Fig. 332.—The Paper-Maker, drawn and engraved in the Sixteenth Century by J. Amman.
But while the use of parchment was still strictly employed in the chancellor’s offices and the tribunals, where the basoche (a brotherhood of lawyers of all grades) considered it as one of their most lucrative privileges ([Fig. 331]), it had for a long while ceased to be used anywhere else. Paper, after having during many centuries competed with parchment, at last almost entirely replaced it ([Fig. 332]); for if less durable, it had the great advantage of costing much less. Formerly nothing but the ancient papyrus of Egypt was known, and it was made use of concurrently with parchment till there was brought into Europe, towards the tenth century, cotton paper, which is generally believed to be a Chinese invention, and which was at first called Grecian parchment, because the Venetians, who introduced it into the West, had found it in use in Greece.
Actually, this paper was at first of a very inferior quality, coarse, spongy, dull, and subject to the attacks of damp and worms; so much so that the Emperor Frederick II. issued, in 1221, an order declaring null and void all documents written on it, and fixing the term at two years by which all were to be transcribed on parchment.
The use and the knowledge of the process of manufacturing paper from cotton soon led to the fabrication of paper from linen or rags. It is, however, impossible to say when and where it was accomplished—the assertions and the testimonies on this point are so contradictory. Some think that the paper was brought from the East by the Spanish Saracens; others say it came from China; these affirm it has been employed since the tenth century; those, that we can only find specimens of it as far back as the reign of St. Louis.
Fig. 333.—Water-Marks on Paper, from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century.
At any rate, the most ancient writing on paper made of rags known at the present day is a letter from Joinville to Louis X., dated 1315; we may, moreover, mention with certainty, as written on linen paper, an inventory of goods belonging to a certain Prior Henry, who died in 1340, which is preserved at Canterbury, and many authentic writings, dating back as far as 1335, preserved in the British Museum, London. The first paper-manufactory established in England was, it is said, at Hertford, which dates only from 1588; but important paper-manufactories existed in France from the reign of Philippe de Valois, that is, from the middle of the fourteenth century; particularly at Essonne and at Troyes. The paper which came from these manufactories bore generally, in the paper itself, different marks ([Fig. 333]) called water-marks, such as a bull’s head, a cross, a serpent, a star, a crown, &c., according to the quality or destination of the paper. Many other countries in Europe had also flourishing paper-manufactories in the fourteenth century. From this period we find, indeed, a large number of documents written on paper made of rags, the use of which thus preceded by about a century the invention of printing.
