“That the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of London, with six other high commissioners, shall supply the places of those four as they shall become void.
“That no master-founder shall keep above two apprentices at one time.
“That all journeyman-founders be employed by the masters of the trade, and that idle journeymen be compelled to work, upon pain of imprisonment and such other punishment as the court shall think fit.
“That no master-founder of letters shall employ any other person in any work belonging to the casting or founding of letters than freemen or apprentices to the trade, save only in pulling off the knots of metal hanging at the end of the letters when they are first cast; in which work every master-founder may employ one boy only, not bound to the trade.”
By the same decree, the number of master-printers in England was limited to twenty.
Regulations like the above were in force till 1693. The “polyglot founders,” as they have been called, were succeeded by Joseph Moxon and others. But the English were unable to compete with the superior productions of the Dutch founders, until the advent of William Caslon, who, by the beauty and excellence of his type, surpassed his Batavian competitors, when the importation of foreign type ceased, and his founts were, in turn, exported to the Continent.
By an act subsequently passed, no founder was to cast any letter for printing, no joiner to make any press, no smith to forge any iron-work for a press; no person to bring from parts beyond the seas any letters founded or cast for printing; nor any person to buy any letters or any other materials belonging unto printing; without application to the master and wardens of the Company of Stationers.
TYPE-FOUNDING IN AMERICA.
A foundry, principally for German type, was established at Germantown, Pennsylvania, about the year 1735, by Christopher Saur, (or Sower,) a printer, who executed in German the first quarto Bible printed in America, as well as other valuable works in the German language. Three editions of the Bible were printed—viz., in the years 1743, 1763, and 1776, the latter two by his son. In 1739, Saur published a newspaper in Germantown.
An abortive attempt was made about 1768 to set up a foundry at Boston by a Mr. Mitchelson from Scotland, and another in Connecticut in 1769 by Abel Buel. In 1775, Dr. Franklin brought from Europe to Philadelphia the materials for a foundry; but little use of them was made.