During the last years of the sixteenth century, and the first three
decades of the seventeenth, there were two Jaggards among the London
printers; by far the better known is Isaac, who, with Edward Blount,
issued the first folio edition of Shakespeare’s plays; he seems to have
had no Mark, but William, 1595-1624, used the rather striking device
(page 88), which is thus described: Serpent biting his tail, coiled
twice round the wrist of a hand issuing from the clouds and holding a
wand from which springs two laurel branches, and which is surmounted by
a portcullis (the Westminster Arms); in the last coil of the serpent the
word “Prudentia.” Equally distinct is the mark of Felix Kingston, or
Kyngston, who printed a very large number of books from 1597 to 1640; in
this device we have the sun shining on the Parnassus, and a laurel tree
between the two conical hills, with a sunflower and a pansy on either
side.
[Illustration: WILLIAM JAGGARD.