The authorities of the City of London were strongly opposed to admitting any foreigners to the freedom of the City. In a letter from Thomas Berthelet to Morisine written in 1540 he writes, “My lorde mayor told me ... that but one stranger born was made freeman these 40 years. I fear the answer is somewhat feigned, for instead of one stranger made freeman this 40 years, there have been six or more. Perhaps they do it to show that they esteem not the liberty of London so light as to admit a stranger born so suddenly when the King’s natural subjects must do so long and painful a service before they can enjoy it.”
The great centre of trade during this period was St Paul’s Churchyard, and the shops there were of two kinds. There were the substantial houses round the cathedral, where the printer or stationer could carry on his business and dwell, but clustered in every direction against the very walls of the church were booths and sheds and stalls. These were simply “lock up” shops of one story, many with flat roofs for people to stand on to view processions, and were used by booksellers and such printers as had printing-offices elsewhere. In Strype’s life of Parker we have a description of a shop set up at a later date by Day the printer, “Whereupon he got framed a neat handsome shop. It was but little and low and flat-roofed, and leaded like a terrace, railed and posted, fit for men to stand upon in any triumph or show, but could not in any wise hurt and deface the same. This cost him forty or fifty pounds.”
Even the most important printers had stalls before their houses, for we read in an account of a lawsuit in 1536 resulting from an attack on some Frenchmen in Fleet Street, that one of them, endeavouring to escape, concealed himself under the King’s Printer’s (i.e. Berthelet’s) stall. Thomas Symonds, a stationer, who was a witness in a lawsuit in 1514, speaks of himself as standing before his stall at seven in the morning, not so very early an hour at a period when the Privy Council assembled at eight.
Though London was the head-quarters of the trade, the stationers did not confine their attention to the City, but travelled about the country attending the various fairs, where so far as we can judge from such few early accounts as are still preserved, a very considerable portion of their trade was done. Great fairs such as that of Sturbridge brought booksellers from far and near, and so great was their fame as a bookselling centre that even at the end of the seventeenth century the great London dealers sent down vast consignments of books which were sold by auction by the leading London auctioneers. All the more important stationers too paid frequent visits to the Continent and attended the great fair at Frankfurt, the principal opportunity for seeing all the latest publications and the recognised time and place for the transaction of business.
In treating of these early stationers I propose first of all to take those who lived and carried on business solely in London, and then to pass on to those who traded both in London and on the Continent. Of very many we know little but the name, and these I can but pass over, touching only on those who are known as publishers of books, or about whom we have some definite information.
The first of these is a certain John Boudins, or Baldwin as he called himself in English, who lived in the parish of St Clement’s, Eastcheap. We know of him from one book, an edition of the Sarum Expositio Hymnorum et Sequentiarum which was printed for him at Paris by André Bocard in 1502, and which is apparently the first edition with the preface of Badius Ascensius. Boudins died shortly after the publication of the book, for his will dated October 11, 1501, was proved March 30, 1503. He was a native of the Low Countries.
A certain Andrew Rue, who had succeeded his brother John, who had died in 1493, was a stationer like his brother in St Paul’s Churchyard. He died in 1517 leaving legacies to relations in Frankfort and others. To Thomas Wallis, priest of St Faith’s, he leaves a bound copy of the book of sermons called Dormi Secure, and to David Owen of the same church a copy of Quentin’s sermons. Two of the executors of his will were John Reynes and Joyce Pelgrim, both to be noticed shortly.
Richard Nele is mentioned as a stationer in a document of 1525, when he petitioned to be transferred to the Company of Ironmongers.
John Taverner, another stationer, was paid £4 in 1521 for binding the books for use in the Chapel Royal. He died in 1531 and his will was proved in November of that year. In the year following John Sedley, Warden of the Craft of Stationers, died.
It would be useless here, as well as extremely tedious, to go on enumerating the names of stationers of whom we know so little, so I will pass on to some about whom we possess some more definite information.