trading of foreigners in this country. The ninth chapter ends:
“Provided always that this act or any parcel thereof, or any other act
made, or to be made in this said parliament, shall not extend, or be
in prejudice, disturbance, damage, or impediment, to any artificer, or
merchant stranger, of what nation or country he be, or shall be of, for
bringing into this realm, or selling by retail, or otherwise, any
books written or printed, or for inhabiting within this said realm for
the same intent, or any scrivener, alluminor, binder or printer of such
books, which he hath, or shall have to sell by way of merchandise, or
for their dwelling within this said realm, for the exercise of the said
occupations; this act or any part thereof notwithstanding.”
This Act it will be seen, which was not repealed until 1534, gave
absolute liberty to foreign printers and stationers to trade and
reside in England. That it succeeded in its object of encouraging the
immigration of stationers and craftsmen and the importation of books,
is clear from the words of the Act of 1534: “Whereas by the provision
of a Statute made in the firste yere of the reygne of Kynge Richarde
the thirde, it was provided in the same acte that all strangers
repayryng into this realme might lawfully bring into the saide realme
printed and written bokes to sell at their libertie and pleasure. By
force of which provision there hath comen into this realme sithen the
makynge of the same, a marvellous number of printed bookes and dayly
doth. And the cause of the making of the same provision semeth to be,
for that there were but few bookes and fewe printers within this realme
at that time, whiche could well exercise and occupie the said science
and crafte of printynge. Nevertheless, sithen the making of the saide
provision, many of this realme being the Kinges naturall subjectes,
have given them so diligently to lerne and exercise the saide craft of
printing that at this day there be within this realme a great number
of connyng and experte in the said science or crafte of printing, as
able to exercise the saide crafte in all pointes as any stranger in any
other realme or country.”
Though the preamble of this Act speaks only of printing, it was mainly
directed against the foreign bookbinders and stationers. By it it was
forbidden to import any foreign printed books ready bound, and no one
was to buy from any foreigner residing in England any books except “by
engrosse,” that is, wholesale. This you will see completely stopped the
trade of the foreign binder in the English market, and absolutely did
away with the foreign stationer in England. One effect of the Act is
apparent in the extraordinary number of letters of denisation taken out
at that date. In 1582 Christopher Barker wrote: “In the time of King
Henry VIII there were but few printers and those of good credit and
competent wealth, at whiche time and before there was another sort of
men, that were writers, lymners of bookes and dyverse thinges for the
Churche and other uses called stacioners; which have and partly to this
day do use to buy their bookes in grosse of the said printers, to bynde
them up and sell them in their shops, whereby they well mayntayned
their families.”
The fifty years then between 1484 and 1534 are the really interesting
years in the history of the English book trade, when it was free and
unprotected, but though we have a fair amount of information about the
latter half of this time, the earlier half is almost destitute of any
kind of records. The books of the original company of stationers in
London have all disappeared, and we are dependent mostly on incidental
references in deeds, in wills, or other legal documents.
Two years before the Act was passed, namely in 1482, we know of two
foreign booksellers who had come to London, Henry Frankenberg and
Bernard van Stondo, who rented an alley in St Clement’s Lane called
St Mark’s Alley. From their names they would appear to have come from
the Low Countries, but we know nothing about them or their business
beyond the fact that Frankenberg commissioned his fellow-countryman,
William de Machlinia, who was printing in London, to print for him
an edition of the _Speculum Christiani_, about which I spoke in my
last lecture. Their names in the deed and Frankenberg’s name in a
colophon are the only clues we have to the existence of two probably
important booksellers. So also in the very year of the Act we find
foreign dealers in books trading in Oxford with the resident university
stationer. In 1485 Peter Actors, a native of Savoy trading in London,
was appointed by Henry VII, Stationer to the King.
About 1486 at Louvain, Egidius vander Heerstraten printed an edition of
the _Regulae Grammaticales_ of Nicolas Perott, which contains a great
number of passages in English. These are very curious, and seem to have
been translated by one not very conversant with the language. Here is a
passage which refers to the fifteenth century substitute for compulsory
football: “who someuer of my discipulis goyeth awey fyrst from the
gammyng wt owt my licence i shal smyte his hande wyt a rode. And yf
he do the samyn thyng twyss i shall also beet hym wyt a leyshe.” In
another place, having translated the Latin phrase, “Quintilianus est
eloquens sed nihil ad Ciceronem,” “Quintilian is a wel spoken man but
nothyng to Tully,” he adds another and more personal example: “Helia
Perott is fayr but nothing to Penelope.”
I am not sure whether we ought to consider this book as one printed for
the purpose of exportation to England, or whether it was not rather
intended for the use of English students at the foreign universities.
This is made more probable from the fact that in a few cases we have
words translated into Dutch prefaced by “as we say.” I have seen
it stated that a similar edition was printed by the same printer
with explanations in French, but I have not been able to verify the
existence of any copy.
About 1486, too, was issued the first edition of the Sarum _Missal_,
printed, it is supposed, at Basle by Wenssler, though some doubts have
been raised as to whether it was really printed at Basle on account of
the appearance of the music type. It is a very handsome folio volume
of 278 leaves, printed in a large Gothic type in red and black. The
printer has not attempted to print the English portions of the wedding
service, but has left blank spaces where they occur, so that they might
be written in by hand. The first few editions of the Sarum _Missal_ are
all similar in this respect, but it is curious that Caxton, who had an
edition specially printed for him, should not have supplied the printer
with correct copies for these small portions of the service.
In the next few years a few grammatical books were issued, printed
as a rule in the Low Countries. In 1486 Gerard Leeu printed the
_Vulgaria Terentii_, a series of Latin sentences with translations
into English, an edition reprinted from the Oxford one of a year or two
earlier. This book is sometimes found printed as a supplement to the
_Grammar_ by John Anwykyll, and of this _Grammar_ there are two foreign
editions, one printed by Paffroed at Deventer in 1489, and another
rather later by Henry Quentell at Cologne. The _Grammar_ does not
contain an author’s name, but in the prefatory verses written by Petrus
Carmelianus he is referred to as Joannes. There are also verses written
to William Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, and founder of Magdalen
College, Oxford, congratulating him on having persuaded this Joannes to
edit the _Grammar_. The book is supposed to have been intended for the
use of the Magdalen College School, in which the two grammarians John
Anwykyll and John Stanbridge were masters, and is supposed to have been
the work of Anwykyll. The two earliest editions were printed at Oxford,
but by 1486 the Oxford Press had stopped work and the two succeeding
editions were printed abroad.
The _Liber Equivocorum_ and _Liber Synonymorum_, the former wrongly
attributed to Joannes de Garlandia were also printed in the Low
Countries, the first at Deventer by Paffroed, the second at Antwerp by
Thierry Martens in 1493. The _Liber Synonymorum_ has the commentary of
Galfridus Anglicus. A copy of this book sold in the Ratcliffe sale in
the last century was described as having been printed at Antwerp in
1492, but this must have been, I suppose, a misprint for 1493.
Three more books printed in the Low Countries I ought to mention
before turning to France. One is an edition of Clement Maydeston’s
_Directorium Sacerdotum_, printed by Gerard Leeu in 1488, of which
there is a copy in the Cambridge University Library.
Another is an edition of the Sarum _Horae_, also printed by Leeu, which
I am afraid has to be spoken of at present as a lost book. The only
fragment known, an unused half sheet containing eight leaves, had been
used to line the binding of a copy of the _Scriptores rei rusticae_
printed at Reggio in 1496, in Brasenose College library; Bradshaw saw
the fragment and took down a description of it, but on its return to
Oxford it was mislaid and is not to be found.
The third book is another edition of the Sarum _Breviary_, printed at
Louvain in 1499 by Thierry Martens. The only copy known is in the Musée
Plantin at Antwerp. Leaving the Low Countries for a time we will turn
to France.
The _Missal_ printed for Caxton in 1487 I have already described in an
earlier lecture, so I can pass on to the edition which succeeded it,
that printed by Martin Morin, the celebrated printer of Rouen in 1492.
This Morin was by far the most important of the Norman stationers and
printers, and he appears to have excelled in the printing of service
books, for he was employed by printers and publishers from all parts to
print the service books for the special uses of the towns where they
resided.
For England he printed altogether six service books in the fifteenth
century. Three _Missals_, two _Breviaries_, and a _Liber Festivalis_,
and of these the _Missal_ of 1492 is the earliest. The two copies known
of this book, both slightly imperfect, are in the British Museum and
the Bodleian. It contains, like the earlier edition printed for Caxton,
two full-page engravings before the Canon of the Mass, not one only, as
is more generally the case.
The two later _Missals_ which he issued, one without date but about
1495 and another dated 1497, appear to have been mixed up by all
writers. The undated edition appears the rarest, for the only copy
which I have noted is in the British Museum. Of the dated edition I
have notes of five; one at Windsor in the Royal library, one in St
Catharine’s College, one at Chatsworth, one in the Aberdeen University
Library, and the fifth at Kinnaird Castle. I owe my knowledge of the
existence of this last copy to almost the last book in which one would
seek for bibliographical information, that handy work of reference
_Who’s Who_. Both editions are very handsome books, remarkable for
their fine titles and initial letters.
Of the two _Breviaries_ which Morin printed the earliest is dated 1496,
and the only copy known is in the University Library at Edinburgh, to
which it was bequeathed in 1577 by Clement Litill, who left a number
of valuable books to that library, of which he was practically the
founder. It is a magnificent folio volume of 437 leaves, and contains a
fairly full imprint, which after a deal of very grandiloquent language
tells us that the book was printed at the cost of Jean Richard, “by
the industry of that man skilled in printing, Mr Martin Morin, a not
unworthy citizen of that great city Rouen.” Morin’s colophons I may
note rarely err on the side of modesty. The Jean Richard mentioned
was a stationer of Rouen, and one who appears to have had considerable
dealings with England. I do not think he was a printer, as is often
stated, and he describes himself as a dealer in books, not a printer,
using sometimes the word merchant of books and sometimes the word
stationer.
It was for him that Morin printed in 1499 an edition of Mirk’s _Liber
Festivalis_ and _Quattuor Sermones_, a copy of which is in the Sandars
collection in the University Library. For him also, in 1500, a Sarum
_Manual_ was printed by Petrus Olivier and Joannes de Lorraine, of
which there is a copy in the Bodleian, and during the early years of
the sixteenth century a considerable number of service books for the
English market were printed at his expense.
The names of a number of early stationers who probably traded between
Rouen and England are to be found in the imprints of the early Sarum
_Missals_, for as the printing of them entailed a good deal of expense
a number of booksellers would combine to pay for the edition. Rouen
seems to have been, amongst all the towns of France, the most connected
with England as regards the book trade. It was there many of our
printers, as well as the first Scottish printers, learned their art or
obtained their materials, while stationers from that town crossed over
and sold their books in this country.
We know that Ingelbert Haghe, the publisher of the Hereford _Breviary_
of 1505, came over himself and sold books at Hereford and in the
country round. On the fly-leaf of a Bible formerly in the library of
Gloucester Cathedral is a Latin inscription which runs: “I gave to the
Hereford bookseller called Ingelbert for this and the six other volumes
of the Bible 43 shillings and fourpence, which I bought at Ludlow the
year of our Lord’s incarnation 1510, about the day of the Lichfield
fair.” Whether the Bible is still in the Gloucester Cathedral library
I do not know, but the fly-leaves which once belonged to it are in a
bundle of scraps in the Bodleian.
Another Rouen printer issued in 1495 an edition of the _Liber
Festivalis_. His name was James Ravynell, and this is the only book
that he is known to have printed. It is an exact copy of the edition
printed by W. de Worde in 1493 and ’94, and the type used in it has a
very clean and new appearance. At the end is a device with the initials
P. R., which looks as though it might have been made for another member
of the family, though we know of no other printer of the name. The fact
that he uses the English form of the Christian name in the imprint, “By
me, James Ravynell,” looks as if he was an Englishman who had migrated
to Rouen.
The device consists of the initials P. R. on a shield suspended by a
belt from a tree and supported by two muzzled bears. Below the shield
two birds hold up a wreath. Round the whole runs the text: “Junior
fui etenim senui et non vidi justum derelictum nec semen ejus querens
panem.” The name Ravynell is a curious one, and may be a corrupted
spelling of a commoner name, though it is still borne by some families
of Huguenot descent.
Another mysterious book, which from its type may very well have
been printed at Rouen, is an edition of the little grammar called
_Parvula_. It consists only of four leaves, and the only copy known is
at Manchester. The book ends: “Here endeth a treatise called parvula,
for the instruction of children. Emprentyd by me Nicole Marcant.” In
the exasperating way common to some printers both the date and place
of printing are omitted. As to the date I am inclined to put it before
1500, but the place is more difficult to settle. Nicole Marcant is an
unknown printer, but may very well be a member of one of the numerous
families of Marchand or Mercator, for there were several printers of
that name, though none so far as I know named Nicholas.
If we except the _Missal_ printed for Caxton in 1487 it was not until
1494 that the Paris printers began to work for the English market, and
the books they produced were almost all liturgical. The only exceptions
are three editions of grammatical works, two of the _Liber Equivocorum_
wrongly ascribed to Joannes de Garlandia, and one of the _Liber
Synonymorum_, the first two printed by Baligault and the last by Hopyl.
The first liturgical book was an edition of the Sarum _Breviary_,
printed in 1494 by Pierre Levet. For a long time only one copy was
known, that in the library at Trinity College, Dublin, but not long ago
the University Library was fortunate enough to secure a second example,
a very beautiful copy in its old binding.
In one thing the Paris printers excelled all others, and that was in
the production of books of Hours. These were turned out in the last few
years of the century by hundreds of thousands, and though they are now
of very common occurrence and very often of little interest, they are
still much sought after by certain classes of collectors, especially
those who like what they call pretty books. Of course, when these books
were printed for the use of out of the way places they have often great
liturgical interest, and being printed no doubt in small quantities are
very rare. The English service books having been relentlessly destroyed
at the Reformation are very rare indeed. Altogether in the fifteenth
century twenty-seven editions of the Sarum _Horae_ were printed,
fifteen in England, one at Antwerp, one at Venice, and ten in Paris.
Nine English editions were printed before one was issued at Paris, but
these latter when once they got a footing in England easily defied
competition. The changes in the text of these books during the last
ten years of the century are very curious and interesting. The _Horae_
was not a service book proper, but a manual of private devotion, and
so long as it contained certain fixed and definite parts additional
prayers could be added at will. Consequently the editions vary greatly,
and each publisher seems to have aimed at inserting new and popular
prayers, and by 1500 the book had increased to almost double the bulk
of its forerunner of ten years earlier.
In speaking of these books there is one point on which a word of
warning may be said. And that is about dating editions which have no
date in the imprint. All such are usually put down to 1488, which is
the first date printed in the calendar of moveable feasts. As this
calendar was made out for a nineteen year cycle running on to 1508 it
was naturally not reprinted for many years, and therefore is no test
for dating the printing of the book. The ten editions printed at Paris
are the work of about five printers, of whom the most important was
Felix Baligault.
The study of these French books of Hours is not an easy one, as there
is so much confusion between printers and publishers. In some cases
I am afraid the publishers used the words “printed by” in a quite
unwarrantable manner, and claimed to have produced books which they
had done nothing more than pay for. Then again quite half the editions
produced for sale in England are without any imprint, so that we are
left to conjecture who was the printer from the type or cuts used in
the books. To further bewilder us, sets of cuts passed from printer to
printer, and are very untrustworthy guides in assigning books. If one
printer issued a _Horae_ with a fine set of cuts they were promptly
copied by his rivals, who in their turn sold their old sets to less
wealthy printers, in fact some sets of cuts change hands almost every
year.
These books are all got up in the same style, the text surrounded on
every page by deep borders containing figures of saints and martyrs or
pictures from the Dance of Death.
One unique edition, printed by Jean Poitevin about 1498, was picked
up lately in Ireland and bought by the librarian of Trinity College,
Dublin, for a small sum.
A service book of great interest is the first edition of the Sarum
_Manual_, of which the only known copy is in the library at Caius
College. It bears on its first leaf a Latin inscription stating that
it was given to the College of the Annunciation of the Blessed Mary
at Cambridge by Humphrey de la Poole, son of the Duke of Suffolk, for
the use of the college, in September, 1498. The book is a folio of
164 leaves, beautifully printed in red and black by Berthold Rembolt
of Paris. It has no date, but the Greek in the printer’s device reads
ΧΕΡΕΘΗΚΙ, and must therefore be after 1496, when it read ΧΕΡΕΘΙΚΗ, and
as the book was presented in 1498 we may fairly safely fix the date of
printing about the beginning of 1498. Unfortunately the last leaf is
missing, which may have contained an imprint giving the exact date and
stating for whom the book was printed.
The last service book to be noticed is a Sarum _Missal_ printed by Jean
du Pré at Paris in 1500. Unfortunately all the copies of this book are
imperfect, though from the three copies known an exact collation can be
made. Another _Missal_ was printed at Paris in the same year by Higman
and Hopyl for two unknown persons, I.B. and G.H.
All these service books though most interesting liturgically are
almost the most uninteresting class of book to the bibliographer. They
were issued by well-known printers, and are hardly different from the
great mass of foreign service books. From them early in the sixteenth
century, however, we derive a good deal of information about the
stationers, especially as regards the provincial presses; for in the
case of a town like York hardly anything seems to have been printed
beyond liturgical books.
So far the books we have been speaking of have been for the most part
in Latin, with some sentences here and there in English, printed, of
course, for the English market, but not of much interest from the
point of view of literature. But we now come to another small group
of English books, printed entirely in English, of very much greater
interest.
In 1492 and 1493, when, just after the death of Caxton, the English
press was almost at a standstill, Gerard Leeu of Antwerp printed four
English books of considerable interest. Three of them were reprints
of books already printed by Caxton, Lefevre’s _History of Jason_,
the _History of Paris and Vienne_, and the _Chronicles of England_.
The fourth book was _The Dialogue or Communyng between the Wise King
Solomon and Marcolphus_. Of this there does not seem to have been any
other English edition, though many Latin ones were printed in the
fifteenth century, and it is possible, though hardly probable, that
Caxton might have printed an edition which has entirely disappeared.
Lefevre’s _History of Jason_ is a small folio of ninety-eight leaves,
illustrated with a number of half-page cuts clearly made to illustrate
the book in which they first appear. They were used in several editions
of the _Jason_ in different languages, the earliest in Dutch having
been printed by Bellaert at Haarlem about 1485. There are copies of
the English edition at Trinity College, Dublin, and in the library at
Chatsworth, and a third copy, slightly imperfect, is in the University
Library.
The _History of Paris and Vienne_, which was printed exactly three
weeks after the _History of Jason_, is a still rarer book, only one
copy being known, which is in the library at Trinity College, Dublin.
It, like the _Jason_, is illustrated with a series of half-page wood
engravings, which Mr Conway, in his _History of the Woodcutters of the
Netherlands_, conjectures to have been originally used in an edition
printed by Bellaert at Haarlem, which has now entirely disappeared, and
then to have passed from his possession into the hands of Gerard Leeu.
It is a small folio of forty leaves, and the copy at Dublin is bound up
with the _Jason_ and the _Chronicles_.
The next book to be noticed, the _Dialogue or Communyng between the
Wise King Solomon and Marcolphus_, is very interesting, being the only
English edition of this version of a widespread and popular story. It
tells how Solomon, seated on his throne, is confronted by Marcolphus,
a misshapen rustic who answers with a certain coarse wit the questions
put to him by the king. Later on the king visits Marcolphus, who in
his turn comes to reside at court, but his behaviour there is so
insolent that the king can hardly put up with it. After a series of
escapades Marcolphus is banished from the court, and finally sentenced
to be hanged. He is allowed as a favour to choose his own tree, and
consequently he wanders with his guards through the Vale of Josaphath
to Jericho, over Jordan, through Arabia and the wilderness to the Red
Sea, but “never more could Marcolf find a tree that he wold choose to
hang on.” The curious result of this is that he went home and lived
happily ever afterwards.
The book itself has only one illustration, which is used twice, on the
recto and verso of the title-page, representing Marcolphus and his wife
Polycana standing before Solomon, who is seated upon his throne. This
cut found its way over to England, and was used by several successive
printers for editions of _Howleglas_.