Sec. 23 ordains that no one, under penalty of £20, shall be allowed to possess or use a printing-press or types for printing, without giving notice thereof to a Clerk of the Peace, and obtaining from him a certificate to that effect.
Sec. 33 provides that any Justice of the Peace may issue a warrant to search any premises, and seize and take away any press or printing-types not duly certificated. {135}
The following sections we give in full:—
Sec. 25. “That from and after the Expiration of Forty Days after the passing of this Act, every Person carrying on the Business of a Letter Founder or Maker or Seller of Types for Printing or of Printing Presses, shall cause Notice of his or her Intention to carry on such Business to be delivered to the Clerk of the Peace of the . . . Place where such Person shall propose to carry on such Business, or his Deputy in the Form prescribed in the Schedule of this Act annexed.[226] And such Clerk of the Peace or his Deputy shall, and he is hereby authorized and required thereupon to grant a Certificate in the Form also prescribed in the said Schedule,[227] for which such Clerk of the Peace or his Deputy shall receive a Fee of One Shilling and no more, and shall file such Notice and transmit an attested Copy thereof to one of his Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State; and every Person who shall, after the expiration of the said Forty Days, carry on such Business, or make or sell any Type for Printing, or Printing Press, without having given such Notice, and obtained such Certificate, shall forfeit and lose the Sum of Twenty Pounds.”
Sec. 26. “And be it further enacted, That every Person who shall sell Types for Printing, or Printing Presses as aforesaid, shall keep a Fair Account in Writing of all Persons to whom such Types or Presses shall be sold, and shall produce such Accounts to any Justice of the Peace who shall require the same; And if such Person shall neglect to keep such Account, or shall refuse to produce the same to any such Justice, on demand in Writing to inspect the same, such Person shall forfeit and lose, for such offence, the Sum of Twenty Pounds.”
Such was the law with regard to typefounding at the time when the widows of the two Caslons were struggling to revive their then ancient business, when Vincent Figgins was building up his new foundry, and Edmund Fry, Caslon III and Wilson were busily occupied in cutting their modern Romans to suit the new fashion. And such the law remained nominally until the year 1869,[228] {136} just upon four centuries after the introduction of the Art into this country. It is probable that, during the first few disturbed years of its existence, the Act may have been enforced, that certificates may have been registered, and accounts dutifully furnished.[229] But its provisions appear very soon to have fallen into contempt, and certainly, as far as we can ascertain, failed to trouble the peace of any British letter-founder.
Such is a hasty and very cursory review of the various laws which from time to time have taken letter-founding under control. Whether they succeeded in placing any real check on the progress of the art, it is difficult to determine. But it is certain that the heaviest restrictive measures have generally been accompanied not only by the most grievous abuses in the spirit of the press, but by distinct degeneration in the quality of the typographical work executed. A privileged printer, sure of his monopoly and safe from competition, would have little or no inducement to execute his work at more cost or pains than was necessary. Old type would do as well as new, and bad type would do as well as good. Free trade and open competition were the great evils to be dreaded, because free trade and open competition would demand the best paper, and type and workmanship. The typography of the entire Stuart period is a disgrace to English art. Fine printing was an art unknown; and only a few works like Walton’s Polyglot, which were produced in an atmosphere untainted by mercenary considerations, stand out to redeem the period from unqualified reproach.
On the other hand, the removal of the restrictions was the signal for a revival which may be traced in almost every printed work of the early eighteenth century. In the absence of any great English founder, the best Dutch types came freely into the English market. Books came to be legible, paper became white, ink black, and press-work respectable. Caslon came in on the tide of the revival, as also did Bowyer, Watts, Bettenham, and artists of their rank; and the emancipated press, among them, made up the leeway of a wasted century, and, no longer in the grip of faction, but the free servant of the great and wise of the land, raised for itself monuments which will remain a lasting glory not only to English scholarship and English eloquence, but also to English typography, for which liberty has been, and always will be, the surest road to achievement.
