E. Gordon Duff

“ For his first book the St Alban’s printer used a beautiful type which, except as signatures in two other books, never appeared again.
It is extremely unfortunate that a source from which we might no doubt have learnt something about the introduction of printing into Oxford, and some details about the first printer, seems irrevocably lost. This is the volume of the registers of the Chancellor’s court covering the period between 1470 and 1497. ”

“ Henry Jacobi, who came to Oxford from London about 1512 and died in 1514, had certainly various panels which he had used in London, but he may not have transferred them to Oxford. Of stationers or binders who lived and worked in Oxford alone no single panel has yet been identified. Unfortunately, not a single book printed for or at Oxford in the early sixteenth century is known in an original binding. ”

“ But in looking at the history of the book trade in England during the period, one point is especially striking, the very great disproportion between the numbers of printers and of stationers. The books produced by the English presses formed but an infinitesimal portion of the literature circulated in the country. The number of printers we can reckon fairly accurately, for there must be few, if any, who have left no trace; with stationers it is quite otherwise, for we are almost entirely dependent on records and registers, of which [Pg 124] vast numbers have utterly perished. ”

“ The death of Henry VIII. and the accession of Edward VI. in 1547 gave a fresh impetus to printing, and presses were set up in three new towns, Ipswich, Worcester, and Canterbury. For some years previous to this no book had been printed outside London, and with the religious opinions changing from day to day, even the London printers themselves hardly knew what they might or might not issue without fear of prosecution. Numbers of persons who had fled abroad returned, and with them came an immense number of foreigners seeking refuge from their own religious persecutions abroad. ”

“ The University Library possesses the Modus of January and the unique copy of the Æsop.
Now not only are the types of the Oxford and Cologne printers identical, but both men made similar mistakes in the use of certain capitals, and we find both in the Modus Confitendi and in the Expositio a capital H frequently used in place of a capital P. This must be regarded as more than a mere coincidence and strong evidence of a connexion between the two presses. The Oxford printer also printed his capital Q sideways in his earliest book. ”

“ At the end is the printer’s device, Italian in style, a double cross rising from a circle. In the circle is a shield bearing a saltire cross, the arms alike of the town and abbey of St Alban’s.
The last book from this press was the famous Book of St Alban’s, “the book of hawking and hunting and also of coat armours.” It is a small folio of ninety leaves. As might be supposed from its popular nature copies are now excessively scarce, and out of some dozen which are known, not one is absolutely perfect. ”

“ In good specimens of roll-tooled bindings again Oxford is singularly deficient, in curious contrast to Cambridge, which rivals if not surpasses London in this class of work. There are no fine broad rolls, and only one bearing initials. This is a roll engraved with a waving spray of foliage containing in the curves the initials R. H. M. I. What these initials stand for is unknown, and the roll is only claimed as an Oxford one from its use on the covers of a Brasenose College register. For the rest of the century Oxford binding is entirely uninteresting. ”

“ The master to whom Kaetz referred was very possibly Christopher Endoviensis or Van Ruremond, who, when Kaetz set up in business on his own account, printed books for him. Van Ruremond we know printed English prognostications, single folio broadsides such as would be sold at a penny a piece, which as we know from Dorne’s day-book was the usual price of a single sheet, so that he may have been the printer of these supplied to Siberch at twenty-five for a shilling. The New Testaments were probably of a Latin version since they are called Nova Testamenta in the letter. ”

“ For some reason, perhaps through marriage, the name, Freez, was changed to Wandsforth, a not uncommon Yorkshire name, and, though Frederick does not seem to have used it himself, his brother, Gerard, certainly assumed it, and in his will calls both himself and his brother Wandsforth, making no reference to his original name, Freez.
Frederick is but a shadowy person. His name is found in no colophon, and the only definite connexion with book-selling of which we have evidence, is the inevitable lawsuit, for Pynson brought an action against him in 1505. ”

“ In 1487 an attempt was made by the Corporation of London to prevent London freemen attending local fairs, but a general outcry was made that many goods, amongst them books, would not be obtainable, and the ordinance was repealed. The subject of the book trade at fairs is too large to be considered here, but it must be remembered that by far the largest fair in England, a not unworthy rival to Frankfurt, was held at Sturbridge by Cambridge, and it retained its reputation for bookselling for some centuries. ”

“ It is therefore enacted that no bookseller, except the sworn stationers or their deputies, shall sell any book, being either his own property or that of another, exceeding half a mark in value, under pain of, for the first offence, imprisonment, for the second, a fine of half a mark, for the third, abjuring his trade within the precincts of the University. ”

“ Davies in his History of the York Press has been singularly unfortunate in his account of this book. He quotes the very inaccurate transcript of the colophon printed by Ames, and then adds: “Neither the copy in the library of Sidney Sussex College nor that belonging to the Dean and Chapter of York now contains the leaf upon which this colophon was printed. It is to the valuable work of Ames that we are indebted for the only record of it that has been preserved.” Davies or his informant was probably misled by its occurring three pages before the end of the book. ”

“ The presses of the two University towns, Oxford and Cambridge, have been very fully treated, and, in a lesser degree, those of St Alban’s and York, but with these exceptions the remaining towns have been curiously neglected, and our knowledge concerning such important printing centres as Ipswich, Worcester and Canterbury seems to have advanced but little since Herbert issued the third volume of his Typographical Antiquities over a hundred and twenty years ago. ”

“ There are a great many booksellers in Oxford who are not sworn to the University; the consequence of which is, that books of great value are sold and carried away from Oxford, the owners of them are cheated, and the sworn stationers are deprived of their lawful business. ”

“ A number of quite irrelevant assertions were made and vague arguments brought forward of which the following is apparently the strongest. Because Caxton’s edition of the Description of Britain, printed in 1480, has not the place of printing mentioned in the colophon, while some of the later editions speak of the Chronicles and Description of Britain as printed by the schoolmaster of St Alban’s, therefore Caxton’s edition was printed at St Alban’s. This is surely a quite unwarranted argument from the fact that W. de Worde preferred to reprint the St Alban’s edition rather than Caxton’s. ”

“ The most important stationer in the fifteenth century was Thomas Hunte, who, we have seen, was for a time a partner with Theodoric Rood the printer. His name first appears in 1473, in which year he sold a Latin Bible, now in the British Museum, and he was then one of the official University stationers. Between 1477 and 1479 he was living in Haberdasher Hall in the parish of St Mary the Virgin. These premises in Cat Street belonged to Oseney Abbey and seem to have been a favourite situation with stationers. ”

“ At present we do not know much about the early business of type-cutting, but it seems clear that, soon after the commencement of the sixteenth century, different printers went to a common source for their type, and that type-cutting was not a part of the printer’s business, as it was when printing was first invented, but a special trade. ”

“ The Statutes are described by Herbert from a copy in his own possession, but where it is at present is not known.
Oswen printed altogether at Worcester some twenty-one books, so that it heads the list of provincial presses as regards numbers. The press is also noticeable for the comparative excellence of the printing and the variety of good border-pieces and initial letters, very much superior to the material used by most of the contemporary printers. From the class of books he issued we can well understand the cessation of his press as soon as Mary succeeded to the throne. ”

“ In May 1503 the award of Margaret, Countess of Richmond, and three other arbitrators was agreed to and signed. This covenant between the town and University contained special references to stationers, and enacted that only those stationers and binders who had always practised their trade should be considered under the jurisdiction of the University, a certain number, then in business, being exempted.
Our knowledge of early Cambridge bookbinding is curiously different from what we know of Oxford. There our knowledge of fifteenth-century work is full, and of early sixteenth almost a blank. ”

“ The trade of a stationer then was more comprehensive than now, for he was a bookseller and a bookbinder, but even then his business cannot have been large and would hardly be sufficient to keep him. It is clear, however, from numerous contemporary references, that stationers often engaged in other business apart from their own. ”

“ In 1515-16, therefore, we find the name Ursyn Mylner, prynter, entered on the roll of freemen. He did not obtain his freedom by patrimony, so that he had probably served his full term of apprenticeship.
In December 1516 he issued a Grammar of Whitinton. It is a small quarto of twenty-four leaves and only one copy is known. It was sold in Thomas Rawlinson’s sale in 1727 for one shilling, being bought by his brother Richard, and at the latter’s sale it was bought by M. C. Tutet; it is now in the British Museum. ”

“ About 1490, when he moved to Copenhagen, he parted with some of his material, and this cut, with a fount of type and some woodcut initials, passed into the hands of Wynkyn de Worde, who used it in several grammars issued about 1500. At the end of the book, below the colophon, is the printer’s device. This consists of a shield hanging from a tree supported by a bear, an allusion to the name Ursyn, and an ass. The shield is divided per pale, and bears on the one half a windmill, on the other a sun. The mill is obviously for Mylner, but what the sun is for is not clear. ”

“ The amount of Greek printing in all Siberch’s books put together is very small, hardly enough to call for the cutting of a special fount, for it must be borne in mind that a Greek fount is infinitely larger and more complex than a Roman. One specially complicated fount used at Venice in 1486 contained about 1350 sorts. It seems probable therefore that we must look to some foreign source for this type, and its identification might throw some further light on Siberch’s business career. ”

“ Croke was at this time Professor of Greek at Cambridge, but he was compelled to have his work printed abroad, since no English printer of the time possessed a fount of Greek type. Had he acted on his own initiative, he would probably have employed a printer of Paris where he had studied, or Leipzig where he had recently been a professor, both of which towns had excellent Greek presses. ”

“ The first person to begin printing at Ipswich was a certain Anthony Scoloker, whom most writers have considered to be a foreigner, but who is definitely spoken of in the Subsidy Rolls as an Englishman. He was an educated man, printing translations of his own from French and German, and it is not improbable that he had left England on account of religious persecutions, and had returned under the milder rule of Edward. ”

“ Within the period we have been examining, roughly the hundred years since the invention of printing up to the passing of the Stationers’ Company’s Charter in 1557, printing had been practised in nine provincial towns. The two fifteenth-century presses, Oxford and St Alban’s, ceased simultaneously in 1486. York, away in the north of England, had a press at work between 1509 and 1516. ”

“ We find them dealing in various things besides books, but by far the most favourite occupation supplementary to selling books was to keep a public-house. Numbers of the early stationers are spoken of also as beer brewers. In the Oxford University Archives we constantly find licences granted to the booksellers to sell wine or beer. The early English printer, Jean Barbier, who had worked at London and Westminster at the end of the fifteenth century, is cited in a London lawsuit as “Johannes Barbour nuper de Coventre, bere brewer, alias dictus Jehanne Berbier nuper de Coventre, prenter.” ”

“ Though printing was not actually practised in Hereford, three books at least are known which were printed for sale there. In 1502 the very beautiful Hereford Missal was printed at Rouen by Pierre Olivier and Jean Mauditier for a Rouen stationer, Jean Richard. We know accidentally that about the time this Missal was printed Richard was in England, for he was party to a lawsuit at Oxford, and he may have journeyed to Hereford to dispose of this book. ”