[Illustration: JOHN WIGHT.
I W
WELCOM THE WIGHT: THAT BRINGETH SVCH LIGHT]
The employment of the Geneva arms as a Printer’s Mark is confined, in
this country, to Rowland Hall, who, at the death of Edward VI.,
accompanied several refugees to Geneva, where he printed the Psalms,
Bible, and other works of a more or less religious character; his books
range from 1559 to 1563, and about two dozen are known to
bibliographers, and half of this number are in the British Museum. His
Mark has a double interest; first, from his residence in Geneva, and
secondly from the fact that the sign of his shop, “The Half Eagle and
Key,” was a still further acknowledgment of the protection which he
enjoyed in Geneva. This was not his only Mark, but it is the only one to
which we need refer. The name of Richard Tottell, 1553-97, is much
better remembered in connection with the epoch-making little book,
“Songes and Sonettes,” 1557, the first miscellany of English verse, than
either of the other seventy or eighty publications which bear his
imprint. His shop was in Fleet Street at the sign of the Hand and Star,
the same idea serving him as a Mark: the hand and star in a circle, with
a scroll on either side having the words “cum privilegio,” the whole
being placed under an arch supported by columns ornamented in the
Etruscan style. One of the most curious of the large number of books
which came from the press of Henry Bynneman, 1567-87, is “The Mariners
boke, containing godly and necessary orders and prayers, to be observed
in every ship, both for mariners and all other whatsoever they be that
shall travaile on the sea, for their voyage,” 1575; a still more curious
production of his press has the following title, “Of ghostes and
spirites walkyng by night, and strange noyes, crackes and sundry fore
warnynges, which commonly happen before the death of men, great
slaughters, and alterations of kyngdomes,” 1572. Bynneman had served
with Reynold Wolfe, and when he started in business on his own account
met with much encouragement from Archbishop Parker, who allowed him to
have a shop or shed at the north-west door of St. Paul’s. He appears to
have had two Marks, one of which was derived from the sign of his shop,
“The Mermaid,” with the motto, “Omnia tempus habent,” and the other
(here reproduced) of a doe passant, and the motto, “Cerva charissima et
gratissimus hinnulus pro.” Thomas Woodcock, 1576-94, who dwelt at the
sign of the Black Bear, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, was a bookseller
rather than a printer; his Mark is an evident double pun on his surname.
[Illustration: ROWLAND HALL.