[Μ] 20. Day’s Saxon Fount. (From the Ælfredi Res Gestæ, 1574.)

[Μ] 21. Day’s Double Pica Roman. (From the Ælfredi Res Gestæ, 1574.)

[Μ] 22. Day’s Double Pica Italic. (From the Ælfredi Res Gestæ, 1574.)

(The extract is Parker’s reference to Day as a letter-founder.)

It appears that in that year, at the time when Day removed his shop from {97} Aldersgate to St. Paul’s Churchyard, Archbishop Parker was engaged in providing replies to a Popish polemic of Nicholas Sanders, entitled De Visibili Monarchia. Dr. Clerke of Cambridge was selected for the task, and his Responsio was entrusted to Day to print. In a letter to Lord Burleigh, dated December 13, 1572, the Archbishop thus refers to the typography of the forthcoming work[170]:

“To the better accomplishment of this worke and other that shall followe, I have spoken to Daie the printer to cast a new Italian letter, which he is doinge, and it will cost him xl marks; and loth he and other printers be to printe any Lattin booke, because they will not heare be uttered and for that Bookes printed in Englande be in suspition abroad.”

Strype, referring to the transaction, adds a note: “For our Black English letter was not proper for the printing of a Latin Book; and neither he (Day) nor any one else, as yet had printed any Latin books.”[171] This misleading statement is corrected by Herbert,[172] who points out that many Latin books had been printed, few of which, after 1520, had been in Black-letter, and he believed none at all after 1530. Moreover, many English books had long before 1572 been printed in Roman or Italic, and even such as had generally been printed in Black-letter usually had the notes and quotations in Roman or Italic.