Item, yt ys covenanted, accorded, and agreed bitwene the said Parties, accordinge to the said Award, that all Bedells of the said Universitie, and all Mancipills, Cooks, Butlers, and Launders of everye Colledge, Hostell, and of other places ordeyned for Scolers, Students, and places of religion in the said Universitie, and all appotycares, Stacioners, Lymners, Schryveners, Parchment-makers, Boke-bynders, Phisitions, Surgeons, and Barbers in the sayd Universitie ... shall be reputed and taken as Common Ministers and Servants of the said Universitie, as longe as they shall use eny such occupacion, and shall have and enjoye lyke privilege as a Scolers Servant of the same Universitie shall have and enjoye....[10]
In the list at the end of the award containing the names of those privileged by the university, the last entry is "Garreit Stacioner.", This "Garreit" is the stationer and binder generally known as Garrett Godfrey. When he first began business in Cambridge is not known, but more than fifty specimens of his binding, dating from 1499 to 1535, have survived. We know also that he was churchwarden of Great St Mary's in 1516 and again in 1521 and that he died in 1539[11].
Erasmus refers to him in 1516 as his "old host, Garrett the bookseller" (which suggests that he stayed in his house during his first visit to Cambridge), and in 1525 sends a message, already quoted, to Garrett and other booksellers.
Another stationer and bookbinder of the period is Nicholas Spierinck (Speryng), whose name first appears in Grace Book B under the date 1505-6. Little is known of him as a stationer. He was a Dutchman by birth and, like Garrett Godfrey, was a friend of Erasmus and a churchwarden of Great St Mary's. His will, of which he appointed Thomas Wendy, the royal physician, as supervisor, shows him to have been a man of property, since he bequeathed to Nycholas Spyrynke, his "sonnes sonne," the "howse of the Crosse Keyes"—a brewery in Magdalene Street[12]; of his work as a binder nearly fifty examples remain.
The third of the Cambridge stationers of this period whom we must consider is Segar Nicholson. He also came from Holland, and, as Mr G. J. Gray remarks, affords an early example of a member of the university engaging in business, being a pensioner of Gonville Hall from 1520 to 1523. His career has more varied features than those of his fellow-stationers.
In 1529 he was charged with holding Protestant views and further with the unlawful possession of Luther's books and other heretical works. Now Luther's books had been publicly burnt in Cambridge eight years before and the ceremony had, as we have seen, been the occasion of a notable sermon by Bishop Fisher. About this time, however, there had grown up a small society of members of the university who were sympathetic towards Lutheran doctrine. They met in secret in the White Horse inn, which stood where are now the back buildings of the Bull Hotel—a place chosen so that members might enter unobserved by the back door and nicknamed 'Germany' by the orthodox[13]. Among the heretics who frequented these meetings was Segar Nicholson.
Foxe, in his Acts and Monuments, gives a sad account of the treatment of Nicholson: "The handling of this man," he says, "was too too cruel." After his release from prison, Nicholson remained a stationer till the age of 60, when he was ordained deacon by the Bishop of London.
In the meantime the university had taken steps to ensure the suppression of heretical books. In 1529 a petition was presented to Cardinal Wolsey, begging:
that for the suppression of error, there should be three booksellers allowed in Cambridge by the King, who should be sworn not to bring in or sell any book which had not first been approved of by the censor of books in the University, that such booksellers should be men of reputation and gravity, and foreigners, (so it should be best for the prizing of books,) and that they might have the privilege to buy books of foreign merchants[14].
It was, no doubt, as a result of this petition that five years later Cambridge printing was formally established by royal charter on 20 July, 1534, when Henry VIII by letters patent gave licence to the Chancellor, masters, and scholars