A History of the Cambridge University Press, 1521-1921

by S. C. Roberts

To return to Cambridge, we are on firmer, though not very spacious, ground, when we come to the name of John Siberch, the first Cambridge printer. "True it is," says Thomas Fuller, "it was a great while before Cambridge could find out the right knack of printing, and therefore they preferred to employ Londoners therein ... but one Sibert, University Printer, improved that mystery to good perfection."

Of the life of Siberch, either at Cambridge or elsewhere, we know little. He was the friend of several great humanists of the period, including Erasmus; he was in Louvain, evidently, in 1518. "I was surprised," writes Erasmus to John Caesarius on 5 April of that year, "that John Siberch came here without your letter."

The earliest appearance of his name on a title-page is in 1520, when Richard Croke's Introductiones in rudimenta Graeca was printed at Cologne "expensis providi viri domini Ioannis Laer de Siborch."[2] His full name, then (of which there are many forms), is John Lair and his place of origin Siegburg, a small town south-west of Cologne.

A discovery made by Mr Gordon Duff in the Westminster Abbey Library in 1889 makes it almost certain that Siberch was already in England when Croke's book was printed; for in a copy of a book bound by Siberch there was found, besides two printed fragments and a letter from Petrus Kaetz[3], a portion of the manuscript of the Rudimenta Graeca. It seems clear, therefore, that Siberch was in England when proofs and 'copy' of the work were sent to him.

Richard Croke (afterwards the first Public Orator) was at this time the enthusiastic leader of Greek studies in Cambridge. He had earned fame as a teacher at Cologne, Louvain, Leipzig, and Dresden and, in succession to his friend Erasmus, was appointed Reader in Greek to the university in 1519. His text-book could not be printed in England, because there was as yet no Greek fount owned by an English printer; and it is quite probable, as Mr Duff suggests, that John Siberch, himself settled in Cambridge, had undertaken to have Croke's work printed by a friend, possibly by his old master, in Cologne. Possibly, too, Croke may have previously met Siberch in Germany and, with Erasmus, have been responsible for his coming to Cambridge. This, of course, is conjectural, but of the friendship between Erasmus and Siberch there is no doubt, since, in a letter from Erasmus to Dr Robert Aldrich, written on Christmas Day 1525, there is a message sent to "veteres sodales Phaunum, Omfridum, Vachanum, Gerardum, et Joannem Siburgum, bibliopolas."

From this it would naturally be inferred that Siberch was still in Cambridge in 1525, but his name does not appear in the Subsidy Roll of 1523-24 and it is probable, therefore, that, unknown to Erasmus, he left in the early part of 1523[4].

Siberch, then, probably lived in Cambridge from 1520 to 1523, a period during which the labours of the first Cambridge humanists were beginning to bear fruit. In 1497, the Lady Margaret, mother of Henry VII, had appointed as her confessor John Fisher, Master of Michaelhouse; and "to the wealth and liberality of the one," in Mullinger's words, "and the enlightened zeal and liberality of the other the university is chiefly indebted for that new life and prosperity which soon after began to be perceptible in its history."

To the Lady Margaret were due the foundation of St John's and Christ's Colleges and the Professorship and Preachership which bear her name; Fisher, afterwards Bishop of Rochester and President of Queens' College, was the first holder of the Divinity chair and it was at his invitation that Erasmus, who had taken a degree in divinity in Cambridge in 1506, came to live, in 1509 or 1510, in the turret-chamber of Queens'. Though it is, perhaps, as the first teacher of Greek (himself for the most part self-taught and not, as Gibbon says, the importer of Greek from Oxford) that Erasmus is most famous, the result of his first lectures was disappointing:

So far I have lectured on the grammar of Chrysoloras, but to few hearers; perhaps I shall have a larger audience when I begin the grammar of Theodorus, perhaps I shall take up a theological lectureship.

This last hope was fulfilled in 1511, when Erasmus was elected to the Lady Margaret's professorship of divinity. His letters are full of petulant complaints which may be taken as seriously as those of Gray in later years. He sees no hope of lecture-fees since his conscience will not let him rob 'naked men,' and only by touting does it appear possible to get pupils. The college beer is bad and the townsmen boorish. So he retires to his garret in Queens' and applies himself to his work on the New Testament (Novum Instrumentum) and his edition of St Jerome, both of which were to play an important part in preparing the way for the Reformation in England.