My mynde longe vexing with ymaginacyons
That my work before shold apere more comendable
Now have I performed a boke of dystyllacyons.
The “sundry trifles of mirth” might well be such books as Frederick of Jennen, The Life of Virgilius, or The Parson of Kalenborowe. The only two books to which he put his name as translator, The wonderful shape and nature that our Saviour Christ Jesu hath created in beasts, serpents, fowles, etc., and the Valuation of gold and silver, hardly come under the head of “trifles of mirth.”
No doubt this large production of English books must have entailed frequent visits to England and a shop or agent there, but the only clue we have to John of Doesborch’s residence in this country is afforded by the entry in the lists made for the subsidy of 1523, “De Johanne van Dwysborow, extraneo, pro xls per annum ijs.,” and he is entered in the parish of St Martin in the Fields.
I now come to two printers of Antwerp, in many ways the most interesting of all, but of whom little is known and less has been written. These are Christopher and Hans van Ruremond or Rémonde, who were concerned very specially with the printing and dispersal of the first English New Testaments. Whether or not these two men were related is not very clear, but from the way they were connected in business it seems very probable. Christopher, the more important of the two, was known also as Christopher van Endhoven, which is the name used on his device and under which he is entered in 1524 in the registers of the St Lucas Gilde at Antwerp. Many have thought that Christopher van Ruremond and Christopher van Endhoven were two persons, but as all the books in the two names have the same type and woodcuts, and as in three cases at least we find the device of Christopher van Endhoven and the name of Christopher van Ruremond together, we may take them to be the same. Besides if they were different persons it would be a very marvellous coincidence that they should die on the same date, and their widows simultaneously begin to carry on their businesses.
Christopher began to print in 1523, issuing a Sarum Manual and Processional; this was followed by four more Sarum service books in 1524 and five in 1525. Until after February 6, 1525, all were printed for Peter Kaetz, the later ones for Francis Birckman. In 1526 he entered on a task which was destined to bring him into considerable trouble, the printing of the New Testament in English. In the beginning of the year he printed a Sarum Breviary, but for the next year we have nothing else from his press, for a reason to be noted shortly. In 1527 he printed three Missals, one of Sarum use, and in 1528 three Sarum service books and a New Testament in Dutch. For 1529 we have no books, and 1530 is represented by an English Almanack and two editions of the Sarum Horae.
In 1525 Christopher and Hans had printed a Bible in Dutch, Hans printing the greater part of the Old Testament and Christopher the remainder and the New Testament. On October 30, 1525, Hans was summoned before the town council of Antwerp for printing a book tainted with Lutheran heresies, was ordered to leave the town and district immediately, and go on pilgrimage to the Holy Blood at Wilsenaken in Prussia, and was further forbidden to return to the town or neighbourhood until he could produce a certificate that the pilgrimage had been carried out. This he apparently objected to do and crossed over to England.
Christopher, left in Antwerp, soon afterwards started on the very dangerous undertaking of printing English New Testaments, which were sent into England and sold there by Hans. In 1528 in the table of certain persons abjured within the diocese of London we find “John Raimund a Dutchman, for causing fifteen hundred of Tyndale’s New Testaments to be printed at Antwerp and for bringing five hundred into England.” John Raimund is clearly the English form of Jan Roemundt and is probably identical with the Dutchman who earlier in the year was in the Fleet for having sold to Robert Necton some 200 or 300 copies of the Testament. At the end of 1526 when these Antwerp printed Testaments had found their way into England, a strong effort was made by the English authorities to have them suppressed and the printer punished. On November 24 John Hackett wrote to Wolsey saying there were two printers in Antwerp who printed these books but that a proclamation would soon be issued against them. On the 12th January, 1527, Hackett again wrote that the Margrave had declared that according to the Emperor’s last mandment these English books must be condemned to be burnt, the printer Christopher Endhoven banished, and the third part of his goods confiscated. The prisoner’s counsel however protested against this judgement, saying that the Emperor’s subjects ought not to be judged by the laws of other countries, and his plea seems to have been successful, for Christopher does not appear to have been banished, and continued to print at Antwerp. About the end of 1530 he appears to have crossed over to England in connexion with the sale of English Testaments, and the last act of the drama is tersely stated by Foxe under the year 1531. An Antwerp bookseller named Christopher for selling certain New Testaments in English to John Row, bookbinder, was thrown into prison at Westminster and there died.