Another prominent figure in the early years of the sixteenth century was that of Robert Copland. He was a man of considerable ability, a good French scholar, and a writer of mediocre verse. Apart from this, he was also, in the truest sense of the word, a book lover, and used his influence to produce books that were likely to be useful, or such as were worth reading. In the prologue to the Kalendar of Shepherdes, which Wynkyn de Worde printed in 1508, he described himself as servant to that printer. This has been taken to mean that he was one of De Worde's apprentices. But in 1514, if not earlier, he had started in business for himself as a stationer and printer, at the sign of the Rose Garland in Fleet Street. Very few of the books that he printed now exist, and this, taken in conjunction with the fact that he translated and wrote prologues for so many books printed by De Worde, has led all writers upon early English printing to conclude that he was an odd man about De Worde's office, and that he was in fact subsidised by that printer. There is evidence, however, that many of the books printed by De Worde, that have prologues by Robert Copland, were first printed by him, and that in others he had a share in the copies.
Fig. 13.—Robert Copland's Device.
In the British Museum copy of the Dyeynge Creature, printed by De Worde in 1514, it is noticeable that on the last leaf is the mark or device of Robert Copland, not that of the printer, while in the copy now in the University Library, Cambridge, De Worde's device is on the last leaf.
This would appear to indicate that both printers were associated in the venture, though the work actually passed through De Worde's press, and that those copies which Copland took and paid for were distinguished by his device. Again, in several of these books, found with De Worde's colophons, Copland speaks of himself as the 'printer,' or 'the buke printer,' and the inference is that they were reprints of books which Copland had previously printed. Indeed in one instance the evidence is still stronger. In 1518, Henry Pepwell printed at the sign of the Trinity the Castell of Pleasure. The prologue to this takes the form of a dialogue in verse between Copland and the author, of which the following lines are the most important:—
'Emprynt this boke, Copland, at my request
And put it forth to every maner state.'
'At your instaunce I shall it gladly impresse
But the utterance, I thynke, will be but small
Bokes be not set by: there tymes is past, I gesse;
The dyse and cardes, in drynkynge wyne and ale,
Tables, cayles, and balles, they be now sette a sale
Men lete theyr chyldren use all such harlotry
That byenge of bokes they utterly deny.'
If this means anything, it is impossible to avoid the inference that Robert Copland printed the first edition of this book. Amongst others that he was in some way interested in may be noticed a curious book by Alexander Barclay, Of the Introductory to write French, fol., 1521, of which there is a copy in the Bodleian; The Mirrour of the Church, 4to, 1521, a devotional work, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, with a variety of curious woodcuts; the Rutter of the Sea, the first English book on navigation, translated from Le Grande Routier of Pierre Garcie; Chaucer's Assemble of Foules and the Questionary of Cyrurgyens, printed by Robert Wyer in 1541.
Copland was also the author, and without doubt the printer, of two humorous poems that are amongst the earliest known specimens of this kind of writing. The one called The Hye Way to the Spyttell hous took the form of a dialogue between Copland and the porter of St. Bartholomew's, and turns upon the various kinds of beggars and impostors, with a running commentary upon the vices and follies that bring men to poverty. Iyll of Brentford, the second of these compositions, is a somewhat different production. It recounts the legacies left by a certain lady, but the humour, though to the taste of the times, was excessively broad.