A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898

by Henry R. Plomer

From the affidavit of Emmanuel Demetrius [i.e. Van Meteren], discovered in 1884 at the Dutch Church in Austin Friars,[3] it seems clear that in 1535 Edward Whitchurch was working with Jacob van Metern at Antwerp in printing Coverdale's translation of the Bible.

Richard Grafton was the son of Nicholas Grafton of Shrewsbury. The first record we have of him is his apprenticeship to John Blage, a grocer of London, in 1526. He was admitted a freeman of the Company in 1534, and at that time seems to have employed himself chiefly in furthering the project of an English translation of the whole Bible. On the 13th August 1537, Grafton sent to Archbishop Cranmer a copy of the Bible printed abroad. The text was a modification of Coverdale's translation ostensibly by Thomas Mathew, but in reality by John Rogers the editor. In 1538, Coverdale, Grafton, and Whitchurch were together in Paris, busy upon a third edition of the Bible. In June of that year they sent two specimens of the text to Cromwell, with a letter stating that they followed the Hebrew text with Chaldee or Greek interpretations. The printing was done at the press of Francis Regnault, but before many sheets had been struck off, the University of Paris seized the press and 2000 copies of the printed sheets, while the promoters had to make a hasty escape to this country. The presses and types were afterwards bought by Cromwell, and the work was subsequently finished and published in 1539. The work had an engraved title-page, ascribed to Holbein, and the price was fixed at ten shillings per copy unbound, and twelve shillings bound.

Before leaving Paris, Grafton and Whitchurch had issued an edition of Coverdale's translation of the New Testament, giving as their reason that James Nicholson of Southwark had printed a very imperfect version of it.

In 1540 Grafton and Whitchurch printed in 'the house late the graye freers,' The Prymer both in Englysshe and Latin, to be sold at the sign of the Bible in St. Paul's Churchyard. In the same year they printed with a prologue by Cranmer, a second edition of the Great Bible, half of which bore the name of Grafton and half of Whitchurch, and in all probability the subsequent editions were published in the same way. Two very good initial letters were used in the New Testament, and seem to have been cut especially for Whitchurch. On the 28th January 1543-44 Grafton and Whitchurch received an exclusive patent for printing church service books (Rymer, Fœdera, xiv. 766), and a few years later they are found with an exclusive right for printing primers in Latin and English. Upon the accession of Edward VI. Grafton became the royal printer, but upon the king's death he printed the proclamation of Lady Jane Grey, and was for that reason deprived of his office by Queen Mary. The remainder of his life he spent in the compilation of English Chronicles in keen rivalry with John Stow.

Richard Grafton died in 1573. He was twice married. By his first wife, Anne, daughter of —— Crome of Salisbury, he had four sons and one daughter, Joan, who married Richard Tottell, the law printer. By his second wife, Alice, he left one son, Nicholas.

Grafton used as his device a tun with grafted fruit-tree growing through it.

Among the noted booksellers and printers in St. Paul's Churchyard at this time must be mentioned William Bonham. As yet it is not clear whether he belonged to the Essex family of that name, or to another branch that is found in Kent.

From a series of documents discovered at the Record Office relating to John Rastell and his house called the Mermaid in Cheapside, it appears that in the year 1520 William Bonham was working in London as a bookseller, and on two different occasions was a sub-tenant of Rastell's at the Mermaid. Yet not a single dated book with his name is found before 1542, at which time he was living at the sign of the Red Lion in St. Paul's Churchyard, and issued a folio edition of Fabyan's Chronicles, besides having a share with his neighbour, Robert Toye, in a folio edition of Chaucer. Even at this time William Bonham held some sort of office in the Guild or Society of Stationers, for from a curious letter written by Abbot Stevenage to Cromwell in 1539, about a certain book printed in St. Albans Abbey, he says he has sent the printer to London with Harry Pepwell, Toy, and 'Bonere' (Letters and Papers, H. 8, vol. xiv. p. 2, No. 315), so that it would look as if they were commissioned to hunt down popish heretical and seditious books. By the marriage of his daughter, Joan, to William Norton, the bookseller, who in turn named his son Bonham Norton, the history of the descendants of William Bonham can be followed up for quite a century later.

At the Long Shop in the Poultry we can see the press at work almost without a break from the early years of the sixteenth century till the close of the first quarter of the seventeenth. Upon the removal of Richard Bankes into Fleet Street its next occupant seems to have been one John Mychell, of whose work a solitary fragment, fortunately that bearing the colophon, of an undated quarto edition of the Life of St. Margaret, is now in the hands of Mr. F. Jenkinson of the University Library, Cambridge. Whether this John Mychell is the same person as the John Mychell found a few years later printing at Canterbury there is no evidence to show. Nor do we know how long he occupied the Long Shop. In 1542 Richard Kele's name is found in a Primer in Englysh, which was issued from this house. He may have been some relation to the Thomas Kele who, in 1526, had occupied John Rastell's house, the Mermaid, as stated by Bonham in his evidence. During 1543, in company with Byddell, Grafton, Middleton, Mayler, Petit, and Lant, Richard Kele was imprisoned in the Poultry Compter for printing unlawful books (Acts of Privy Council, New Series, vol. i. pp. 107, 117, 125). Most of the books that bear his name came from the presses of William Seres, Robert Wyer, and William Copland. Perhaps the most interesting of his publications next to the edition of Chaucer, which he shared with Toye and Bonham, are the series of poems by John Skelton, called Why Come ye not to Courte? Colin Clout, and The Boke of Phyllip Sparowe. They were issued in octavo form, and were evidently very hastily turned out from the press, type, woodcuts, and workmanship being of the worst description. At the end of Colin Clout is a woodcut of a figure at a desk, supposed to represent the author, but it is doubtful whether it is anything more than an old block with his name cut upon it.

Looking back over the work done at this time, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the art of printing in England had much deteriorated since the days of Pynson, while the best of it, even that of Berthelet, could not be compared with that of the continental presses of the same period. There was an entire absence of originality among the English printers. Types, woodcuts, initial letters, ornaments, and devices, were obtained by the printers from abroad, and had seen some service before their arrival in this country. But just at this time a printer came to the front in this country, who for a few years placed the art on a higher footing than any of his predecessors.