“During a period of twenty years the heretical inhabitants were either extirpated or driven into perpetual exile. Those who escaped carried with them a passionate affection for their destroyed fatherland, and an undying hatred against the tyranny of the Church of Rome.
“It will be shown that from the appearance of the first water-mark in 1282 these mysterious marks are, speaking broadly, the traditional emblems of Provençe.
“From the fact that fundamentally the same designs were employed all over Europe, we can deduce the inference that Provençal refugees carried their art throughout Europe, just in the same way as at a later period and under somewhat similar circumstances Huguenots carried new industries into strange countries. It will also be shown that the same code which unlocks many of the obscurities of paper-marks elucidates the problems of printers’ marks, and evidence will be brought forward that paper-makers and printers were originally in close touch with each other, held similar views, and were associated in identical aims.”
Gradually the secrets of the craft pursued their northward trail into the Netherlands. Saardam, in the Duchy of Holland, became in the eighteenth century an important center, employing, it is said, one thousand persons.
In England, which for many years imported all its paper, the first mill was erected about 1498, as is attested by an entry for that year in the privy-purse expenses of King Henry VII. Further corroboration is also to be found in the following quaint verse from Wynken de Worde’s edition of “De Proprietatibus Rerum”:
And John Tate the younger Joye mote he broke,
Which late hathe in England doo make this paper thynne
That now in our Englyshe this book is written inne.
England, however, achieved no reputation for fine papers until the establishment of the famous James Whatman, in 1760.
In the meantime, the trade had taken root in our own country when, in 1690, William Rittenhouse started the first American mill on the Wissahickon river at Roxborough, near Philadelphia, and thirty years later New England’s first mill was established by David Hinchman at Milton, Massachusetts.
The migratory characteristics of the trade were made possible by the simplicity of the machinery which was required in these times. Pictures of early mills depict a mortar and pestle in which to macerate the rags to pulp, a small vat for the paper stuff, a mold on which the paper was formed, and a screw press with which to squeeze out the water from the new-formed sheets.
Mechanical improvements came with painful slowness, and no doubt each small advance was a jealously guarded secret.