One is Bookbinders Bridge, which is still standing, namely the bridge which as one starts from close under the Castle in Titmouse Lane towards St. Thomas’s Church, crosses the second piece of water. The bridge was on the limits of Oseney Abbey and the neighbouring tenements were largely occupied by binders who worked for the Abbey. See Clark’s edition of Wood’s History of the City, i. 433.
Schidyard St., now Oriel St., is said to imply by its name that it was the locus schediasticorum, the place of writers on schedae or sheets of paper. Certainly with St. John Baptist St. (now Merton St.) and Cat St., it was a great centre for scribes, illuminators, bookbinders, and the like. See Clark’s Wood, as above, i. 139, 175, 184.
Also Cheney Lane, earlier St. Mildred’s Lane, and now Market St., was largely tenanted by the same class. See Clark’s Wood, i. 72.
The stationarius (or virgifer) of the University was regularly appointed (see Clark’s Register of the University, vol. ii, pt. 1, p. 261), and was generally employed to value the books of a scholar after death or sequestration.
But these general facts require to be supplemented by the details which follow: with respect to which it must be remembered that many persons combined several of the trades here recorded, and that, for instance, the earliest printers always bound the books they produced.
[Chief Authorities:—
Coxe. = Catalogus codicum MSS. qui in collegiis aulisque Oxoniensibus hodie adservantur. Confecit H. O. Coxe. (Oxf. 1852.)
Kirchhoff, Albrecht: Die Handschriftenhändler des Mittelalters. Zweite Ausgabe. (Leipz. 1853), pp. 132, 136.
Magd. = Notes from the muniments of St. Mary Magdalen College, Oxford, by the rev. W. D. Macray. (Oxf. 1882.)
Oxf. City Doc. = Oxford City Documents, 1268–1665, edited by J. E. Thorold Rogers. (Oxf. Hist. Soc. vol. xviii, 1891.)