“No new copies without pictures to be printed at more than the following rates: those in pica Roman and Italic and in English (i.e., Black letter) with Roman and Italic at a penny for two sheets; those in brevier and long primer letters at a penny for one sheet and a half.”[216]
A further regulation regarding typefounders shows that in 1622 the trade had more than one recognised representative:—
“The Founders bound to the Company by bond, not to deliver any fount of new letters, without acquainting the Master and Wardens—1622.”
The Act of 1586, despite the rigour with which, at first at any rate, it was enforced, appears to have fallen into contempt, and to have been openly {130} disregarded by the printers of the first quarter of the seventeenth century. According to the account of the “London Printer,” who wrote his Lamentation in 1660, printing and printers, about 1637, were grown to such “monstrous excess and exorbitant disorder” as to call for the prompt and serious attention of the Court of Star Chamber, who in that same year, because the former “Orders and Decrees have been found by experience to be defective in some particulars; and divers abuses have sithence arisen and been practiced by the craft and malice of wicked and evill disposed persons,” put forward the famous Star Chamber Decree of 1637.[217]
In this decree, the severity of which called forth from Milton his noble protest, the Areopagitica,[218] letter-founding is formally recognised as a distinct industry, and shares with printing the rigours of the new restrictions. The following is the text of the clauses relating to founders:—
XXVII.—Item, The Court doth order and declare, that there shall be foure Founders of letters for printing allowed, and no more, and doth hereby nominate, allow, and admit these persons, whose names hereafter follow, to the number of foure, to be letter-Founders for the time being, (viz.) John Grismand, Thomas Wright, Arthur Nichols, Alexander Fifield. And further the Court doth Order and Decree, that it shall be lawfull for the Lord Arch-bishop of Canterbury, or the Lord Bishop of London for the time being, taking unto him or them, six other high Commissioners, to supply the place or places of those who are now allowed Founders of letters by this Court, as they shall fall void by death, censure, or otherwise.
Provided that they exceede not the number of foure, set down by this Court. And if any person or persons, not being an allowed Founder, shall notwithstanding take upon him, or them, to Found, or cast letters for printing, upon complaint and proofe made of such offence, or offences, he, or they so offending, shal suffer such punishment, as this Court, or the high Commission Court respectively, as the severall causes shall require, shall think fit to inflict upon them.
XXVIII.—Item, That no Master-Founder whatsoever shall keepe above two Apprentices at one time, neither by Copartnership, binding at the Scriveners, nor any other way whatsoever, neither shall it be lawfull for any Master-Founder, when any Apprentice, or Apprentices shall run, or be put away, to take another Apprentice, or other Apprentices in his, or their place or places, unless the name or names of him, or them so gone away, be rased out of the Hall-booke of the Company, whereof the Master-Founder is free, and never admitted again, upon pain of such punishment, as by this Court, or the high Commission respectively, as the severall causes shall require, shall be thought fit to bee imposed. {131}
XXIX.—Item, That all Journey-men-Founders be imployed by the Master-Founders of the said trade, and that idle Journey-men be compelled to worke after the same manner, and upon the same penalties, as in case of the Journey-men-Printers is before specified.[219]
XXX.—Item, That no Master-Founder of letters, shall imploy any other person or persons in any worke belonging to the casting or founding of letters, than such only as are freemen or apprentices to the trade of founding letters, save only in the pulling off the knots of mettle hanging at the ends of the letters when they are first cast, in which work it shall be lawfull for every Master-Founder, to imploy one boy only that is not, nor hath beene bound to the trade of Founding letters, but not otherwise, upon pain of being for ever disabled to use or exercise that art, and such further punishment, as by this Court, or the high Commission Court respectively, as the severall causes shall require, be thought fit to be imposed.
XIV.—Item, That no Joyner, or Carpenter, or other person, shall make any printing-Presse, no Smith shall forge any Iron-Worke for a printing Presse, and no Founder shall cast any Letters for any person or persons whatsoever, neither shall any person or persons bring, or cause to be brought in from any parts beyond the Seas, any Letters Founded or Cast, nor buy any such Letters for Printing, Unlesse he or they respectively shall first acquaint the said Master and Wardens, or some of them, for whom the same Presse, Iron-works, or Letters, are to be made, forged, or cast, upon paine of such fine and punishment, as this Court, or the high Commission Court respectively, as the severall causes shall require, shall thinke fit.
Respecting the four founders thus nominated, and their types, we shall have occasion to speak in a following chapter. Continuing here our cursory review of the Statutes which affected letter-founding, it is necessary to remind the reader that this tremendous decree, which for severity eclipsed all its predecessors, was short-lived.
On November 3, 1640, the Long Parliament assembled, and with it the Star Chamber disappeared, and its decrees became dead letters. Then for a season there was virtually free trade in printing, and advantage was taken of the new condition of affairs to infringe existing rights on every hand, the King’s Patent Printers (if we are to believe the “London Printer,” above quoted) being the chief and most unscrupulous transgressors.
Parliament was not slow to take up the mantle dropped by the late Star Chamber, and in 1643 attempted to stem “the very grievous” liberty of the press, reinvesting the Stationers’ Company with powers to search and seize all unlicensed presses and books, and to apprehend the “authors, printers and other persons whatsoever employed in compiling, printing, stitching, binding, {132} publishing and dispersing the said scandalous, unlicensed and unwarrantable papers, books and pamphlets.”
This ordinance, in which once more typefounders are conspicuous by their absence, was strengthened by a further decree in 1647, and two years later the Act of Sept. 20, 1649, virtually reimposed the old Star Chamber regulations, requiring, among other provisions, that printers should enter into a £300 bond not to print seditious or scandalous matter; also that no house or room should be let to a printer, nor implements made, press imported, or letters founded, without notice to the Stationers’ Company. The penalties attached to a breach of these orders were severe. This Act was renewed in 1652, but it failed to remedy the abuses it was intended to meet. Private presses sprung up on all hands; the art was degraded and prostituted to all manner of base uses; workmen as well as master printers joined in their complaints against disorders which were working their ruin. The number of printers, restricted since 1586 to twenty, had grown to sixty; the Royal printers themselves were interlopers, two of them not even being practical printers, and all of them being political incendiaries.