E. Gordon Duff

“ Having now disposed of Caxton’s only rival, let us turn to Caxton himself. It would, I think, be out of place here to recapitulate however shortly the history of Caxton’s early life, since it has been so fully and excellently done in that standard book Blades’s Life of Caxton. What is more to our purpose is to pass on to the time when, as an influential and prosperous man, he laid the foundations of his career as a printer. ”

“ I must warn anyone who uses Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities, that the facsimile page of the book which he gives is made up from the upper part of the first leaf of the Cambridge copy and the lower part of the same leaf of the Manchester copy, which he must have seen when it was in the possession of Triphook, the bookseller, so that the resulting facsimile is rather puzzling. The fact that one of these editions, that in the British Museum, has a title-page, makes us inclined to put it to rather a late date, but at any rate it is the earliest title-page in an English printed book. ”

“ In Westminster Abbey library is a copy of the Epistolae of Ficinus, printed in 1495, which has its covers ornamented with early Winchester stamps, and another binding worked with twelfth century dies is on a fifteenth century printed book in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.
In all these early bindings one is especially struck with the extraordinary taste and balance in the decoration. The dies themselves are beautiful, and the pattern in which they are built up is also beautiful, and yet neither are unduly emphasised. ”

“ Signatures, directors, headlines, seem to be present or absent without rule or reason. There is hardly any method of arranging the books in groups, every book stands alone in splendid isolation.
The only division possible is according to the type used in the books, and in this way we can separate them into two groups. Those of the first group are printed in two founts of a square gothic type, and as in colophons of the two books in this series which possess them the printer speaks of himself as living near the “Flete-bridge,” we call these books the ones printed in the Fleet-bridge type. ”

“ The fifty years of freedom from 1484 to 1534 not only brought us the finest specimens of printing we possess, but compelled the native workman, in self-protection, to learn, and when competition was done away with his ambition rapidly died also. Once our English printing was protected, it sank to a level of badness which has lasted, with the exception of a few brilliant experiments, almost down to our own day. ”

“ Those in use at Cambridge are perhaps the finest of all, but this is not the time to speak of them. Among London binders John Reynes produced the best known roll, containing figures of a hound, a falcon, and a bee with flowers and foliage. Another with an unknown binder’s mark, contains a hound, a falcon, and a double-headed eagle on a shield. The roll of another unknown binder bears a Tudor Rose, a pomegranate, a shield with the arms of France and England, a turreted gateway, a portcullis, a fleur-de-lys, and the binder’s mark. ”

“ I found in a college library at Oxford a book with these stamps, evidently bound by De Worde, and the boards were lined with waste leaves of three books printed by him, one being unknown, and one by Caxton. De Worde’s bindings are the least easily identified of any in the fifteenth century, for beyond these few dies of Caxton’s there are none that can definitely be ascribed to him, and even the various bindings that might be ascribed to him from the fragments found in them vary so much in style and decoration that it seems impossible that they could have all come from one shop. ”

“ Indeed, so torpid was the press at that time that foreign printers found it worth their while to produce and import reprints of Caxton’s books for sale in this country, books to which I shall refer more fully in a future lecture. We soon see that we have to deal now with a man who was merely a mechanic, and who was quite unable to fill the place of Caxton either as an editor or a translator, one who preferred to issue small popular books of a kind to attract the general public, rather than the class of book which had hitherto been published from Caxton’s house. ”

“ If you wish to have a practical idea of what foreign work meant to England, just glance at the list of Contents in Mr Sayle’s admirable Catalogue of the Early [Pg 240] English books in the University Library. Taking all the persons given in the list, from the earliest printing to 1510 connected with English books, we have the astonishing result of three Englishmen, Caxton, a printer, Hunte, the Oxford stationer, and W. Bretton, merely a patron of printing. The foreigners on the other hand number forty-two. ”

“ The art of printing was introduced into London in 1480, three years after Westminster, two years after Oxford, and probably one year after St Alban’s, by a printer called Joannes Lettou. The name evidently denotes that he came originally from Lithuania, of which the word Lettou is an old form. One thing is at once apparent when we come to examine his work, and that is that he was a skilled and practised printer, producing books entirely unlike Caxton’s, and bearing every appearance of being the work of a foreign press. ”

“ It has always been a puzzle to me why, if De Worde had had this fount of type beside him for several years, he never used it before, and why, having used it this once, he never used it again. Not a single letter ever appears in another book, and yet the type is a handsome one.
1498 saw the issue of three fine folios: the Morte d’Arthur, of which the only known copy is in the John Rylands Library at Manchester, the Golden Legend, of which the only known perfect copy is in the same library, and lastly the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. ”

“ It is obvious that where the printer by his work placed himself in very considerable danger, he would not be anxious to advertise himself and would therefore [Pg 228] let his books go out without any imprint or with a fictitious one. Then comes in the study of type. It affords a far more conclusive argument than any theories drawn from where the author was living or where he would probably like to have his book printed. Then again there is the common danger of taking for an early or original edition what is merely a reprint with the original colophon unaltered. ”

“ In 1523 as a set-off for levying a subsidy Henry VIII gave assent to an Act which ordered that no alien, denizen or not, using any manner of handicraft within the realm should from henceforth take any apprentice except he be born under the King’s obedience; that no alien should keep more than two alien journeymen; and that aliens using handicrafts in London and two miles round should be under the search and reformation of the wardens of the handicrafts within the City of London. ”

“ It is very disappointing that we have practically [Pg 94] no information about Frederick Egmont, for it is clear from the number of books that he had printed for him in Venice that he must have been a stationer of very considerable importance. The colophons of his books give, beyond his mere name, no information whatever about him: we do not even know in what part of London or under what sign he lived. The stationers seem always to have settled in St Paul’s Churchyard, and I cannot help thinking that part of that district may have been “in the liberties,” as it was called, of some church. ”

“ Though he did not print so many books as De Worde in the fifteenth century, nevertheless Pynson was evidently a more enterprising and careful printer. He had seven distinct founts of type, all of which were made for him and not inherited from other printers, and the works he produced were of a much more scholarly nature, though this becomes more apparent in his work during the sixteenth century. His patrons were often learned and distinguished men, for whom he produced such splendid work as the Morton Missal, and he became later the recognised king’s printer. ”

“ The bookbinders were in a much worse case, because so many binders in this country were foreigners, and no doubt large consignments of books came over ready bound. The probability is that the foreigners had been better trained, and could turn out cheaper and better work, and though that might appeal to the purchaser, it would certainly injure their native rivals. While for forty years the Italians had been issuing beautiful little volumes in gilt bindings, the use of gilding on bindings was almost unknown in England. It was not as though English printing was improving as time went on. ”

“ The great centre of trade during this period was St Paul’s Churchyard, and the shops there were of two kinds. There were the substantial houses round the cathedral, where the printer or stationer could carry on his business and dwell, but clustered in every direction against the very walls of the church were booths and sheds and stalls. These were simply “lock up” shops of one story, many with flat roofs for people to stand on to view processions, and were used by booksellers and such printers as had printing-offices elsewhere. ”

“ It cannot be any matter of wonder that the fragments used for lining the boards of old books should have an interest for those who make a study of the methods and habits of our early printers with a view to the solution of some of many difficulties still remaining unsettled in the history of printing. ”

“ It would seem unlikely that so important a man should come to London to print so small a tract, and besides it has no appearance of English work. Like many others, he had probably an agent of his own in London and printing the tract [Pg 211] in Paris sent it to London for sale. The type in which it is printed, a neat black letter, is what may be called a stock type, that is, it was made by a man who made type-founding his business and supplied various printers. ”

“ Many aliens in order to obtain the privileges of a native took out letters of denization, but these privileges only commenced from the date of the grant and were not retrospective as in the case of a patent of naturalization. Letters of denization allowed a man to hold, but not to inherit lands; nor did they confer any benefit on the children born previous to the date of the grant. In 1512 an Act was passed for levying a subsidy, and it was ordained that every alien made a denizen should be rated like a native, but that aliens not denizened should pay a double rate. ”

“ It is curious that this book, which would lend itself so readily to illustration, was not printed with woodcuts, but Caxton after using them in 1481 made no further move in this direction until 1484, when another group of illustrated books appeared. It always looks as though Caxton, and indeed his own words tend to prove it, was much more interested in the literary side of his work than in the mechanical, and therefore only called in the aid of the wood-engraver when he thought it absolutely necessary. ”

“ A printer here and there who had a subsidy and was sure of work, such as Pynson and Berthelet, cast fine type and produced handsome books. But the majority lagged far behind, and worn-out type and broken cuts were the stock-in-trade of the ordinary printer. Then was passed the Act of 1534, which declared the English printers to be at least the equals of any foreign competitors, and restricted the importation of foreign books. ”

“ Though the Act of Richard allowed foreigners to come over and trade, yet I do not suppose his Act could override the rights of the trade guilds. It certainly did not in York, for there a stationer must be a freeman by right or by purchase before he could carry on certain businesses, that of a stationer amongst the number, within the city. There were, however, certain liberties where an alien could live and trade; and we find at York that their earliest stationer, Gerard Wanseford, does not appear in the city register. ”

“ There are bindings which are obviously English just as there are others obviously foreign, but the great majority are doubtful. It must be remembered that a very large number of binders in England were foreigners, who [Pg 232] would very likely bring their dies and stamps with them from abroad, and finish their work in a foreign manner. As their bindings were produced in England, they must be called English bindings though in a foreign style, for we would not call the Berthelet bindings, produced for Henry VIII in London by foreign workmen with foreign dies, anything but English. ”

“ The alien printer, stationer, or binder, when denizened, was in this position. He paid double subsidies and taxes, he could have none but English-born apprentices and only two foreign workmen. He was under the rule of the Warden of the Craft. He could not deal in foreign bound books, nor buy books from foreigners except by engross. The alien not denizened had the further restrictions that unless he had been a householder before February 1528, he could not keep any house or shop in which to exercise any handicraft, nor could he sell any foreign printed books by retail. ”

“ Pynson’s earliest bindings are as a rule very plain. Like the other binders of the time he ruled diagonal lines across the sides of his books, and put a small die in each division. Sometimes he did not even use a die, but contented himself with plain lines, as, for instance, on the copy of his first dated book of 1492 in the British Museum. His bindings, like Machlinia’s, are very plain, and the dies used are small and poor. ”