CHAPTER III
LITERATURE AND ART
The earliest transcribers of MSS., that is to say, publishers of books, the monks, not only transcribed MSS., but they sold their copies, the sale of books forming part of the monastic revenues. These books were either plain copies for common use, as the service books and the school books, or they were illuminated, bound with decorations of gold and silver, costing very large sums. When, however, as happened in the fifteenth century, the demand for books increased, while the revenues, and therefore the numbers, of the religious in the monasteries decreased, the multiplication of books fell into the hands of laymen. In some cases the monks themselves employed laymen as transcribers. There grew up various branches of the book trade: the maker of parchment, pens, ink, colours for illumination; the writers, the binders, the illuminators, and the sellers. As regards the value of books at any time, it is impossible to estimate it, because we must first learn the purchasing power of money, which is very difficult to ascertain; e.g. the price of wheat, sheep, fowls, etc., is a very fallacious test, because we do not know the standards of the time. The wage test is the safest guide. For instance, six pounds a year was thought sufficient pay for the maintenance of a chantry priest—a man considered superior to the ordinary craftsman, yet not very high in the social scale. In addition we must know the whole conditions of production; the cost of materials, the time taken by transcribers for a page or a sheet, the demand, the competition, and everything else connected with the work. Some of these points have been cleared up, but most of them can never be cleared up. It must be sufficient to understand that there was a large demand for books, and that many collections of books were formed by princes and prelates and monasteries. It was a providential circumstance that the art of printing was well advanced at the time of the Dissolution of the Religious Houses. Otherwise the losses, which were great indeed, might have been very much greater, even irreparable.
The first printers in the City of London were Caxton’s workmen, Wynkyn de Worde and Richard Pynson. The former set up his press in Fleet Street, “over against the Conduit,” which stood at the end of Shoe Lane; the latter, outside Temple Bar. In the course of the century, however, the number of printers rapidly increased, and in the reign of Elizabeth the number of books published in any branch was extraordinary. Nothing can show more conclusively the general avidity for learning and for the possession of books in every branch of knowledge. When, indeed, we consider that the yearly output of books in Great Britain and America now amounts to some 10,000 (a large number of them new editions), which at an average of 1000 each means 10,000,000 volumes among a population of 120,000,000, who nearly all read, without counting India, which alone contains millions of readers, and when we remember that the whole reading public of England amounted to a few thousands, it is clear that the Elizabethan output was beyond comparison greater in proportion than our own.
OLD TEMPLE BAR IN THE TIME OF JAMES I.
E. Gardner’s Collection.
It could not be long before a censorship of the Press was established. In 1526 the printing of books against the Catholic Faith was prohibited. Later on, that of books defending the Catholic Faith was in turn prohibited.
It was in 1557 that the very singular powers were conferred upon the Company of Stationers of suppressing and prohibiting books either seditious or heretical. These powers were absolute and subject to no appeal. Why the Company of Stationers was entrusted with powers which belonged to the Bishop of London and the Ecclesiastical Courts does not appear. However, the Company exercised this authority for two years, when Queen Elizabeth ordered that no book should be printed without a license being first obtained. She then, illogically, granted monopolies to certain printers and booksellers for the sale of certain books specified: to one for the sale of Bibles; to another for sale of catechism; to a third for that of music-books; and so on. To the Stationers she granted the monopoly of psalters, primers, almanacks, A B C, the “little Catechism,” and Nowell’s English and Latin Catechism. The printer, however, was already separating from the bookseller. As yet there was no such thing recognised as the author’s rights over his own property. In many cases he did not wish his name to appear; the publisher did what he pleased with the MS.
Among the early booksellers was Richard Grafton, who was printer, bookseller, and author as well. He reprinted and continued Hall’s Chronicles. Other publishers and booksellers of the sixteenth century were Robert Redman, who quarrelled with Richard Pynson; Henry Pepwell, who died in 1539; John Day, for whom John Foxe, who wrote the Book of Martyrs, worked. He issued a Church music book. He also published Bibles, Sermons, and A B C’s. Day had shops successively in Holborn, Aldersgate Street, and St. Paul’s Churchyard. William Middleton, whose shop was in Fleet Street, near St. Dunstan’s Church, was both printer and bookseller. He published Heywood’s Four P’s, and an edition of Froissart.
Henry Smyth, Redman’s son-in-law, was the publisher of Littleton’s Tenures. Richard Tottell, whose shop was within Temple Bar, published Tusser’s Hundred Good Points of Agriculture, Grafton’s Abridgment of the Chronicles of England, and Stow’s Summary of the Chronicles of England. Harrison of St. Paul’s Churchyard published Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis in 1593, but it was printed by Richard Field, a fellow-townsman of the poet. In 1594 Harrison published The Rape of Lucrece. The publication of the plays, however, belongs mostly to the seventeenth century. But Romeo and Juliet, Richard II., Richard III, Henry IV. Part I., Love’s Labours Lost, were published at this time, and in 1600 Henry IV. Part II., Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, and Henry V. all came out. In all, eleven of the plays were published in the sixteenth and the rest in the seventeenth century.
There was an astonishing number of printers and booksellers. Thus, in addition to the names mentioned above, we may note those of Middleton, Richard Field, Harrison, father and son, William Leake, Wise, Aspley, Ling, and Nathaniel Butler, Ponsonby, Edward White, Cadman, Burby, Warde, William Barley, Humphrey Hooper, John Budge, Thorpe, and Norton.