As an example of this confusion I would mention the binding on a copy of the Horae ad usum Sarum of 1506, printed for Pelgrim and Jacobi, and now in the Bodleian. In the centre of the cover are two purely Netherlandish panels, while round these runs a frame composed of two dies which had belonged to Caxton. We know that the partners owned several of Caxton’s dies, because they are found in conjunction with Jacobi’s signed panels. As the Horae was printed for them and has their dies on the binding, it is clear they are the binders, but had the Caxton dies been absent, no one could have put down the binding as anything but Netherlandish.
The favourite English binding of this time consisted of two panel stamps, one having the Royal Arms, the other the Tudor Rose with mottoes, which I described before. In the base of these panels the binder’s initials and mark generally occur. In some cases these initials can with certainty be ascribed, because they occur with the mark and full name in some printed book. Thus there is no mistake about the bindings of Pynson, Notary, Jacobi, or Reynes. But in a large number of cases there are merely initials, or initials with a mark which has not been identified. Here the imagination steps in with usually fatal results.
One set of these panels is signed R. O., and as O is an uncommon initial for a surname the natural inclination is to attribute the binding to Reginald Oliver. Another set has the initials R. L.: who more likely than Richard Lant? All such suggestions are worthless without proof, and until proved are not worth setting down. Other binders using these panels were H. N. and G. G.
A binder whose initials were G. R. had two very handsome pairs of panels. One panel contains the Royal Arms surrounded by the verse beginning, “Confitemini dominum quoniam bonus,” while the corresponding panel contains figures of four saints. The first of the second pair is also the Royal Arms with the verse beginning “Laudate Dominum de terra,” and the other has the figures of the four saints, George, Barbara, Michael, and Katherine.
The Annunciation was a very favourite subject with bookbinders. One of the handsomest panels of this kind was used by a binder, A. H., who used also a panel with the Tudor Rose. Though this shows that the bindings were produced for the English market, the leather employed, apparently sheepskin, suggests that they were executed abroad, perhaps at Rouen.
Two other panels were in common use containing figures of St Sebastian and St Roche. These were extremely popular, for at that time the country was periodically visited with outbreaks of the plague, against which these two saints were considered the guardians. Very often the saint chosen for the binder’s panel had reference to his own Christian name. John Reynes has a panel with St John Baptist. St George as the patron saint of England was naturally popular. One beautiful binding has on one side St George and the Dragon, and on the other St Michael with the binder’s devices, a maiden’s head on a shield. This might be the work of Richard Faques, who lived at the sign of the Maiden’s Head.
The roll binding, as apart from the panel binding, was ornamented by means of a rolling tool, and at first these were large and ornamental, but they gradually narrowed, and so became meagre or weak in detail.
Those in use at Cambridge are perhaps the finest of all, but this is not the time to speak of them. Among London binders John Reynes produced the best known roll, containing figures of a hound, a falcon, and a bee with flowers and foliage. Another with an unknown binder’s mark, contains a hound, a falcon, and a double-headed eagle on a shield. The roll of another unknown binder bears a Tudor Rose, a pomegranate, a shield with the arms of France and England, a turreted gateway, a portcullis, a fleur-de-lys, and the binder’s mark.
Another handsome roll has the initials of I. G. and W. G. with figures of a dragon, a gryphon, and foliage, and is not at all uncommon. In Archbishop Marsh’s library at Dublin there is an example of such a binding, tooled entirely in gold, the only example I have ever seen of such work.
In the main design of all these English rolls there is very little variation, the various royal emblems amidst foliage and flowers.