For a long period after the discovery of printing, it seems that
type-founding, printing, and binding went under the general term of
_printing_, and that printers cast the types used by them, and printed
and bound the works executed in their establishments. Type-founding
became a distinct calling early in the seventeenth century. A decree of
the Star Chamber, made July 11, 1637, ordained the following regulations
concerning English founders:—
“That there shall be four founders of letters for printing, and no more.
“That the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the Bishop of London, with six
other high commissioners, shall supply the places of those four as they
shall become void.
“That no master-founder shall keep above two apprentices at one time.
“That all journeyman-founders be employed by the masters of the trade,
and that idle journeymen be compelled to work, upon pain of imprisonment
and such other punishment as the court shall think fit.
“That no master-founder of letters shall employ any other person in any
work belonging to the casting or founding of letters than freemen or
apprentices to the trade, save only in pulling off the knots of metal
hanging at the end of the letters when they are first cast; in which work
every master-founder may employ one boy only, not bound to the trade.”
By the same decree, the number of master-printers in England was limited
to twenty.
Regulations like the above were in force till 1693. The “polyglot
founders,” as they have been called, were succeeded by Joseph Moxon
and others. But the English were unable to compete with the superior
productions of the Dutch founders, until the advent of William Caslon,
who, by the beauty and excellence of his type, surpassed his Batavian
competitors, when the importation of foreign type ceased, and his founts
were, in turn, exported to the Continent.
By an act subsequently passed, no founder was to cast any letter for
printing, no joiner to make any press, no smith to forge any iron-work
for a press; no person to bring from parts beyond the seas any letters
founded or cast for printing; nor any person to buy any letters or any
other materials belonging unto printing; without application to the
master and wardens of the Company of Stationers.