The extreme rarity of this printer’s books will be best understood when it is stated that there are only two examples in the British Museum; one of these is a “Psalter,” 1504. With W. Faques we exhaust the fifteenth century printers who employed marks to distinguish the productions of their presses.
| JULIAN NOTARY. | R. FAWKES. |
Notwithstanding the similarity in their surnames it is not at all certain that Richard Fawkes (1509–1530), who also appears as Faukes, Fakes, and Faques, was related to the last-mentioned printer. His books are now of excessive rarity. The unicorn (regardant on either side of the device) appears for the first time in an English mark. Henry Pepwell (1505–1539), of the Holy Trinity in St. Paul’s Churchyard, was a bookseller rather than a printer, and all his earlier books were printed in Paris; his Mark, in which occurs the heraldic device representing the Trinity, was suggested by the sign of his shop. The most important example of the thirty books which issued from the little-known press of Peter Treveris, who was apparently putting forth books from 1514 to 1535, is “The Grete herball whiche geveth parfyt knowlege and und[er]standing of all maner of herbes,” etc., 1526, a finely printed folio (“at the signe of the Wodows”), of which a second edition appeared in 1529. The earlier edition contains, on the recto of the sixth leaf, a full-page woodcut of the human skeleton, with anatomical explanations, whilst the last leaf contains a full-page woodcut of the printer’s Mark, with the imprint at the foot. Herbert supposes that the sign of the “Wodows,” mentioned by Treveris in the colophon, might possibly be put for wode hommes or wild men, and alludes to the supporters used in the device. Treveris printed for several booksellers, notably John Reyves, of St. Paul’s Churchyard, and for Lawrence Andrewe, of Fleet Street. In this printer’s Mark, and in fact nearly every other sixteenth century example, there is a very evident French influence, whilst many of the examples are the most transparent imitations of Marks used by foreign printers. Of the three used by John Scott or Skot, who was printing books from about 1521 to 1537, two were mere copies of the Marks used by Denis Roce of Paris. We give an illustration of one example; the second is of the same design, but with a very rich stellated background, and the motto, “A l’aventure, tout vient a point qui peut attendre.” His own device was an exceedingly simple long strip, with the letters Iohn Skot in antique Roman characters. An example of the last mark will be found in “The Golden Letanye in Englysshe,” printed by Skot in “Fauster Land, in Saynt Leonardes parysshe”; but examples of this press are excessively rare, only one, “Thystory of Jacob and his XII Sones,” fourteen leaves, in verse, and printed about 1525, being in the British Museum, and another tract, “The Rosary,” 1537, being in the Althorp Library now transferred to Manchester.
| PETER TREVERIS. | JOHN SCOTT. |
Robert Copland, who was a beneficiaire and pupil of Wynkyn de Worde, was a translator as well as a printer and stationer, and his shop was at the sign of the Rose Garland in Fleet Street. Although he carried on business from 1515 to about 1548, only a few of his books are now known, none of which appear to be in the British Museum. The majority were purely ephemeral. The most interesting phase of this printer’s career occurs in connection with one or two books printed by Wynkyn de Worde, notably “The Assembly of Foules,” 1530, at the end of which is “Lenvoy of Robert Copland boke prynter,” one of the three verses running thus:
“Layde upon shelfe, in leues all torne
With Letters, dymme, almost defaced cleane
Thy hyllynge rote, with wormes all to worne
Thou lay, that pyte it was to sene
Bounde with olde quayres, for ages all hoorse and grene