Berthelet was also a bookbinder and bookseller, and some of his fine bindings for Henry VIII. and his successors are still to be seen. He was apparently the first English binder to use gold tooling.
Of his official work very little need be said. It consisted in printing all Acts of Parliament, proclamations, injunctions, and other official documents. In the second volume of the Transcript (pp. 50-60), Professor Arber has printed three of Berthelet's yearly accounts, in which the titles of the various documents are given, with the number of copies of each that were struck off, and the nature and cost of their bindings.
In the year 1530 the divorce of Queen Katherine and the King's marriage to Anne Boleyn filled the public mind, and in connection with this event he printed, both in Latin and English, a small octavo, with the title:
The determinations of the moste famous and moofte excellent Vniversities of Italy and France that it is so unlefull for a man to marie his brother's wyfe that the Pope hath no power to despense therewith.
Berthelet, in 1531, printed Sir Thomas Elyot's Boke named the Governour, an octavo, in a large Gothic type, very bold and clear. This type, however, is seen to much better advantage in the folio edition of Gower's Confessio Amantis, which came from this press in 1532. In this instance the title-page is striking, the title being enclosed within a panel which gives it the appearance of a book cover. The text of the work was printed in double columns of forty-eight lines each.
In 1533 Berthelet appears to have purchased a new fount of this type, with which he printed Erasmus's De Immensa Dei Misericordia. If possible this new letter was more beautiful than the other, the lowercase 'h' finishing in a bold outward curve, which was absent in the earlier fount. These founts of Gothic closely resemble some in use in Italy at this time.
To the year 1534 belongs St. Cyprian's Sermon on the mortality of man, translated by Sir Thomas Elyot, as well as a second edition of The Boke named the Governour.
Berthelet also brought into use during this year a woodcut border of an architectural character, with the date 1534 cut upon it. It was used only in octavo books, and he continued to use it for some years without erasing the date, a fact that has led to much confusion in the classification of his books.
We meet with the large Gothic type again in 1535, in an edition of the De Proprietatibus Rerum of Bartholomæus Anglicus, which Berthelet printed in that year. But his most notable undertaking during the next few years was the book for regulating and settling nice points of religious belief, which had been compiled by the bishops, and was issued under the King's authority, with the title:—
The Institution of a Christian Man conteyninge the Exposition or Interpretation of the commune Crede, of the Seven sacraments, of the X commandments, and of the Pater Noster, and the Ave Maria, Justyfication & Purgatory.