It is not our purpose here to review in detail the various decrees and {124} proclamations which regulated printing in this country[203]; but it will be interesting to notice such of them as appear to have special reference to letter-founding.
The earliest Statute relating to printing was made in 1483, before the art had well taken root in the country; and proclaimed free trade in all printed matter imported from abroad. In 1533 this enactment was repealed, on the ground that “at this day there be within this realm a great number of cunning and expert in the said science or craft of printing.”[204]
More direct control was assumed in 1556, when the charter was granted to the Stationers’ Company, constituting that body the “Master and Keepers, or Wardens and Commonalty, of the Mystery or Art of a Stationer of the City of London.”[205] Under this comprehensive term, there is little doubt, founders of type, had any at that time been practising in London, would be included; and such being the case, it would become necessary for them, as well as for paper-makers, printers, binders, booksellers and others, to become members of the Stationers’ Company, and subsequently, in compliance with the enlarged powers conferred on the Company in 1559 and 1556, to give surety to that body for the due observance of the ordinances by virtue of which they held their privileges.
The powers conferred on the Company by its charter related exclusively to the publication of printed matter; and the rights of search granted in the subsequent Acts confirming the charter appear to have been directed rather against the possession of smuggled or illegally printed books than against the possession of the materials necessary to produce them.
In 1582 was tried a celebrated lawsuit known as the Star Chamber case of John Day versus Roger Ward and William Holmes, for illegal printing of an {125} A B C and Catechism.[206] In the course of the inquiry occurs an interesting reference to the practice of printers as their own letter-founders, which we reproduce as being one of the earliest direct notices of letter-founding in the Public Records. Amongst the questions put to the recalcitrant Roger Ward[207] the following three were intended to discover whether the illicit A B C was printed by him in his own type, or whether (with a view to remove suspicion from himself) he had printed it in the type of another printer:—
“QUESTION XIII. Did any person or personns Ayde help or assist you with paper letters (type) or other necessaries in this work?
“ANSWER. He was not with paper letters (type) or other necessaryes in the said worke aidyd holpen or assistyd by any manner of personne or persons but that one Adam a Servant of Master Purfo(o)ttes dyd lend him some letters wherewith he imprinted the said boke.
“QUESTION XVIII. Whether were the Letters wherewith you imprinted the sayd A B C your owne yea or no? If not whose were they and by what meanse came you by them, And whether with the Consent of the owner or not? And whether have you redelivered them back againe and how long since, And what nomber of Reames did you imprint with the said letter?
“ANSWER. That all the letters wherewith he impryntyd the said A B C were not his owne for he dyd borrowe of one Adame, a man of one master Purfott all the Inglisshe (i.e., Black) Letters to the said worke and he borrowyd these letters without the consent of the said master Purfytt and hath the same as yet in this defendants custodye and have not Redelyvered of the same sithes he borrowyd the same as aforesaid and to his Remembrance he Did imprynt with the sayd letter the nomber of Twentie Reames of paper.
“QUESTION XIX. Whether have you cast any new Letter of your owne since the first printinge of the said A B C, and what nomber of the same have you printed of that letter (in that type)?
“ANSWER. He confessyth that he hath sythes the first imprintyng of the said A B C, cast a newe letter of his owne and yet he hath not pryntyd any of that letter (in that type).”
This testimony was generally corroborated by the other printers and persons examined, to many of whom it appeared to be notorious that Roger Ward had printed the book in a letter not his own, and that he had since cast a new fount of type for his own use. The whole inquiry throws a curious light on the methods of business of the printers of the day. Composition then, as Mr. Arber points out, was not necessarily done in the master-printer’s house where he kept {126} his press. Of course that which was done by himself and his apprentices was done there, but work given out to journeymen (who were generally householders), was probably done in their houses and paid for by piecework. “A custom which,” continues Mr. Arber, “was facilitated by most of the books then printed being almost always in some one size of type. Therefore there could not be so much control exercised over the literature in respect to the guardianship of the type—however easy it was for printers of that day to identify the printer of a book by its typography—neither do we find any such attempted; but only in respect to the custody of the hand printing press, which was doubtless well secured every night as a dangerous instrument, lest secret nocturnal printing should go on without the owner’s consent.”[208]
In the same year, 1582, Christopher Barker, the Queen’s printer, drew up an able report on the condition of printing as it then existed, in which, among other matters, he referred to the cost of making type, and its consequent effect on publishers and printers. “In King Edward the Sixt his Dayes,” he says, “Printers and printing began greatly to increase; but the provision of letter, and many other thinges belonging to printing was so exceeding chargeable, that most of those printers were Dryven throughe necessitie, to compound before[hand] with the booksellers at so low value, as the printers themselves were most tymes small gayners and often loosers . . . The Bookesellers . . now (1582) . . keepe no printing howse, neither beare any charge of letter, or other furniture, but onlie paye for the workmanship . . . so that the artificer printer, growing every Daye more and more unable to provide letter[209] and other furniture . . . will in tyme be an occasion of great discredit to the professours of the arte.”
The report goes on to mention that at that time (December 1582) “there are twenty-two printing howses in London, where eight or ten at the most would suffise for all England, yea, and Scotland too.”[210]
In May of the following year there were twenty-three printers with fifty-three presses among them, and during the next two years the number appears to have increased so considerably as to call for that sweeping enactment, the Star Chamber decree of 1586. This famous measure prohibits all presses out of London, except one each at the two Universities, and “tyll the excessive {127} multytude of Prynters havinge presses already sett up be abated,” permits no new press whatsoever to be erected.[211] The Stationers’ Company have authority to inspect all printing offices, “to search take and carry away all presses, letters and other pryntinge instrumentes sett up, used or employed . . contrary to the intent and meaninge hereof; . . . and thereupon shall cause all suche printing presses, or other printing instruments, to be Defaced, melted, sawed in peeces, broken, or battered . . . and the stuffe of the same so defaced, shall redelyver to the owners thereof againe within three monethes next after the takinge or seizinge thereof as aforesayd.”[212]