Broadside ballads must have come among the people with the first dawn of printing, and in Henry the Eighth’s reign they had become of such weight in political influence that one or more royal edicts were levied against them. The earliest known English printed ballad is, in date, about 1540. Ballad printing was generally done by small local printers, or else by those larger London printers who made a speciality of the work, and who supplied the whole country with ballads and with “garlands.”
Gough, Redman, Bankes, Walley, and many others who worked in London during the sixteenth century were noted printers of ballads. In the seventeenth century ballad printing became more general, and many of the publishers clubbed together, so that we find several names on one imprint. Henry Gosson printed in 1616, and John Trundle, his contemporary, was so noted as a ballad vendor that he is named in Ben Jonson’s play, “Every Man in His Humour.” In 1642 Francis Coles (or Coules) flourished and issued ballads in conjunction with William Gilbertson, having a shop on Saffron Hill. Of this period also were Alexander Milbourn, Francis Grove, J. Wright, William Onley, and the “Assignees of Thomas Symcocke.” At a later date William Thackeray, at the “Angel in Duck Lane,” issued, with Passenger, at the “Three Bibles on London Bridge,” many interesting ballads, garlands, and chap-books. One of their dates is 1687.
All these seventeenth century ballads, or the chief part of them, were printed in “black-letter,” a type of Gothic character which was specially reserved for law books, bibles, and romances long after its discontinuance as ordinary text. They were generally printed on rather large paper, about 14 inches by 10 inches, and, of course, only on one side of the paper. The name of the tune was frequently given, and on some a few musical notes, professing to be the tune, were appended to the verses. These musical notes, however, were a fraudulent inducement to purchasers, for they were merely set at random. Rude woodcuts, which more or less illustrated the theme of the ballad, generally headed the whole.
The most noted collections of this period of ballad are the Roxburghe collection in the British Museum, and the Pepysian at Cambridge. It must be pointed out that a great number of these ballads were scarcely folk-songs—that is, they were not “born of the people”—and only a certain proportion were current among them. There were professional ballad writers who supplied rhymed narratives to order for the ballad seller, not only upon topical events, but re-dishings of earlier romances, and other matter.
Whether at the opening of the eighteenth century printed ballads began to be out of favour, or whether the ballads have not been so carefully preserved, is not quite clear, but they are certainly more rare of this period.
The chief ballad printer of this date was John Cluer, who was printing ballads in 1720, and shortly after this date was established as a music publisher of repute. He worked in Bow Church Yard, Cheapside, and was succeeded by William Dicey, who had been in partnership with Robert Raikes, at Northampton, in the ballad and chap-book printing business. Robert Raikes removed to Gloucester, where he established the first Gloucester newspaper. He was father to Robert Raikes, the originator of Sunday Schools.
An important range of ballad sheets were those which issued from the Aldermary Church Yard press. In 1793 J. Marshall was at this address, printing engraved song sheets with pictorial headings. There was also a J. Marshall at Newcastle-on-Tyne, who published song garlands about 1820.
One of the best-known ballad printers at the end of the eighteenth century was John Evans, of 42 Long Lane, Smithfield. He printed broadside ballads, chap-books, and garlands. He and his sons at a later date printed for the Religious Tract Society, producing such quaint religious stories as The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain. The Evans family, and successors, were in full vigour as printers as late as 1815.
It was at the beginning of the nineteenth century that the great ballad printer J. Pitts appeared. It is said that “Johnny Pitts” was a female who had been a bumboat woman. The ballad sheets that issued from the Pitts’ press are all of interest, and many genuine folk-songs appear on them. A rival to Pitts came from Alnwick in the person of James Catnach, the son of a printer in that small Northumbrian town. James Catnach first commenced business in 1813, at 2 and 3 Monmouth Court, Seven Dials, and he made a complete revolution in ballad sheet printing. The early ballad-mongers used a rough grey, or blue tinted, paper and their type was none of the best, or clearest. Catnach changed the shape of the ballad sheet into Large Post Quarto (about 10 × 8 inches), used good, though thin, white paper, and clear type. Many of his wood-blocks were either by the Bewick brothers, or by their pupils. He put forth an enormous quantity of ballads and songs, and seems to have not only employed men to write songs on topical events, but also to have for the first time put into print many a stray folk-song which the ballad-singers, who flocked to buy his ballads, would recite to him. This latter fact accounts for a certain amount of ignorant mistakes that occur in the text.
After founding an immense business he retired in 1838, and died in 1841. His married sister, Anne Ryle, took over the business and advertised that she had “4000 sorts” of ballad sheets. Her manager, James Paul, appears to have been some sort of an editor for her, and it is believed that he wrote, or re-wrote, certain of the ballads and songs she printed. He was, with others, proprietor of the business at one time, but finally it became the property of W. S. Fortey, who reprinted from Catnach’s old stereotypes. T. Batchelor, Piggot, and T. Birt were other ballad printers, a little later than Catnach.