While a serious blow was struck at the French book trade by the Act of 1534, which attacked the supply, Henry VIII himself did it much more serious damage by destroying the demand. Almost the whole of the trade done by the French booksellers consisted in the production and supply of service books; and the great change which was taking place in the services was gradually tending to do away with their use. After this time we find no more editions of the old Breviary or the Missal produced at all, except for a short time in Mary’s reign, and these two books had been mainly produced in France. The Horae or Primer still continued in use, but its character was so much changed and so much English introduced into it that it was as well produced in England. By this time too the taste for the elaborate borders and illustrations and sumptuous printing which marked the earlier work seems to have disappeared, so that as a general rule the editions sent over from abroad were as inartistic and badly printed as our own.
The competition of the Low Countries must also have had something to do with the decay of French trade, for the Antwerp stationers boasted they could undersell anyone, and certainly such later service books as were printed abroad were printed at Antwerp.
Be the explanation what it may, the fact is clear that the date which saw the passing of the Act of 1534 concerning books, saw the end of French book production for the English market.
LECTURE VIII.
THE STATIONERS FROM ANTWERP AND THE
BOOKBINDERS.
Though in regard to books printed for the English market France is most important in numerical strength, it ranks far below the Low Countries in point of interest. The productions of Paris and Rouen consisted almost entirely of liturgical books and a few dictionaries and grammars. From Antwerp on the other hand from the time of Gerard Leeu in the fifteenth century onwards there was an almost unbroken output of books in the English language. Leeu began with reprints of some of Caxton’s books, Adrian van Berghen, the printer of Arnold’s Chronicle, followed, then came Jan van Doesborch with his many curious little English books, and then, most interesting of all, the various editions of the English Testament and the multitude of controversial works caused by the religious dissensions in England.
Of Gerard Leeu, “an exceedingly pleasant person” as Erasmus called him, and his English books, I gave some account in an earlier Lecture; so I must begin the account of the sixteenth century with Adrian van Berghen, Adryan of Barrowe as he calls himself in his English imprints. He apparently began to print about the close of the fifteenth century, living in a shop with the sign of the Great Golden Mortar in the Market; in 1507 he had moved to the Corn Market behind the Town Hall, and at a later date he settled in a house by the Cammerpoort Bridge with the sign of the Golden Missal. In 1535 like many another stationer he got into trouble in religious matters and was accused of keeping and selling Lutheran books, of which a number had been found in his house. In vain he protested that he knew nothing about them and that they had been secretly put there by some enemy, for after a lengthy trial he was found guilty and on January 3, 1536, was sentenced to leave the state of Antwerp within three days, and perform a pilgrimage to, of all places in the world, Nicosia in Cyprus. Nothing further is known of him. But Adrian of Barrowe will ever be had in grateful remembrance as the printer of Arnold’s Chronicle, for in this he first published to the world the beautiful ballad of the “Nut-browne Maid.”
A description of Arnold’s Chronicle is a difficult matter to undertake. It was one of the books which served as weapons to the late Professor Chandler in his campaign against the subject catalogue of the Bodleian. It contains a list of the London sheriffs, and a guide to writing business letters, a list of the London churches, recipes for making ink, and a variety of other miscellaneous information. And in the middle, apropos of nothing, “The Nut-browne Maid.” Chronicle is a misleading title, for the work is really a commonplace book and a very interesting one. Fortunately this and the later edition printed about 1520 by Peter Treveris are fairly common books and available in a considerable number of libraries. There is a copy in the Parker collection in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, interesting to the typographer from an accidental cause. The printer when inking the forme accidentally pulled out a type which has fallen sideways upon the top of the rest and impressed on the page an exact full-length image of itself. From the few early examples of such faults as are known it has been possible to obtain a good deal of information as to the sizes and shapes of early types.
Adrian van Berghen printed also an English Almanack for 1529 and an edition of Holt’s Lac Puerorum. This latter is known only from fragments, and some of these have a curious connexion with Cambridge. Among a parcel of unidentified fragments in the Bodleian I came across some pieces of this book which had at one time formed the pad or boards of a binding. From the well indented marks on the paper it was easy to identify the panel which had been stamped upon the binding as the picture of St Nicholas raising the three children, with the name underneath, Nicolas Spiernick, used by Nicolas Speryng, the Cambridge stationer. But the interesting point about the fragments was that on one of them was written the name of N. Speyrinck, thus connecting the Spiernick of the binding with the name as used at Cambridge, Speryng. It is perhaps not strictly right to have included Adrian van Berghen, since he had not so far as we know any personal connexion with England; but the interest of one at least of the English books which he printed must serve as an excuse.
The next printer to be considered is Francis Birckman, the first of the numerous bookselling family of that name, and himself a very important stationer. He was a native of Cologne, who had his headquarters at Antwerp while he carried on business in several other towns, and a great part of his trade was with England. Panzer in his Annales Typographici does not mention him before the year 1513, but at an earlier date he was issuing books for the English market and had a shop in St Paul’s Churchyard. He is first mentioned in 1504, when in partnership with a certain Gerard Cluen of Amersfoordt in Utrecht he issued a Sarum Missal. Beyond the mention of his name in this one book we know nothing of Gerard Cluen, but I think we may take for granted that he was a relation of Birckman’s wife, Gertrude van Amersfoordt. Of the Missal but two copies are known, one in Trinity College, Dublin, and the other, recently acquired, in the British Museum. Between 1504 and 1510 Birckman’s name is not found, but after that date he issued books continuously until about 1528. The history of the Birckman family is very confused, but I cannot help thinking that there were two branches both using the same Christian names. It seems impossible otherwise to account for the large number of books printed in various places almost at the same time, unless they were merely commissioned and Birckman’s name put in the imprint. The Birckmans were certainly always travelling about; at a little later date I find one of them within three months at Antwerp, Cologne, London, Oxford, and Cambridge. It is interesting to notice that he had combined his business in Oxford with a visit to young Christopher Froschover, nephew of the printer of the first English Bible of 1535, who was then an undergraduate there.