took out letters of denization, but these privileges only commenced from the date of the grant and were not retrospective as in the case of a patent of naturalization. Letters of denization allowed a man to hold, but not to inherit lands; nor did they confer any benefit on the children born previous to the date of the grant. In 1512 an Act was passed for levying a subsidy, and it was ordained that every alien made a denizen should be rated like a native, but that aliens not denizened should pay a double rate. In 1515 this was reversed and denizens again compelled to pay a double rate.
In 1523 as a set-off for levying a subsidy Henry VIII gave assent to an Act which ordered that no alien, denizen or not, using any manner of handicraft within the realm should from henceforth take any apprentice except he be born under the King’s obedience; that no alien should keep more than two alien journeymen; and that aliens using handicrafts in London and two miles round should be under the search and reformation of the wardens of the handicrafts within the City of London. This Act seems to have been very laxly enforced, and was practically repeated by a decree of the Star Chamber in 1528, which contained the additional clause that no stranger, not being a denizen and who was not a householder before 15th February 1528, should keep house or shop where he should exercise any handicraft. Finally, in 1534 the celebrated Act against foreign printers and binders was passed, whose terms and effects will be noticed later.
From the earliest times London citizens had been forbidden by their oath of freedom from taking any foreign born apprentice, and the Act of 1523 laid a similar prohibition on all aliens, so that the foreign element was slowly and surely eliminated.