- (1665). Specimen sheet of minute printing in several languages, addressed to the King by Nicholas Nicholls, Letter Founder. (State Papers, Domestic, 1665, vol. 142, No. 174.)
CHAPTER VIII.
JOSEPH MOXON, 1659.
OSEPH MOXON, whose distinction it is to have been the first practical English writer on the mechanics of typography, was born at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, on August 8, 1627, and appears to have been brought up as a mathematical instrument maker, in which profession he showed himself highly proficient. In the year 1659, being either already settled in the metropolis, or having come thither for the purpose, he added to his stated business that of a typefounder, in which, according to Mores, he continued till 1683.
It is difficult to fix the precise condition of the laws relating to typefounders in the last year of the Commonwealth. The Ordinances of 1647 and 1649, which reimposed the main provisions of the Star Chamber Decree of 1637, remained nominally in force till the Restoration, so that we are to suppose that Moxon, unless he practised his art surreptitiously or sub rosâ, was formally installed into a vacancy in the body of authorised founders on execution of the usual bond to the Company of Stationers.
