More than one pen has considered titles, dedications, and imprints worth a
Note, and as there are still gleanings in their track, I take the liberty
of sending you a few of the latter; some from my common-place book, others
from the fountainheads on my own shelves, but all drawn at random, without
much regard to classification or chronological arrangement.
The horrors of the Star Chamber and the Ecclesiastical Courts produced many
extraordinary imprints, particularly to those seditious books of the
Puritans, better known as the _Marprelate Family_; works which were printed
by ambulatory presses, and circulated by unseen hands, now under the walls
of Archiepiscopal Lambeth, and _presto_! (when the spy would lay his hands
upon them) sprite-like, Martin re-appeared in the provinces! This game at
hide and seek between the brave old Nonconformists and the Church, went on
for years without detection: but the readers of "N. & Q." do not require
from me the history of the Marprelate Faction, so well told already in the
_Miscellanies of Literature_ and elsewhere; the animus of these towards the
hierarchy will be sufficiently exhibited for my purpose in a few of their
imprints. _An Almond for a Parrot_, for example, purports to be--
"Imprynted at a place not farre from a place; by the Assignes of
Signior Some-body, and are to be soulde at his shoppe in Trouble-Knave
Street."