and was in a volume of tracts bequeathed with his library by Thomas
Tanner, Bishop of St Asaph. The volume contained originally five
separate pieces. Two by Wynkyn de Worde, the _Three Kings of Coleyne_
and the _Meditations of St Bernard_, two by Caxton, the _Governayle of
Health_ and the _Ars moriendi_, and the _Solomon and Marcolphus_. I am
sorry to say that the two Caxtons have been cut out of the volume and
bound separately.
The last of the four books to be noticed is the edition of the
_Chronicles of England_. While the _Chronicles_ were being printed
Gerard Leeu died, or perhaps it would be more correct to say was
murdered. One of his workmen named Henric van Symmen, who was also a
type engraver, struck work and determined to set up in business on
his own account. This led to a quarrel, and blows succeeded words.
The workman, it appears, in the course of the quarrel struck Leeu a
blow on the head, and this proved so serious that he lay very ill
for three days and then died. The workman was promptly secured and
brought up for trial for the killing of his master, but it was probably
considered that he had received a certain amount of provocation, and
his punishment took the form of a fine. He was sentenced to pay into
the Duke of Burgundy’s exchequer the sum of forty guelden. Gerard Leeu
seems to have been a good master and a kindly man if we may judge from
the colophon put to the _Chronicles_: “Enprentyd In the Duchye of
Braband in the towne of Andewarpe In the yere of our lord M.cccc.xciii.
By maister Gerard de Leew a man of grete wysedom in all maner of
kunnyng: whych nowe is come from lyfe unto the deth, which is grete
harme for many a poure man. On whos sowle god almyghty for hys hygh
grace haue mercy. Amen.”
The book contains no illustrations beyond a woodcut of the arms of
England on the title-page.
Leeu seems to have intended to print more English books, for the type
in which all but the _Chronicles_ are printed was a special fount cut
in imitation of English type, with a curious lower-case d for use when
that letter occurred at the end of a word. His death, so soon after the
cutting of the type, put an end to all such plans. The custom, however,
of printing English books at Antwerp revived at the very beginning of
the sixteenth century, for Adrian van Berghen printed an edition of
Holt’s _Lac Puerorum_, and John of Doesborch issued a whole series of
English popular books, some of them remarkably curious.
Among the stationers who came to England from abroad the most important
was certainly Frederick Egmont. He was probably a Frenchman, but his
printing was mainly done in Venice, and he seems to have been the agent
of the Venetian printer Johannes Hertzog de Landoia. From this Venetian
press came a large number of service books for English use, editions
of the _Breviary_ and _Missal_. The Sarum _Horae_ on the other hand is
only represented by one edition, issued about 1494, of which only a few
leaves are known.
Egmont during his earliest years as a stationer was connected with no
press except that of Hertzog, and we do not know of any books by this
printer produced for any other English stationer, so that as regards
liturgical books for English use known to us only from fragments we
are justified, I think, in attributing to Egmont as stationer such as
we can determine from their type to have been printed by Hertzog.
The first book in which his name occurs is an edition of the _Breviary_
according to the use of York, of which the only known copy is in the
Bodleian, having been originally in the great liturgical collection
of Richard Gough. It is a small thick octavo of 462 leaves, and was
issued in May, 1493. Two if not three editions of the Sarum _Breviary_
in octavo were printed about this same time, but we know of their
existence only from fragments discovered in bindings. Fragments of
one edition are in a binding in the library of St John’s College,
Cambridge, of another in a binding at Lambeth, while some leaves of
probably a third edition are in the library of Corpus Christi College,
Oxford.
In 1494 Egmont had commissioned Hertzog to print for him two editions
of the Sarum _Missal_, one in folio, the other in octavo. The folio
edition is of great rarity, but there is a beautiful though slightly
imperfect copy in the Sandars collection in the University Library.
The title-page is wanting and also the leaf containing the engraving
of the Crucifixion which should precede the Canon of the Mass. In the
imprint we are told that the book was finished on the 1st of September,
1494, by John Hertzog de Landoia for Fredericus de Egmont and Gerardus
Barrevelt. This Gerardus Barrevelt was clearly a partner of Egmont’s
as their initials occur together in the device on the title-page. This
device is remarkable for the delicacy of its execution. It consists of
a circle divided by a perpendicular line produced beyond the top of the
circle, the projection being crossed by two bars. In the left-hand
half of the circle are the initials and mark of Egmont, in the right
those of Barrevelt. The whole is enclosed in a square frame, and the
background contains sprays of leaves. It so resembles in style and
appearance the mark used by the printer John Hertzog that we may be
pretty certain it was cut under his supervision at Venice.
The octavo _Missal_ of 1494, a much commoner book than the last, was
issued in December. On the last leaf is Hertzog’s mark and the words,
“Fredericus egmont me fieri fecit.” There is no mention of Barrevelt,
and the double device does not occur in the book, which makes it
appear as though this edition was printed for Egmont alone. Both these
editions of the _Missal_ contain exquisitely designed woodcut initials,
the most graceful to be found in any early book.
In the Bodleian there is a copy of the “Pars estivalis” of the Sarum
_Breviary_ printed at Venice in 1495, which contains again the device
of Egmont and Barrevelt, though the imprint mentions Egmont’s name
only. After 1495 we hear nothing more of Egmont until 1499, when he
seems to have got rid of his former partner Barrevelt and joined with
a man named Peter post pascha, and these two commissioned Pynson to
print them an edition of the _Promptorium Puerorum_. After 1499 Egmont
disappeared for a long time; we know of him working as a bookbinder,
and it is probable that he stayed on for some time in England, for he
is mentioned as a witness in a law-suit in London in 1502. When he does
reappear it is in Paris, where he had some books printed for him about
1517-1520.
It is very disappointing that we have practically 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 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.
Having taken up his abode within the liberty of St Peter, he was
privileged to carry on business there without being a freeman of the
city.
In the same way in London, I suppose, the various trades had their
rights and could prevent foreigners from competing, except they resided
within the liberties. Of course there was a Stationers’ Company in
London in the fifteenth century, though unfortunately most of the
records relating to it have disappeared, and it would protect its own
members. We see in the early bindings how ostentatiously the binders
who were freemen decorated their bindings with the arms of London, and
there is no doubt that as far as trading in the City was concerned the
foreigner was considerably handicapped in comparison with the freeman.
We know from the few early documents remaining that the London Company
of Stationers was a powerful and important body, and the members of it
must certainly have enjoyed certain privileges.
Nicholas Lecomte was another stationer who appears to have been settled
in England by 1494, in which year, so far as I know, his first dated
book appears. M. Madden, a French writer on early printing, in the
fifth volume of his _Lettres d’une Bibliographe_, speaks of Hopyl
having printed a book for Lecomte in 1493. Several times in writing
to him I asked for some information about this book, its whereabouts
or its name even, but though he sent always voluminous replies to
my letters, he never would touch on this particular point. I think,
therefore, we may consider that this 1493 book never existed, and
take the 1494 book as the first. This was an edition of the _Liber
Synonymorum_, printed by Hopyl, of which there are copies in the
University Library, the British Museum, and the Bodleian.
In the imprint Lecomte is described as living in London by St Paul’s
Churchyard at the sign of St Nicholas. His device depicts St Nicholas
restoring to life the three children who had been killed and pickled, a
favourite subject of the early bookbinders.
I think it is worth noting here, that so far as I can discover the
sign of a house was not in any way permanent, but could apparently
be changed at will. I noticed this in reading through a catalogue or
_précis_ of some thousands of deeds relating to property in London at
this time and a little earlier. We find endless notices of houses with
changed signs, “the tenement now called the Rose, formerly the Lion,”
the “house called the Bull, formerly called the Rose,” and so on.
Naturally if a house got celebrated for any reason it would be politic
to keep the sign, but there seems to have been no compulsion to do so.
In 1495 an edition of Mirk’s _Liber Festivalis_ and _Quattuor Sermones_
was printed by Hopyl for Lecomte. This contains Lecomte’s device at the
end of the _Liber Festivalis_ and a curious device at the end of the
_Quattuor Sermones_, used sometimes by Hopyl, but which does not bear
on its face any appearance of having been made for him.
At the time when this book was printed Hopyl had in his office as press
corrector an Edinburgh man called David Lauxius, the earliest Scotchman
we know of employed in a printing-office. He afterwards became a
schoolmaster at Arras, and appears to have been a man of considerable
ability, and a friend of the celebrated Parisian printer and editor,
Badius Ascensius, who addresses to him some of the prefatory letters in
his grammars. What Scotch name is represented by the Latin Lauxius no
one has yet been able to determine.
The last book printed for Lecomte was printed at Paris by Jean
Jehannot, and is an edition of the Sarum _Horae_. It is a book of very
great rarity, but there are two copies in Cambridge, one in Trinity
College, and the other in the Sandars collection in the University
Library, the latter containing a small supplement not found in the
other copies, and which was not originally intended to form part of
the book, since the prayers in it are not referred to in the list
of contents. The imprint is curious; it states that the edition has
been revised and corrected in the celebrated University of Paris, and
printed for Nicolas Lecomte of that University, settled for the time
being in England as a merchant of books. I do not know whether this
means merely that he was educated at the University or whether he was
one of the privileged stationers attached to it, though in the latter
case he would hardly have come to settle in England. Like Frederick
Egmont, Lecomte was also a bookbinder.
Before the end of the century another stationer was settled in England
whose name we know, John Boudins. We know of only one book printed
for him, an edition of the _Expositio Hymnorum et Sequentiarum_ of
Salisbury use, which was printed at the beginning of 1502 by Bocard of
Paris. Boudins was probably then an old man, for his will is dated the
11th of October, 1501, and it was proved on the 30th of March, 1503. He
lived in the parish of St Clement’s, Eastcheap, and was apparently a
naturalised Fleming, and an immigrant from Antwerp.
A great difficulty in the way of tracing these stationers, especially
those from the Low Countries, is the very sparing use they made of
their proper surnames. In legal documents such as wills or letters of
denization the formal name would be given, whereas in ordinary parlance
and in the imprints of books they would be spoken of by a kind of
nickname taken from the town from which they came, like William de
Machlinia, Wynkyn de Worde, and so on. So that we should probably
find, if we had more information on the subject, that in many cases
two men who are treated as different may turn out to be only one man
under two names. The number of stationers that existed at this time
in England was probably very large, and it is sad to think that our
information on the subject is so meagre. Of course unless the stationer
was wealthy enough or in a good way of business he would not be able
to commission whole editions of books from a foreign printer, and
therefore he would not have his name in the imprint. Then again the
greater part of a stationer’s stock would consist of foreign books
which were not necessarily printed for England. For information of this
class we can only look to manuscript sources, accounts kept by the
bookseller, lists of imported books, and so on.
There exists, for instance, a list of books for sale at Oxford in 1483
by Thomas Hunte, which has been edited by Mr Madan for the Oxford
Historical Society. At the head of the list is the following sentence
in Latin: “Here follows the inventory of the books which I, Thomas
Hunte, stationer of the University of Oxford, have received from Master
Peter Actors and John of Aix-la-Chapelle to sell, with the price of
each book, and I promise faithfully to return the books or the money
according to the price written below as it appears in the following
list.” The two men mentioned were travelling stationers from London,
supplying so much stock to the bookseller on a system of sale or return.
A document such as the _Day-book of John Dorne_, the journal or
account-book of an Oxford bookseller in 1520, which was edited by
Mr Madan for the Oxford Historical Society, and about which Henry
Bradshaw wrote his _Half-century of Notes_, the last piece of work
which he finished, is a find of the utmost importance in our subject,
and it is perhaps not too much to expect that more documents of this
kind may be forthcoming. In the account-book we notice that after the
21st of May up to the 3rd of August there is an entire blank, and Dorne
begins his account-book again “post recessum meum de ultra mare.” I
think we should be safe in concluding that these months were spent
abroad on business and in the purchase of books.
Sometimes such information is found amongst the waste leaves used to
make boards for bindings. The University Librarian read a note before
the Antiquarian Society here giving an account of a letter on business
matters written from a foreign printer to John Siberch, the first
printer in Cambridge, which was found among other waste matter used
to make the boards of a binding now in Westminster Abbey Library, and
letters of bookbinders have been found in the same way.
We have not, unfortunately, any book however meagre on this subject
which might serve as a basis on which to build up information. Isolated
facts turn up occasionally here or there, but there being no regular
place for us to put them they drop out of sight again. And it is only
when we have collected a number of these facts and begin to find the
links that piece them together that we can arrive at any definite
knowledge of the subject.
I do not suppose we may expect to find much new information from
books themselves, but from manuscript sources a good deal may yet be
discovered. Within the last year or two many documents relating to
stationers and printers of the early sixteenth century have been found
at the Record Office, and there must be many more still to be found
there; besides, the documents in the Record Office are only a part of
our great collections.
However, as I said before, what we most want is an account as full as
possible of the booksellers and stationers up to 1535, giving us all
the information that has yet been discovered, to serve as a groundwork
for what may be found in the future.
LECTURE IV.
THE BOOKBINDERS.
From the very earliest times the bookbindings produced in England were
remarkable for their beauty and richness. The finest were of gold,
ornamented with gems, but their value has led to their destruction,
and I do not think that there is any early binding of this class now
in existence. Leather was very soon recognised as a suitable material
for book-covers, being easily worked and capable of receiving a
considerable amount of ornament. The earliest leather binding known is
on a beautiful little manuscript of St John’s Gospel, taken from the
tomb of St Cuthbert, and now preserved in the library of Stonyhurst
College. It is of red leather, and the centre of the side is ornamented
with a raised ornament of Celtic design, while above and below are
small panels filled with interlaced lines, executed apparently with a
pointed tool and coloured yellow. This binding is generally considered
to be of the tenth century, though there are some reasons for thinking
that it may have been executed later, but if this is so the present
binding must have been copied from an earlier one.
Excellent as the early work had been, that of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries is unsurpassed. The leather bindings executed at
Durham for Bishop Pudsey between 1153 and 1195 are marvellous both for
their detail and for their general effect. It was the custom of binders
of this period to build up a bold and effective pattern covering the
whole side of the book by means of a large number of dies, beautifully
engraved with different designs. On the four volumes of Bishop Pudsey’s
Bible, now in the Cathedral library at Durham, no less than fifty-one
different dies are used, and when we remember that Bishop Pudsey was
one of the great builders of the cathedral, it is not surprising that
the ornamentation on the dies used in these bindings should resemble
the carved work in the cathedral. There are in the Cathedral library
seven of these early bindings, and, unfortunately, they have suffered
a considerable amount of mutilation at a not very remote date, for
visitors on payment of a small gratuity to the person who looked after
the library were allowed to cut out with a penknife one of the stamps
to keep as a curiosity. A few more Durham bindings, easily recognised
by the dies, are scattered in different libraries in London and in
France.
At Winchester, also, and London very beautiful work of the same class
was produced, the circular form of decoration being very much made use
of. Perhaps the finest piece of Winchester work now in existence is the
binding of the _Winchester Domesday Book_ in the library of the Society
of Antiquaries, of which a facsimile was published in the illustrated
catalogue of the exhibition of bookbindings at the Burlington Fine
Arts Club. Some very fine work, too, probably executed at Winchester,
is to be found on some manuscripts in the library of the Faculty of
Medicine at Montpellier executed before 1146 for Henry, son of Louis
VII of France.
The metal dies with which these bindings were stamped were practically
indestructible, but it is curious to notice that they hardly ever
appear to have been used after the twelfth and early thirteenth
centuries. 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. In later bindings
the die became smaller and less finely cut. It was not intended to be
decorative in itself, but only to help to build up patterns, and the
bindings in consequence lose much of their interest.
Oxford, I believe, is generally credited with clinging somewhat
strongly to old traditions, and certainly its bookbinders did so in
the fifteenth century. From the earliest times bookbinding had been
considerably practised there and continued without a break, and no
doubt that is why the old styles lingered for so long. The bindings
produced there towards the end of the century form the connecting
link between the old styles and the new. They represent the last
survival of the early English school of work, that very distinctive
English style which depended so much on the disposal of dies into large
circles, or parallelograms one inside the other, such as we find in the
Winchester and Durham bindings of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries.
That this circular work was not the haphazard freak of a single binder
we can see from the fact that several of the dies are wider at the top
than at the bottom, so that when placed together side by side they
would naturally work round to a circular form, like the stones forming
the arch of a bridge. These dies are in many cases foreign in design
and may have been introduced by Rood, the first printer, but the style
of binding is essentially English. Some bindings of a rather similar
appearance, though never with any circular ornament, were produced in
the Low Countries. On nearly all Oxford bindings will be found little
groups of three small circles, so small that they might have been done
with the end of a watch-key, and arranged in a triangle. This ornament
I have never seen on any but Oxford work. One habit connects the Oxford
binders with those of the Low Countries, and that is their habit of
always, when possible, lining the boards of the binding with leaves
of vellum rather than paper. All the other English binders used paper
generally for this purpose. It is owing to this custom of using vellum
that many copies of _Indulgences_ issued by the early printers have
been preserved, for, as they were only printed on one side, the binder
could paste them down with the printed side next the boards and the
clean side outwards. An Oxford binding with an inscription stating
that it was bound in “Catte Strete” in 1467 was formerly in the British
Museum: the manuscript which it covered has been rebound and the old
binding has disappeared.