GEORGE I.--GEORGE II.--GEORGE III.--GEORGE IV.--WILLIAM IV.
On the succession to the English crown passing to the Hanoverian line,
another important change was made in the royal coat of England. George I.
substituted for the fourth quarter, which had been hitherto a repetition
of the first, the arms of his family, Brunswick, impaling Luneburg, and in
the base point the coat of Saxony, over all an escutcheon, charged with
the crown of Charlemagne, as a badge of the office of High Treasurer of
the Holy Roman Empire. George II. bore the same coat as did George III. up
to 1801, when, on the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland, the
coat was officially altered to first and fourth England; second, Scotland;
third, Ireland, with over all an escutcheon, bearing the arms of the royal
dominions in Germany, ensigned with the electoral bonnet, which was again
changed to the Hanoverian royal crown when Hanover was elevated to the
rank of a kingdom in 1816. This last coat was used by George IV. and
William IV., and, without the Hanoverian escutcheon, it is the present
royal coat of England.
The bindings of George I. and George II. are generally much alike. There
are good specimens of each at Windsor. They are generally in red morocco,
with either coats-of-arms in the centre or monograms. At Windsor there is
one bound in vellum, it is a manuscript _Report on States of Traytors_,
1717, and bears the full royal coat in the centre, enclosed in rectangular
mitred borders, with delicate gold stamped work at the sides. In the
British Museum is a finely stamped _Account of Conference concerning the
Succession to the Crown_, 1719, very delicately and tastefully ornamented,
having the coat-of-arms in the centre, with crowned initials at the
corners, and delicate gold work of floral sprays and curves borrowed from
Le Gascon, a great French binder.
[Illustration: FIG. 23.--_Account of what passed in a Conference
concerning the Succession to the Crown, MS. George I._]
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--_Le Nouveau Testament. Amsterdam, 1718. George
II._]
There are several of George II. bindings at Windsor, made for him when he
was Prince of Wales. These generally bear the Prince of Wales' feathers as
a chief motive, and they often have broad borders, much of the
ornamentation of which contains stamps of crowns, sceptres, and birds,
which are attributed to Eliot and Chapman. There are other inlaid bindings
made for George II. which often have doublures. Some of these are figured
in Mr. Holmes's _Bookbindings at Windsor_. Bindings of a similar kind that
were made for Frederick Prince of Wales, and for his wife, the Princess
Augusta, are also preserved at Windsor. These have always heraldic
centres, and generally the broad Eliot and Chapman outer borders.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--_Chandler. A Vindication of the Defence of
Christianity. London, 1728. George II._]
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--_Common Prayer. Cambridge, 1760. Queen
Charlotte._]
For George III., both when Prince of Wales and King, books were bound with
coloured inlays by Andreas Lande. There are specimens of his work both in
the British Museum and at Windsor, they are not in particularly good
taste. During the reign of George III. a remarkable English bookbinder
worked in London. This was Roger Payne; and, although he himself does not
seem to have bound any royal books, he strongly influenced many who did,
more particularly Kalthoeber, who bound many of the books in the King's
Library at the British Museum. Although these bindings are by no means so
good as their originals, they are a very great advance upon their
immediate predecessors; and a delicately worked and effective instance
covers a copy of the Gutenburg Bible now at the British Museum.
Another English binder of note, James Edwards of Halifax, also flourished
in the reign of George III. This binder has not, I think, received
sufficient appreciation, as he discovered an entirely new way of treating
vellum by which it was rendered transparent. He painted designs on the
under side of the vellum and bound his books with it, the result being
that, if the vellum is clean on the outside, the protected painting
underneath it is as fresh as when it was first done. A fine example of
this curious work is on a copy of a Prayer Book, printed at Cambridge,
1760, which belonged to Charlotte of Mecklenburg, queen of George III.
(Fig. 26). Her arms, in proper heraldic colours, are in the centre of the
upper cover, enclosed by a blue and gold border of Etruscan design. At the
lower edge is a miniature of a ruin in monotone, and at each side of the
coat and above it are ornamental scrolls, with conventional flowers,
birds, animals, and figures. On the lower cover is a central oval, with an
allegorical figure in monotone, enclosed in a similar border to that on
the upper cover, at each side of which are flowering trees in urns, birds,
etc., and in each panel of the back is also a decorative design.
Altogether this is the prettiest royal binding done at this period. It has
the crowned initials "C. R." painted in silver inside the upper cover, and
on the front edge, in an oval, is a painting of the Resurrection under the
gold. Between this and the edges, painted for James II., there were no
books adorned in this way for royal owners.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--_Portfolio containing the Royal Letter concerning
the King's Library. George IV._]
The bindings done for George IV., at Windsor, are generally bound in red
morocco, with heraldic centres and broad borders, sometimes inlaid with
coloured leathers. The borders are sometimes like those used by Eliot and
Chapman, and sometimes conventional patterns. A good example in the
British Museum is on the cover of the letter written to Lord Liverpool by
the king in 1823, concerning the gift of his father's library to the
nation. A copy of the Book of Common Prayer, which belonged to William
IV., and is now at Windsor, is bound in blue morocco. It bears in the
centre the star of the Order of the Garter, within a crowned Garter,
dependent from which is an anchor, and at the sides "G. R. III." There are
anchors in the corners, and a decorative outer border. The generality of
the books belonging to him have the usual heraldic centres, within borders
designed in more or less good taste. The king presented to the British
Museum, and signed with his own name, an _Inventory of the Crown Plate_,
1832. It is bound by William Clark, and bears in the centre the full royal
coat-of-arms, and has a handsome rectangular border of triple gold lines,
broken at each side by bold arabesque ornaments.
EPILOGUE
In the foregoing detailed descriptions I have included only the work of
English binders. There are, however, many books existing that have been
bound for English royal personages abroad. Instances of these occur
notably for Henry VIII., Elizabeth, James I., Henrietta Maria, Henrietta
Anna, Charles II., the Chevalier St. George, and Cardinal York. It will be
noticed that generally the ornamentation of English royal books is
heraldic, and that crowned initials are constantly used from the time of
Henry VIII. to William IV. To understand the royal coat-of-arms of England
it is necessary, at all events, to note the larger rearrangements of the
various quarterings, which on the Tudor bindings were simply France and
England, quarterly. The two great changes took place on the accession of
the Stuart line, when the coats of Scotland and England were introduced;
and on the accession of the Hanoverian line, when the family coat of the
Guelphs was introduced. There are several minor alterations and additions,
but these I have mentioned as they have occurred, and the only other
important change to remember is concerning the supporters. From the time
of Henry VII. until 1528 these were a dragon and a greyhound, and from
that time until Elizabeth they were a lion and a dragon. Since the time of
James I. they have been a lion and unicorn. Badges are constantly found on
Tudor and early Stuart bindings. They are the well-known ones of Tudor
origin--the double rose, portcullis, pomegranate, fleur-de-lis, and
falcon. The fleur-de-lis remains longest of these. The Prince of Wales'
feathers is commonly found on books from the time of Edward VI.
The styles of bindings used by these great royal houses have also
characteristics common to each of them. The bindings of the Tudor
period are most diversified in styles, and the majority of the leather
books are either bound by Thomas Berthelet, royal binder to Henry VIII.,
and his successors, or in his style. Under Elizabeth, the Italian fashion
of double boards, the upper of which is pierced, was used for very choice
work. Berthelet took his inspiration originally from Italian models, but
shortly developed a style of his own. Vellum was much used in connection
with gold stamped work, the first use of which in England is credited to
this binder.
[Illustration: Order of the Coronation of George III. and Queen Charlotte.
London, 1761. George III.]
The bindings of the early Stuart period may be considered remarkable for
the extensive use of what are called semées, successive and symmetrical
impressions from small stamps powdered over the sides of the book; and the
stamped velvet work done at Little Gidding is one of the glories of the
reign of Charles I.
Samuel Mearne was royal binder to Charles II., and many of his bindings
are of great beauty. His influence on English bookbinding remained for a
very long time, weakening gradually, until superseded by the newer style
introduced by Roger Payne.
In the time of George III. there was some improvement in royal bindings
due to the imitators of Roger Payne, another binder, whose influence was
strongly felt after his death. Eliot and Chapman, during the eighteenth
century, introduced the use of broad borders with small stamps, among
which are frequently found crowns and sceptres; and many of these are
found on royal bindings.
Names of many royal binders, from early times, are preserved in various
records, but there is considerable uncertainty about the work of most of
them; and, although many lists exist of books bound for certain kings by
certain workmen, very few of them have been identified. From the constant
appearance of personal badges of different kinds, it may be considered
likely that, especially among the earlier sovereigns, considerable
personal interest has been taken in the covering of their books. We even
find the livery colours of the Tudors--green and white--duly used on some
of their bindings; and the prevalence of red and blue, the livery colours
of the Hanoverian line, is common enough among the Georgian bindings.
LIST OF MOST IMPORTANT WORKS CONSULTED
Almack. A Bibliography of the King's Book. London, 1896.
Burlington Fine Arts Club. Catalogue of Bookbindings. 1891.
Edwards. Lives of the Founders of the British Museum. London, 1870.
Fletcher. English Bookbindings in the British Museum. London, 1895.
Holmes. Specimens of Bookbinding selected from the Royal Library, Windsor
Castle. London, 1893.
Horne. The Binding of Books. London, 1894.
Prideaux. An Historical Sketch of Bookbinding. London, 1893.
Tuer. History of the Horn-Book. London, 1896.
Willement. Regal Heraldry. London, 1821.
And various articles on Bookbinding in _Archæologia_, _Bibliographica_,
_The Gentleman's Magazine_, and _The Queen_ newspaper.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.
The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these
letters have been replaced with transliterations.
End of Project Gutenberg's Royal English Bookbindings, by Cyril Davenport