The printers, stationers and bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535

by E. Gordon Duff

Of all the foreign stationers who traded in this country none was more important than Francis Regnault. He was the son of an earlier Francis Regnault, and when a young man started as a stationer in London towards the end of the fifteenth century. Though he returned to Paris about 1496 he still continued to keep a shop in London and probably paid frequent visits to this country. When on the death of his father, about 1518, he succeeded to the great printing business, his English sympathies at once showed themselves, and from that time onward he poured out a continuous flood of books for the English market. Between the years 1519 and 1535 by far the larger portion of the service books produced for England came from his presses. The Act of 1534, and perhaps other causes, seem to have hampered his business to a serious degree and in 1536 he addressed a letter to Cromwell on the subject. The writer states that he lived in London forty years ago and since returned to Paris and continued his trade as bookseller in London, and likewise printed missals, breviaries, and Hours of the use of Sarum and other books. That he has entertained at his house in Paris honourable people of London and other towns of England. He understands that the English booksellers wish to prevent him printing such books and to confiscate what he has already printed, though he has never been forbidden to do so, but his books well received. He asks permission to continue to sell the said “usaiges” and other books in London and the neighbourhood, and asks Cromwell to speak on his behalf to the King, the chancellor and others. He adds that if any faults have been found in his books he will amend them. Considering the date of this letter, it seems much more probable that his troubles were caused not so much by the jealousy of the English booksellers as by the falling off in the demand for the class of books he produced.

Besides printing on his own account, Regnault printed also for English printers. In 1534 he printed for Berthelet the Interpretatio Psalmorum Omnium of Joannes Campensis, and in 1538 an edition of the English New Testament for Grafton and Whitchurch, edited by Coverdale, and intended to supersede the incorrect version printed shortly before at Southwark by James Nicholson.

One of the latest important undertakings on which Regnault was engaged was a folio edition of the English Bible printed for Grafton and Whitchurch and overseen by Coverdale. The work was progressing favourably when pressure was brought to bear upon the French authorities, and the press, type, and the sheets already printed were seized, most of the printed matter being burnt. By the influence of Cromwell the type seems to have been recovered and conveyed to London, where the work was finished in 1539. The usual account speaks of the printers and presses being brought over as well, but that must, I think, be a little poetical exaggeration, for the presses of England were surely by that time adequate for such work.

In the library of St John’s College, Cambridge, is the unique copy on vellum which was printed specially for Cromwell. The titles, woodcuts, and all the initials throughout the volume are beautifully illuminated.

Regnault again attempted to obtain some favour for his books in England, and a letter was written to Cromwell by Coverdale and Grafton on his behalf. Speaking of him they write, “Whereas of long tyme he hath bene an occupier into England more than xl yere, he hath allwayes provyded soche bookes for England as they moost occupied, so that he hath a great nombre at this present in his handes as Prymers in Englishe, Missoles with other soche like: wherof now (by the company of the Booksellers in London) he is utterly forbydden to make sale to the utter undoying of the man. Wherfore most humbly we beseke your lordshippe to be gracious and favourable unto him, that he may have lycence to sell those which he hath done allready, so that hereafter he prynte no moo in the english tong, onlesse he have an english man that is lerned to be his corrector.”

From the concluding sentence it would appear that a special attack had been made on these foreign printed service books because of their incorrect printing, and everyone who has examined the very numerous editions of the Horae ad usum Sarum printed abroad must admit that any complaints were fully justified. The booksellers evidently succeeded in their opposition, for no more Paris printed service books came to this country until the reign of Mary.

A solitary fragment, rescued like so many others from the binding of a book and now preserved in the Bodleian, is the only record we possess of the presence in England, nominally at any rate, of one of the most important Paris booksellers of the sixteenth century. The fragment consists of the first and last leaves of a little tract of four leaves entitled, “Psalterium beate marie virginis cum articulis incarnationis passionis et resurrexionis domini nostri iesu xpi nuper editum.” Of the liturgical interest of the fragment this is not the place to speak; our interest lies in the colophon, which runs “Imprynted at London in Flete aley the .xxi. daye of October by Simon Voter.” This, I take it, can refer to no one but the celebrated printer of that name, but whether the colophon exactly means all that it states is another matter. It would seem unlikely that so important a man should come to London to print so small a tract, and besides it has no appearance of English work. Like many others, he had probably an agent of his own in London and printing the tract in Paris sent it to London for sale. The type in which it is printed, a neat black letter, is what may be called a stock type, that is, it was made by a man who made type-founding his business and supplied various printers. On the title-page is a woodcut of the Assumption of the Virgin which I have seen in no other book, but which I hope may some day be the means of settling the real printer.

While speaking of these French stationers and their work, there is one book which though without name of printer or place was printed in English and intended for the English market and should certainly not be passed over, especially as it is in some ways the most remarkable book of the period. It is entitled The Passion of our Lord Jesu Christ with the Contemplations, and was translated from the French in 1508 and printed about the same time. The language is peculiar and uncouth and mixed up with foreign expressions. The book is a very large quarto equal in size to the ordinary small folio of the time, printed in double columns. But the extraordinary point about the book is the illustrations, large full-page woodcuts some twenty in number and obviously and unmistakeably German. The style of woodcutting, the dresses, the high-gabled houses, the storks nesting on the chimney-tops are all distinctive. This last gave the immediate suggestion of Strasburg and a very little search showed that the illustrations were almost exact copies of a series engraved by Urs Graf and first published in a volume entitled Passio Jesu Christi printed in 1506 by Knoblouch at Strasburg.

One of these cuts, the Crucifixion, occurs in the York Manual printed ostensibly by Wynkyn de Worde in 1509 for John Gachet and James Ferrebouc. Although the colophon of the book states emphatically twice over that it was printed in London for De Worde I have always thought it was printed abroad, not only because of this woodcut, but because the type both of text and music is not De Worde’s and because the device used in it is one only found in his foreign printed books and therefore presumably kept abroad.

Much seems to point to Paris as the place of production of both books, and a further piece of evidence exists in the fact that these cuts are found in an edition of Les Exposicions des epistres et evangiles printed for Verard in 1511-12. I wrote on the subject of the English book to M. Delisle, who very kindly made some enquiries at the Bibliothèque Nationale, but at present no French original can be traced nor could the Keeper of the Prints throw any further light on the history of the cuts. The translation would appear to have been done in England as it was done at the command of Henry VII. The only perfect copy known is in the Bodleian, but there are fragments in bindings in several libraries, among others Westminster Abbey and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.