On the death of Christopher, Hans wished to return to Antwerp, but in order to do so a certificate of his pilgrimage had to be obtained. In the archives of the city there is an entry dated March 29, 1531, that letters of the pilgrimage having been presented he was free to reenter the city and district. He did not stay long abroad but returned to London, and as an assistant to his fellow-countryman John Nicholson, the printer of Southwark, has been the source of much puzzle to commentators on the English New Testament; for I believe him to be no other than John Hollybush, the so-called reviser of the edition of 1538. The name John Hollybush has generally been considered a pseudonym, and most modern authorities consider the person so designated to have been Miles Coverdale. But Hollybush was a real person, and in the troubled times of 1535, when inhabitants of the Low Countries dwelling in England were forced to become denizened, we find entered amongst others, “John Holibusche alias Holybusche of London, Stationer otherwise bookbinder, born in Ruremund, under the obedience of the Emperor.”
Now considering the prominent part that Hans van Ruremond, otherwise John Raimund, had taken in the production and dispersal of the New Testament, he is just the man to be identical with a stationer who revised for the press a new edition. The whole family was identified with the issue of English Testaments. Christopher printed them at Antwerp, and after he had died in England for selling them, his widow continued to print further editions. John had suffered penance for selling them and was now, in more peaceable times, helping to print them. Christopher’s son, also named John, became a printer in Antwerp and printed Dutch Bibles and Testaments. One of the very last Sarum service books printed, the Processional of 1558, again links Christopher van Endhoven and Christopher van Ruremond together. Upon the title-page is the device with mark and initials, C. E. of Christopher van Endhoven, while the colophon runs “Finit Processionale ad usum Sarum Antverpie impressum per Melchiorem Endovianum, typis Christophori Ruremunden. Anno m.c.lviii. mensis xxiii. Junii.”
Another stationer connected with Christopher and Hans van Ruremond was a young man named Peter Kaetz, who acted for a while as their agent in London and had a shop in St Paul’s Churchyard. The seven Sarum service books, two Manuals, two Processionals, a Horae, a Psalter, and a Hymni cum notis, which Christopher van Ruremond printed before February 6, 1525, were all to be sold in London by Kaetz; after this date his place was taken by Birckman. In the spring of 1525 Kaetz returned to Antwerp and carried on business at the sign of the House of Delft in the Cammerstraete, a house formerly occupied by Henri Eckert van Homberg. Here he issued an edition of the Bible in Dutch printed by Hans van Ruremond. After this date we hear no more of him. Perhaps like Hans van Ruremond he was involved in the religious troubles, and, banished from Antwerp, found refuge in England. He was in communication with Siberch, the first Cambridge printer, and amongst some fragments rescued from a binding of Siberch’s in Westminster Abbey library was a letter addressed to him by Peter Kaetz. In it Kaetz says he is waiting in London for his master, on whose arrival he intends to cross over. He also says, “I send you 25 prognostications and three New Testaments, small size. The prognostications cost one shilling sterling the 25, and the three New Testaments cost 2s. and 6d. sterling.” The puzzling part about the letter is the date to which it should be assigned. Many things point to its being before 1523 and yet the references to the New Testament are not easily explained. The price is that at which the English New Testament printed at Antwerp in 1526 by Christopher van Ruremond was sold, and Hans van Ruremond had come into England about this time to sell it. We know also that Christopher van Ruremond printed prognostications in English. I should have been inclined to put the letter down to some time in or after 1526, and to suppose that the master for whom Kaetz waited was Hans van Ruremond. A person named “Gibkerken” is mentioned in the letter, who may perhaps be a Dutch stationer, John Gybken, who was first an assistant to John Cockes and who afterwards rose to considerable eminence and was admitted as a member of the Stationers’ Company. His son was also admitted a member of the Company, although he was deaf and dumb.
The history of the printing and dispersal of the early editions of the English Testament and the various prohibited controversial books offers a very fascinating subject of study, and it is extraordinary, considering the amount that has been written on the question, how little is really known. I suppose the reason is that it has usually been taken up from the theological rather than the bibliographical side, and that writers on the subject though well versed in the history of the Reformation knew nothing of scientific bibliography.
It is obvious that where the printer by his work placed himself in very considerable danger, he would not be anxious to advertise himself and would therefore let his books go out without any imprint or with a fictitious one. Then comes in the study of type. It affords a far more conclusive argument than any theories drawn from where the author was living or where he would probably like to have his book printed. Then again there is the common danger of taking for an early or original edition what is merely a reprint with the original colophon unaltered. An important English library purchased not very long ago at a high price, a so-called first edition of Tindale’s Parable of the Wicked Mammon, printed at Marlborowe in the land of Hesse by Hans Luft, 1528. But in spite of its having this information emblazoned in gold upon its morocco cover, it is a reprint made about twenty years later by Berthelet, a fact that should have been patent to anyone at all conversant with English printing, seeing that the title-page is within one of Berthelet’s best-known border frames.
Then, again, many of the books with foreign imprints were certainly printed in this country. Upright Hoff of Leipsic and Ian Troost of Aurich are both names assumed by John Oswen, the printer of Ipswich.
Cambridge has made an important start towards a real bibliography of this subject by the publication of the third volume of Mr Sayle’s most admirable Catalogue of the Early English Books in the University Library. Only those who have worked on the subject can understand how much patience, how much untiring labour, and how many often disappointing searches must have been expended on every small fact chronicled in the volume.
To return to these Early English Testaments printed in Antwerp. It is quite clear that as soon as the edition printed by Schoeffer in 1525 had been issued and found a ready sale, the Antwerp printers set to work to print rival editions. Fortunately we have a very clear and contemporary account which there seems no reason for doubting. It occurs in Joye’s Apology, written about 1534, and I will abbreviate it as far as possible. “Thou shalt know that Tyndale translated and printed the New Testament in a mean great volume but yet without Kalendar, Concordances in the margin, and Table in the end. And anon, after, the Dutchmen got a copy and printed it again in a small volume adding the Kalendar in the beginning, Concordances in the margin, and the Table in the end.” After speaking of the many faults in it he continues: “After this they printed it again also without a corrector in a greater letter and volume with the figures in the Apocalypse which was therefore much falser than their first. When these two prints (there were of them both about five thousand printed) were all sold more than a twelvemonth ago [that is about the middle of 1533] Tyndale was pricked forth to take the Testament in hand. But Tyndale prolonged and deferred in so much that in the mean season the Dutchmen printed it again the third time in a small volume like their first print, but much more false than ever it was before.” Before this edition was put in hand Joye had been asked to correct it, but refused, saying that Tindale was about to bring out a revised edition: however two thousand copies were printed and sold almost at once. A fourth edition was then put in hand and Joye was again asked to correct it. He continues: “I answered as before that if Tyndale amend it, with so great diligence as he promiseth yours will be never sold. Yes, quod they, for if he print two thousand and we as many, what is so little a number for all England? and we will sell ours better cheap and therefore we doubt not of the sale.” Joye seeing clearly that they were determined to print whether he corrected or not, and seeing he was more qualified than a native, undertook the task, and for the modest remuneration of fourpence halfpenny for every sheet of sixteen leaves corrected the edition published by the widow of Christopher van Endhoven in August, 1534. According to this statement, which is a very lucid one, between the issue of Tindale’s octavo version in 1525 and Joye’s revision in 1534, three other Antwerp editions had been issued. The first in a very small volume with a Kalendar, marginal notes, and a table. This must be the edition printed by Christopher van Endhoven in 1526 for which he was prosecuted. The second was of a larger size and had woodcuts to the Apocalypse. The third was similar to the first, but much more incorrectly printed. Here then are three editions as yet entirely unidentified, and there are most probably more. The late Dr Angus possessed the title-page of an edition of 1532 which from the tracing reproduced in Demaus’ book on Tindale must have been a quarto.
Antwerp continued to print Testaments in increasing numbers. In 1534 and 1535 four editions were issued, and in 1536 when they were more freely circulated, no less than seven. These are beyond our period, but I cannot resist chronicling a fact lately come to light, which gives the solution of a long-standing puzzle. In all the three quarto editions of 1536, none of which has a printer’s name, is a woodcut of St Paul with his foot resting on a stone. These cuts though almost exactly similar are not identical. In one cut nothing is engraved on the stone, and the edition containing it is known as the “blank stone” edition. In another cut a mole is engraved on the stone, and the edition is known as the “mole” edition. In the third there is what is called an engraver’s mark, with the initials A. K. B., and that issue is called the “engraver’s mark” edition. Now about this engraver’s mark nothing was known. Not long ago, however, in turning over a large volume of miscellaneous woodcuts in the Bodleian I came across an example of this cut on what was manifestly the last leaf of a book. Below the cut was this colophon, “Antwerp. Mattheus Cromme voor Adriaen Kempe van Bouckhout, 1537.” Between 1537 and 1539 Crom printed for Kempe several editions of Branteghem’s Vita Jesu Christi. In 1536 the cut occurs in the Storys and prophesis out of the holy scriptur printed by Simon Cock. It would thus seem that Kempe first employed Cock as his printer, but left him for Crom when the latter began printing about 1537.
The specimens of bookbinding of this period, the best so far as stamped bindings are concerned, offer a very difficult problem to the student. What are English bindings and what are not, and how are they to be distinguished? The more the subject is studied, the more difficult these questions appear. There are bindings which are obviously English just as there are others obviously foreign, but the great majority are doubtful. It must be remembered that a very large number of binders in England were foreigners, who would very likely bring their dies and stamps with them from abroad, and finish their work in a foreign manner. As their bindings were produced in England, they must be called English bindings though in a foreign style, for we would not call the Berthelet bindings, produced for Henry VIII in London by foreign workmen with foreign dies, anything but English.