abounding in abbreviations, and often difficult to read. It appears to
have been designed after the law hand of the period. The edition of
the _Tenures_ is the only one of these books with an imprint, and it
contains the names of both printers, and the statement that the book
was printed in the city of London, “juxta ecclesiam omnium sanctorum.”
There were, however, several churches in London at this time dedicated
to All Saints, and it is not possible now to settle which particular
one was meant. Complete sets of these five books are in the British
Museum and the Cambridge University Library.
The entire change in the character of the books produced after
Machlinia had joined Lettou shows that his strong point was legal
printing, and during his continuance in business he seems to have
printed all the law-books issued in England. But perhaps the
most marked peculiarity of his partnership is the extraordinary
deterioration in the books produced. The work of Lettou was marked by
excellence of typography and the many improvements introduced by an
evidently practised printer. As soon as Machlinia joined him the work
became slovenly. It might be supposed that Mr William Wilcock, who
had defrayed the expense of Lettou’s work, had either tried it as a
speculation and found it a poor one, or had only wished the two books
to be specially printed for his own use and had then left the printer
to shift for himself. It is curious, too, that Lettou’s neat type
should have entirely disappeared. The real reason for this probably was
that though it was very neat it had none of the abbreviations necessary
in a type used for printing law-books.
While Lettou remained in the firm the work, though much deteriorated,
retained a certain amount of regularity. All the books had signatures
and were regular in size, though their appearance was not good. After
the issue of these five books Lettou seems to have ceased printing, but
the type was used for one more book, which it will be well to notice
here, _The History of the Siege of Rhodes_. This was written in Latin
by Gulielmus Caorsin, vice-chancellor of the Knights of Malta, and was
translated into English by John Kay, who styles himself poet-laureate
to Edward IV. It gives an account of the great victory of the Rhodians
against the Turks and the death of Mahomet.
It is the only early English printed book which we cannot definitely
ascribe to any particular printer. By most early writers it was classed
as a production of Caxton, and Dibdin places it under Caxton in his
_Typographical Antiquities_, though he there expresses a doubt as to
its being his work. “The typography,” he says, “is so rude as to induce
me to suppose that the book was not printed by Caxton. The oblique
dash for the comma is very coarse; and the adoption of the colon and
the period, as well as the comparatively wide distances between the
lines, are circumstances which, as they are not to be found in Caxton’s
acknowledged publications, strongly confirm this supposition.” Five
years later, writing in the _Bibliotheca Spenceriana_, he seems to have
settled more accurately. “I have very little doubt,” he writes there,
“of its having been executed by Lettou and Machlinia, or by the former
of these printers, rather than by Caxton. The letters, however, great
and small, especially the larger ones, and some of the compound smaller
ones, bear a strong resemblance to the smallest types of our first
printer; but on a comparison with those of the _Tenures_ of Lyttelton
and the _Ancient Abridgement of the Statutes_, printed by Lettou and
Machlinia, the resemblance is quite complete.” The type is certainly
that used by Lettou and Machlinia, and the considerable difference in
appearance from the other five books is caused by the text being in
English, which makes more difference than would be imagined, and also
that there are very few of the abbreviations which crowd the other
books. Then again the lines of type are spaced out, giving the page a
much lighter appearance.
Though the dedication is to Edward IV, it does not necessarily follow
that the book was printed before his death, for the early printers in
reprinting a manuscript would keep to the preface as there written.
It might, however, have been printed as early as 1483, and immediately
the law books had been completed. Who the printer was I do not think
can ever be settled. When it was printed Machlinia had probably started
by himself with his new types, and I do not think it can have been
printed by Lettou, as it has not the signatures to the pages which he
invariably used.
We may, I think, date the break up of the partnership of John Lettou
and William de Machlinia about 1482-83, and from that date onwards
Machlinia worked alone. He seems to have made a fresh start with new
type, for he has at least three founts which had not been used before.
The difficulties in the way of making any arrangement or arriving at
any definite conclusions about his books are very great. We know that
he printed at least twenty-two books, and not one single one is dated.
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 other group
are in a regular English type, similar in general appearance to some
of Caxton’s or that used by the printer of St Alban’s, and in the
imprint to one of these books Machlinia speaks of himself as printing
in Holborn, so that we speak of this series of books as printed in the
Holborn type. As Flete-bridge was at the east end of Fleet Street and
a considerable distance from Holborn it is impossible that these two
addresses could apply to one office.
It is probable that the Fleet-bridge group is the earlier, so we will
take it first. In it there are altogether eight books. Three folios,
the _Tenures of Lyttelton_, the _Nova Statuta_, and the _Promise of
Matrimony_, four quartos, the _Vulgaria Terentii_, the _Revelation of
St Nicholas to a Monk of Evesham_, and two books by Albertus Magnus,
the _Liber Aggregationis seu de secretis naturae_, and the _Secreta
mulierum_, and one small book, probably a 16º, an edition of the _Horae
ad usum Sarum_.
The two books of Albertus Magnus are certainly the most neatly printed,
the press work being tidy and regular, which was not generally the case
with this printer’s productions.
The copy of the _Secreta mulierum_ in the University Library is an
interesting one, though, unfortunately, imperfect. On the first leaf
which is blank there is a certain amount of writing, amongst other
things the following sentence: “Annus domini nunc est 1485 in anno
Ricardi tercii 3º.” This note, supposing it to have been written at the
time to which it refers, and there is no reason to doubt it, must have
been written between June 26 and August 22, 1485, showing that at any
rate the book was printed before that date. The other book of Albertus
Magnus, the _Liber aggregationis_, has a colophon stating that it was
printed by “William de Machlinia in the most wealthy city of London,
near the bridge vulgarly called the Flete-bridge.” The wealth of London
seems to have impressed the alien printer, for he always applies the
word “_opulentissima_” to that city.
The small _Horae_ we have little information about, for we know of
its existence only from nineteen leaves scattered about the country.
There are eight in Corpus Christi College, Oxford, seven in the British
Museum, four in Lincoln Minster, and two in the University Library,
Cambridge. These have all been extracted from bindings, and in the
cases where we know the particular bindings from which they came these
bindings were the work of the same man, whose initials were W. G.
From the way in which the leaves were printed, and the way in which
they were afterwards folded, a point too technical and difficult of
description to touch on here, we may pretty safely say that the _Horae_
was a 16º and not an 8º. It may be worth while remarking that the early
printers used only the simple folding, which with each successive
folding exactly halves the size of the previous one. The sheet folded
into two leaves produced folio size, this folded again once made 4to,
folded again 8º, again 16º, again 32º, and again 64º. The duodecimo or
12º, which depends on more complicated folding, was quite unknown.
The _Horae_, so far as we can see from what remains, contained no
illustrations, but it had an engraved border which was used round the
pages beginning certain portions of the book. This engraved border we
afterwards find in Pynson’s hands, and it is the only definite link
connecting him with this press. Bradshaw, in his paper on the “Image of
Pity,” suggests that Ames, who quoted this book in his _Typographical
Antiquities_, had seen a complete copy, but as he describes it merely
as “a book of devotions on vellum” and adds no particulars I think that
he simply described it from the few leaves in his own possession, which
are now in the British Museum in the great so-called Bagford volumes of
despoiled title-pages.
The _Revelation of St Nicholas to a Monk of Evesham_ is one of the most
remarkable volumes of the fifteenth century, very well worth reading,
for it is full of early English stories and allusions. (I may say in
passing that Mr Arber has issued a cheap reprint of it.) The story
tells of a man who was taken through purgatory and was shown various
people whom he had known or heard of and listened to their stories.
It seems to me very curious that no other editions of the book were
issued in early times: it seems exactly the kind of book which must
have been popular. Typographically, the book is interesting as showing
an excellent example of wrong imposition, that is that when the one
side of the sheet had been printed, the other side was put down upon
its form of type the wrong way round, and consequently the pages come
all in their wrong order, page 1 being printed on the first side of the
first leaf, page 14 follows it on the other side, then page 16, then
page 4, and so on. Now, most printers who had done this stupid thing,
and it was not an uncommon accident, would have destroyed the sheet
and reprinted it. Not so Machlinia. He printed off some more copies of
the wrong sheet and, cutting it up, pasted the four pages in their
proper places. In one of the two known copies this has had unfortunate
results, for some curious inquirer, noticing the pages pasted together,
has tried to separate them to find out what was underneath, and they
have suffered severely in the process.
The _Vulgaria Terentii_ is the last of the quartos in this group.
It is a book that was often printed, but of the present edition the
copy in the University Library is the only one remaining, and it,
unfortunately, is slightly imperfect.
Of the folios, the _Nova Statuta_ is the most important, and also by
far the commonest, for I have examined over a dozen copies myself,
and I know of a good many more. The book must have been printed after
April, 1483, as the subject-matter runs up to that date, while an
action in Chancery relating to it was tried between 1483 and 1485. The
_Promise of Matrimony_, another folio in this type, consisting only of
four leaves, relates to the agreement made in 1475 between Edward IV
and Louis XI for the marriage of the Princess Elizabeth of York and
Prince Charles, afterwards Charles VIII, King of France.
I have noticed that in nearly all the copies of the law-books printed
by Lettou and Machlinia, or Machlinia alone, that I have examined, the
initial letters, which were filled in by hand in colour, appear to have
been done by the same person; the letter roughly in red, and a twirl
or two by way of ornament in pale green or blue. I suppose the subject
of the books was so severely practical that unless this had been done
before the book left the office it would never have been done at all.
However, in English printing generally, though the spaces were left
for fine initials, I can remember very few books with them filled in
in any but the plainest way, a contrast to the beautiful work so often
found in Italian books.
The last group of books, which number fourteen, are called the Holbom
type books, because, in the imprint of one of the two books that
contain them we find the words, “Enprente per moy william Maclyn en
Holborn.” The general type used for the text of these books is very
remarkably like that used by Veldener at Utrecht and by John Brito at
Bruges, and may, perhaps, have been obtained by Machlinia from abroad,
though it is of the same school of type as several used in England.
The most important book issued in this series is an edition of the
_Chronicles of England_. It is a very rare book, but there is an
imperfect copy in Cambridge in the Barham collection in Pembroke
College. The space for the initial letters, as is usually the case with
early books, has been left blank to be filled in by the rubricator, but
in one copy that I have seen, the initials have been filled in in gold,
not gold leaf, but gold paint, and this is the only example of its use
that I have found in an early English book. Another curious point about
the book is that though it is a folio, a folio of 238 leaves, yet in
all copies leaves 59 and 66, the first and last leaves of a quire, are
printed on quarto paper. I thought once that perhaps for some reason
these leaves had been cancelled and reprinted, but it seems more
probable that the printer had for the moment run out of his supply of
ordinary-sized paper, and had to use some of a much larger size cut in
half. A similar case of mixed papers is found in the _Nova Rhetorica_
printed at St Albans in 1480, which is partly quarto and partly octavo.
Three editions were published by Machlinia of the curious _Treatise of
the Pestilence_ by Canutus or Kamitus, Bishop of Westeraes in Sweden,
and of each edition only one copy is known, one in the British Museum,
one in the University Library, and one sold lately in the sale of
the Ashbumham Library and now at Manchester. 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.
Another book in this group, by far the commonest and best known, is
the _Speculum Christiani_, ascribed to a writer named John Watton,
a curious medley of theological matter interspersed with pieces of
English poetry. The colophon states that the book was printed for and
at the expense of a merchant named Henry Vrankenbergh. About this
merchant I could find out nothing until, curiously enough, on my last
visit to Cambridge a fortnight ago, my attention was drawn by a friend
to a note in the Descriptive Catalogue of ancient deeds in the Record
Office, where is a note of a “Demise to Henry Frankenbergk and Barnard
van Stondo, merchants of printed books, of an alley in St Clement’s
Lane, called St Mark’s Alley, 10th May, 1482.”
This is, I believe, the earliest note relating to foreign stationers or
merchants of printed books in England, but I hope from the same source
we may expect to obtain many more as soon as the endless series of
documents in the Record Office are calendared.
An edition of the _Vulgaria Terentii_ was also printed in this type. An
almost perfect copy was added to the British Museum Library some years
ago, and a considerable portion of another copy is in the library of
Caius College.
Machlinia also printed two of the _Nova Festa_, the _Festum
visitationis beate Marie virginis_ and the _Festum transfigurationis
Jesu Christi_. The first of these is only known from two leaves which
had been used to line the boards of the binding of Pynson’s _Dives and
Pauper_. Of the second a beautiful and perfect copy is in the library
of the Marquis of Bath. It is curious to notice that it contains not
only the feast according to the Sarum use, but also according to the
Roman use.
The last three of Machlinia’s books to be noticed are the three which,
though undated themselves, contain certain evidences of date. The first
of these contains the statutes made in the first year of Richard III,
and, as this first year ran from June 26, 1483, to June 25, 1484, the
book cannot be earlier than the second half of the latter year.
The second book is one about which I am very much inclined to doubt
whether it was printed by Machlinia at all, but rather by Veldener,
who used apparently identical type; and though I have had for several
years under my charge at Manchester the only copy of the book known I
cannot make up my mind about it. It is an edition of the _Regulae et
ordinationes_ of Innocent VIII, and could not at any rate have been
printed before the very end of 1484. The type seems newer in appearance
than any of Machlinia’s, though to all appearance identical. Dibdin,
with his usual readiness, helps us by remarking, “It presents us with
the same character or general appearance of type as that which Caxton
and Machlinia occasionally used. It is not much unlike the St Alban’s
type.”
The last production is a Bull of Innocent VIII confirming the marriage
of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York. It was reissued in 1494 by
Alexander VI, and there the date is given as 27th March, 1486.
Two copies of this Bull are known, one in the library of the Society
of Antiquaries and one in the Rylands Library, Manchester. Both are in
poor condition, and show signs of having been used at one time to line
the boards of a binding.
Richard Pynson was by birth a native of Normandy, but practically
nothing is known of his personal history. It is probable that he was
educated at the University of Paris, for we find in a list of students
in 1464 the name “Ricardus Pynson Normannus,” and this may very well
be the printer. It was, however, in Normandy that he learned to
print, probably from Guillaume le Talleur, a noted printer of Rouen,
as may be seen by certain small habits connected with printing which
he fell into, and which are very typical of Rouen work. Although we
have only circumstantial evidence, evidence depending on a number of
almost trifling details to back up the statement, it seems now almost
certain that Pynson succeeded Machlinia. My own impression is that
he succeeded immediately on the death or retirement of the latter,
with hardly any interval. A very strong reason for this impression is
that had any long time elapsed between the cessation of Machlinia’s
press and the commencement of Pynson’s, England would have been left
without a printer who could set up law French. Caxton and Wynkyn de
Worde were presumably unable to do it, at any rate they printed no
books of the kind except some statutes of Henry VII, and it must be
remembered that in Henry VII’s reign for the first time the statutes
were written in English. I do not mean to suggest that Pynson ever
worked with Machlinia, but only that when the latter ceased to work
Pynson came over and started in his place, perhaps taking over some
of his printing material or even starting work in his old office. The
engraved border which Machlinia had used in his Sarum _Horae_, the only
piece of ornament he seems to have possessed, we find used afterwards
by Pynson, and it is a very common thing to find Pynson’s earliest
bindings lined with waste leaves of Machlinia’s printing. Had Pynson
worked with Machlinia we should have expected the latter’s founts of
type to have passed into his hands, as Caxton’s were inherited by
Wynkyn de Worde, but they did not. Indeed they totally disappeared, and
what we do find of Machlinia’s in Pynson’s hands is merely the refuse
that we might expect a printer to find in an office just vacated by
another. Had Pynson not been ready to take over the place this waste
stuff would have been destroyed. The question is, then, when did
Machlinia cease or Pynson begin? I should say that Machlinia ceased
much later than is supposed and Pynson began much earlier, and that the
two events happened between 1488 and 1490. At first when Pynson arrived
he was without material, so he commissioned Le Talleur at Rouen to
print for him the two law-books most in demand, _Littelton’s Tenures_
and _Statham’s Abridgement of Cases to the end of Henry VI_.
[Illustration]
Probably in 1490-1491 he began printing on his own account. His
first dated book was issued in November, 1492, but five books, if
not more, can be placed earlier; these are an edition of Chaucer’s
_Canterbury Tales_, a _Latin Grammar_, a poetical book, and two or
more _Year-books_. The _Chaucer_ is a particularly fine book, printed
in two sizes of type, a larger for the poetry, and a smaller for the
prose, which is printed in two columns. It is also illustrated with a
set of woodcuts illustrating the different pilgrims. It is interesting
to notice that these cuts were altered in some cases while the book
was passing through the press in order to serve as the portrait of
another pilgrim. The serjeaunt with a little alteration becomes the
doctor of physick, the squire becomes the manciple. There has been a
good deal of controversy as to the date of the printing of this book
and whether it could have appeared before Caxton’s death in the latter
part of the year 1491. Pynson in his prologue, which is rather confused
and difficult to understand, says, speaking of Chaucer: “Of whom I
among alle other of his bokes, the boke of the tales of Canterburie,
in whiche ben many a noble historie of wisdome policie mirth and
gentilnes. And also of vertue and holynes whiche boke diligently
ovirsen and duely examined by the pollitike reason and ouirsight of my
worshipful master William Caxton accordinge to the entent and effecte
of the seide Geffrey Chaucer and by a copy of the seid master Caxton
purpos to imprent, by ye grace, ayde, and supporte of almighty god.”
I think had Caxton been dead Pynson would have alluded to it in some
way, speaking of him, perhaps, as “my late worshipful master” or “my
worshipful master late dead.” The term worshipful master does not imply
that Pynson had been an apprentice or assistant to Caxton, but was
merely a courteous way of referring to the printer and editor whose
work he was about to reprint. Blades in his life of Caxton, speaks
of Pynson’s having used Caxton’s device, but this mistake has arisen
through a made-up book in the British Museum, a copy of Bonaventure’s
_Speculum vite Christi_. The copy wanted the end, and some former
owner, in order to make the book look more complete, has added a leaf
with Caxton’s device printed on it.
The _Latin Grammar_ is known only from three leaves, one in the
Bodleian and two in the British Museum. The leaf in the Bodleian
appears from an inscription upon it to have been used to line a binding
as early as 1494. The book was printed entirely in the large black type
of the _Chaucer_, the first of Pynson’s types, and which he does not
appear to have used after 1492.