Fine Books Part 13

[52] See _The Library_, second series, Vol. VIII, pp. 298 _sqq._

[53] In _The Library_, second series, Vol. IX, pp. 257-81.

[54] "The Printers, Stationers, and Bookbinders of Westminster and London, 1476-1535" (last paragraph).

CHAPTER XIII

ENGLISH BOOKS PRINTED ELSEWHERE THAN AT LONDON

[Ill.u.s.tration: XXVIII. COLOGNE, PRINTER UNCERTAIN, 1525

TYNDALE'S NEW TESTAMENT, FIRST PAGE OF TEXT]

During the fifteenth century presses were set up in more than fifty places in Germany, in more than seventy in Italy, in nearly forty in France, in more than twenty in the Netherlands, in twenty-four in Spain, in only three (counting London and Westminster as one) in England. In London and Westminster over 330 books are known to have been printed; in Oxford and St. Albans only twenty-five. The reason for this paucity of provincial printing in England must be found by the social historian.

The beginning of the sixteenth century brought no change in the facts.

For thirty years from March, 1487, there was no printing-press at Oxford. In December, 1517, a Latin commentary on the Posterior a.n.a.lytics of Aristotle appeared with the imprint "Academia Oxonie," and in four subsequent books, printed in 1518, the printer of this gave his name as Johannes Scolar. A fragment of a sixth book has lately been found at the British Museum. In 1519 Scolar's place was taken by Carolus Kyrforth, who printed a _Compotus_, or small arithmetic book. A prognostication by Jaspar Laet may have been printed apparently either by Scolar or Kyrforth. After the appearance of these eight books there was no more printing at Oxford until a press was started there in 1585 by Joseph Barnes, under the auspices of the University. The last book of the Schoolmaster-printer appeared at St. Albans in 1486, and after this there was no more printing there until 1534. In that year, at the request of Abbot Catton, a printer named John Hertfort, or Herford, printed there _The glorious lyfe and pa.s.sion of seint Albon_. Robert Catton was succeeded as abbot by Richard Stevenage, and in the years 1536-8 three religious books were printed for him by Hertfort, who also printed an Arithmetic and two other books on his own account, making seven books in all. Then, in October, 1539, John Hertfort fell under suspicion of having printed a "little book of detestable heresies,"[55]

and the Abbot had to send him to London. The abbey itself was suppressed by the King the same year, and Hertfort, deprived of his patron, had no inducement to return. He is next heard of as printing in London in 1544.

At York a _Directorium_ was printed by Hugo Goes, and there is a seventeenth century reference to a _Donatus minor_ and _Accidence_ from his press. Three small books are also known to have been printed by Ursyn Mylner in 1514 and 1516. Previous to this, in or about 1507, an _Expositio hymnorum et sequentiarum_ for use at York had been printed at Rouen by Pierre Violette for a stationer named Gerard Freez (also known as Gerard Wandsforth), who died in 1510. This Gerard Freez had a brother Frederick, who is described not only as a bookbinder and stationer, but as a printer, and may therefore have printed books which have perished without leaving any trace behind them. But the only extant York books of the sixteenth century are the _Directorium_ of 1507, two small service-books of 1513, and a little grammatical work in 1516. After this there was no more printing in York until 1642.

At Cambridge a stationer named John Laer, of Siberch, i.e. Siegburg, near Cologne, settled, in or about 1520, and acted as publisher to an edition of Croke's _Introductiones in Rudimenta Graeca_, printed at Cologne by Eucharius Cervicornus. After this, in 1521 and 1522, Siberch himself printed nine small books at Cambridge, the first of them being a Latin speech by Henry Bullock addressed to Cardinal Wolsey. Among the other books was a Dialogue of Lucian's ([Greek: peri dipsadon]), for which Siberch had to use some Greek type, and a work on letter-writing (_De conscribendis epistolis_) by Erasmus, with whom he seems to have been on friendly terms. After 1522 no more books were printed at Cambridge until 1583.

At Tavistock in 1525 a monk named Thomas Richard printed a translation of Boethius's _De Consolatione Philosophiae_ for "the ryght worschypful esquyer Mayster Robert Langdon." Nine years later, in 1534, the same press printed the _Statutes_ concerning the Devonshire Stannaries or Tin Mines. These are the only two early books known to have been printed at Tavistock.

At Abingdon in 1528, John Scolar, presumably the same man who had previously worked a few miles off at Oxford, printed a Portiforium or Breviary for the use of the monastery. No other early book is known to have been printed there.

From 1539, when John Hertfort was summoned from St. Albans, to the end of the reign of Henry VIII, we know of no provincial printing in England. But on the accession of Edward VI the extreme Protestants who had fled from England to the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland, came flocking back, and some of them seem to have stopped at Ipswich. Two, or perhaps three printers, all in the Protestant interest, worked there in the first few months of the new reign. The first of these, Anthony Scoloker, printed seven books at Ipswich in 1547 and 1548, and then went on to London. The second, John Overton, brought over with him from Wesel the text of Bishop Bale's Latin bibliography of the Ill.u.s.trious Writers of Britain, printed there by Theodoricus Platea.n.u.s, otherwise Dirick van der Straten, and may or may not have printed at Ipswich two additional sheets, which he dated there 31 July, 1548.[56] The third printer, John Oswen, printed at Ipswich eleven tracts, mostly controversial, in or about 1548, and then removed to Worcester.

On his arrival at Worcester late in 1548, or early in 1549, John Oswen obtained a special privilege from Edward VI for printing service-books for use in the Princ.i.p.ality of Wales, and produced there three editions of the first Prayer Book of Edward VI and a New Testament. Besides these, from 1549 to 1553 he printed eighteen other books, mostly of controversial theology, calling himself in his imprints "Printer appoynted by the Kinges Maiestie for the Princ.i.p.alitie of Wales and the Marches of the same." On the accession of Mary, it being no longer safe to print Protestant theology, Oswen's press ceased working.

At Canterbury in 1549 John Mych.e.l.l, or Mitch.e.l.l, who had moved there after producing a few books in London, printed an English psalter, "poynted as it shall be songe in churches." During Edward's reign Mych.e.l.l printed at Canterbury altogether some twenty books and tracts, mostly more or less controversial treatises on the Protestant side. On the accession of Mary he ceased publishing till 1556, when his press was employed by Cardinal Pole to print his Articles of Visitation.

The next year, by the charter granted to the Stationers' Company, printing outside London was forbidden, the prohibition being subsequently relaxed in favour of the two Universities, although it was nearly thirty years before they availed themselves of their right. In the previous eighty years only about a hundred books[57] had been produced at the provincial presses, and in the year in which the charter was granted it can hardly be said that any press outside London was in existence. The new regulation stood in the way of development, but it was a development for which there seems to have been little demand. We may see some slight confirmation of this view in the fact that during Elizabeth's reign there was very little secret printing, though there had probably been a good deal under Mary. The three Elizabethan secret presses which have been chronicled were:

(1) A Puritan press which printed various tracts on Church government, written by Thomas Cartwright. These were printed secretly in 1572 and 1573, first at Wandsworth, afterwards at Hempstead, near Saffron Walden, in Ess.e.x. The press was seized in August, 1573, and the type handed to Henry Bynneman, who, the next year, used it to reprint Cartwright's attack, interpolating Whitgift's replies in larger type.

(2) A Jesuit press which printed for Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons in 1580 and 1581, first at Greenstreet House in East Ham, afterwards at Stonor Park, near Henley. The press was managed by Stephen Brinckley, who was ultimately captured and imprisoned for nearly two years.

(3) The Puritan travelling press, from which issued the famous Martin Marprelate tracts in 1588 and 1589. Some of these were printed in East Molesey, in Surrey; others in the house of Sir Richard Knightley at Fawsley, near Daventry, others in that of Roger Wigston of Wolston Priory, between Coventry and Rugby. The chief printer of them was Robert Waldegrave, who eventually fled first to La Roch.e.l.le, where he may have printed one of the tracts, and then to Edinburgh, where he became a printer of some importance.

While there was thus very little secret printing in England, exiled Protestants, Catholics, and Nonconformists all in turn made frequent recourse to foreign presses, and apparently succeeded in circulating their books in England. Religious repression, however, though the chief, was not the only cause of English books being printed abroad. From a very early time the superior skill of foreign printers had procured them many commissions to print service-books for the English market, alike on account of their greater accuracy, their experience in printing in red and black, and the more attractive ill.u.s.trations which they had at their disposal. Not long after 1470 a Sarum Breviary was printed abroad, possibly at Cologne. Caxton employed George Maynyal, of Paris, to print a Missal (and probably a _Legenda_) for him in 1487, and Johann Hamman or Herzog printed a Sarum Missal in 1494 as far away as Venice. When the Paris printers and publishers had won the admiration of all Europe by their pretty editions of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin, they competed with each other for the English market. Early in the sixteenth century Wolfgang Hopyl printed some magnificent Sarum Missals and also an Antiphoner and _Legenda_, besides some very fine editions of Lyndewood's Const.i.tutions. Breviaries, Missals, and Primers were also poured out for English use by Francois Regnault, and in lesser numbers by nearly a dozen other Paris firms, and Martin Morin and other printers plied the same trade at Rouen, while Christoffel van Remunde, of Endhoven, was busy at Antwerp. The predominance of the foreign editions of these books over those printed in England may be estimated from the fact that of 105 Sarum service-books printed before 1540 in the possession of the British Museum, one was printed at Basel, one at Venice, eleven at Rouen, twelve at Antwerp, as many as fifty-six at Paris, and only twenty-four in England.[58]

In addition to service-books, a good many of the smaller Latin grammatical works were printed for the English market in France and the Low Countries, their destination being occasionally stated, but more often inferred from the appearance in them of English explanations of Latin words or phrases. A few attempts were also made to issue popular English works in compet.i.tion with those produced at home. The most formidable of these rivalries was that of Gerard Leeu at Antwerp, who, after printing three entertaining books (_The History of Jason_, _Knight Paris and the Fair Vienne_, and the _Dialogue of Salomon and Marcolphus_), embarked on a more important work, _The Chronicles of England_, and might have seriously injured the home trade had he not met his death in a quarrel with a workman while the _Chronicles_ were still on the press.[59]

Soon after 1500 another Antwerp printer, Adriaen von Berghen, in addition to Holt's _Lac Puerorum_, published the commonplace book of a London merchant which pa.s.ses under the name of _Arnold's Chronicle_, and is famous as containing the earliest text of the _Nutbrown Maid_. A little later still, Jan van Doesborch was at work at the same place, and between 1505 and 1530 produced at least eighteen popular English books, including _Tyll Howleglas_, _Virgilius the Magician_, _Robin Hood_, and an account of recent discoveries ent.i.tled, "Of the new landes and of the people found by the messengers of the kynge of portyngale named Emanuel."

Doesborch's books are poorly printed and ill.u.s.trated, but his texts are not noticeably worse than those in contemporary editions published in England. The reverse is the case with two English books produced (1503) by the famous Paris publisher, Antoine Verard, _The traitte of G.o.d lyuyng and good deying_ and _The Kalendayr of Shyppars_. These have the ill.u.s.trations which book-lovers prize so highly in the _Kalendrier des Bergers_ and _Art de bien viure et de bien mourir_, but the translations seem to have been made by a Scot, only less ill equipped in Scottish than in French. In a third translation, from Pierre Gringore's _Chasteau de Labeur_, Verard was more fortunate, for the _Castell of Labour_ was rendered into (for that unpoetical period) very pa.s.sable verse by Alexander Barclay. Verard, however, had no cause to congratulate himself, for both Pynson and De Worde reprinted Barclay's translation with copies of the woodcuts, and the other two books in new translations, so that in future he left the secular English market alone.

It may be supposed that the Act of 1534, restricting the importation of foreign books into England, finally put an end to compet.i.tion of the kind which Leeu, Verard, and Doesborch had attempted. But isolated English books have continued to appear abroad down to our own day, and form a miscellaneous, but curious and interesting appendix in the great volume of the English book trade. From 1525 onwards, however, until nearly the end of the seventeenth century, compared with the ma.s.ses of theological books alternately by Protestant and Roman Catholic English exiles, printed in the Low Countries, Germany, Switzerland, and France, the output of secular work sinks into insignificance. The stream begins with Tyndale's New Testament, of which a few sheets were printed at Cologne (see Plate XXVIII), two editions at Worms, and half a dozen or more at Antwerp before it was suffered to appear in England.

The first English Bible is believed to have been printed (1535) by Christopher Froschauer at Zurich, the second (1537) at Antwerp, the third (1539) was begun at Paris and completed in England. Besides their New Testaments, Tyndale and George Joy published a good many controversial works at Antwerp. In the next generation the city became one of the strongholds of the Romanist exiles after the accession of Elizabeth, and Hans de Laet, John Fouler, Willem Sylvius, and Gillis van Diest the younger were frequently called on in 1564-6 to provide paper and print for Stapleton, Harding, William Rastell, and the other antagonists of Bishop Jewel.

In 1528 and the following year books by Tyndale, Roy, and Frith appeared purporting to be printed by "Hans Luft at Malborowe in the land of Hesse." A later book with this imprint has been shown by Mr. Sayle to have been printed at Antwerp; whether these earlier works were really produced at Marburg, or, as has been conjectured, at Cologne, or again at Hamburg, is still uncertain. In the 'forties and 'fifties Christopher Froschauer printed several English Protestant books at Zurich, including _A faythfull admonycion of a certen trewe pastor and prophete sent unto the germanes_, translated from Luther's _Warnunge_, with the pleasing imprint "at Grenewych by Conrade Freeman in the month of may 1554." In the 'fifties, again, Jean Crespin and other Geneva printers worked for John Knox, and the Geneva New Testament was produced there in 1558 and the Bible in 1560. In the 'sixties, as we have seen, many treatises attacking Bishop Jewel were issued at Antwerp, others appeared at Louvain, and about the same time (1566), at Emden, G. van der Erven was printing for exiled Puritans some of their diatribes against the "Popish aparrell" (i.e. the surplice) which Elizabeth prescribed for the English Church.

In 1574 we encounter at Amsterdam a curious group of nine little books "translated out of Base-Almayne into English," in which Hendrik Niclas preached the doctrines of the "Family of Love." From that time onwards a good deal of theological literature on the Protestant side was published by Amsterdam presses. Richard Schilders at Middelburg was also an extensive publisher of this cla.s.s of book. Presses at Leyden and Dort made similar contributions, but on a smaller scale. On the Roman Catholic side the head-quarters of propagandist literature, as we have seen, were at first at Antwerp and Louvain, at both of which places John Fouler had presses. In the 'eighties the existence of the English college at Rheims caused several Catholic books to be printed there, notably the translation of the New Testament which was made in the college itself. For like reasons much Catholic literature was published from 1602 onwards at St. Omer, and from 1604 onwards at Douai. Books of the same cla.s.s, though in smaller numbers, appeared also at Paris and Rouen.

Individually the books from the presses we have been naming, both on the Romanist and the Puritan side, are unattractive to look at and dull to read. Collectively they form a very curious and interesting episode in English bibliography, which deserves more study than it has yet received, though Mr. Sayle has made an excellent beginning in his lists of English books printed on the Continent in the third volume of his _Early English Printed Books in the University Library, Cambridge_.

Since then Mr. Steele and Mr. Dover Wilson have made important contributions to the subject, but much still remains to be done.

It was doubtless the existence of these foreign safety-valves which rendered the course of English printing after the grant of a charter to the Stationers' Company so smooth and uneventful.[60] Two violations of the terms of the charter were winked at or authorized, in some way not known to us, by the Crown. The first of these was the printing of a few books for the use of foreign refugees by Antony de Solempne at Norwich.

Most of these books were in Dutch, but in 1569 Antony Corra.n.u.s, previously pastor of the Spanish Protestant congregation at Antwerp, published through de Solempne certain broadside tables _De Operibus Dei_ in Latin, French, Dutch, and English, of which copies only of the first and second have been traced. In 1570 another English broadside commemorated the execution at Norwich of Thomas Brooke. Archbishop Parker seems to have resented the publication, unexamined, of the _De Operibus Dei_, but de Solempne placed the royal arms and a loyal motto (G.o.dt bewaer de Coninginne Elizabeth) on some of his books, and seems in some way or another to have secured the Queen's protection.

Mr. Allnutt, to whose exhaustive articles on "English Provincial Printing" in the second volume of _Bibliographica_ all subsequent writers on the subject must needs be indebted, conscientiously includes among his notes one on the edition of Archbishop Parker's _De Antiquitate Ecclesiae Britannicae_ printed for him by John Day, in all probability at Lambeth Palace, where a small staff of book-fashioners worked under the archiepiscopal eye. Eton is a good deal farther "out of bounds" than Lambeth, but the employment of the King's Printer, John Norton, and a dedication to the King saved Sir Henry Savile from any interference when he started printing his fine edition of the works of S. John Chrysostom in the original Greek. The eight folio volumes of which this consists are dated from 1610 to 1613, and in these and the two following years five other Greek books were printed under Savile's supervision. After this his type was presented to the University of Oxford, where a fairly flourishing press had been at work since 1585.

That printing at Oxford made a new start in 1585 was due no doubt to the example of Cambridge, which two years earlier had at last acted on a patent for printing granted by Henry VIII in 1534, the year, it will be remembered, in which restrictions were placed on the importation of foreign books on account of the proficiency in the art to which Englishmen were supposed to have attained. In the interim Printers to the University seem to have been appointed, but it was not till 1583 that a press was set up, whereupon, as soon as a single book had been printed, it was promptly seized by the Stationers' Company of London as an infringement of the monopoly granted by their charter. Although the Bishop of London seems to have backed up the Stationers, Lord Burghley (the Chancellor of the University) and the Master of the Rolls secured the recognition of the rights of the University. Forty years later they were again attacked by the Stationers, and the Privy Council forbade the Cambridge printer to print Bibles, Prayer Books, Psalters, Grammars, or Books of Common Law, but in 1628 the judges p.r.o.nounced strongly in favour of the full rights of the University, and the next year these were recognized with some modifications by the Privy Council. Up to this time there had been three printers, Thomas Thomas (1583-8), John Legate (1588-1610), and Cantrell Legge (1606-29), the University Library possessing (in 1902) 34 books and doc.u.ments printed by the first, 108 by the second, and 55 by the third, or a total of 197 for a period of forty-six years. From 1628 to 1639 the majority of Cambridge books bear no individual names on them, but have usually the imprint "Cantabrigiae, ex Academiae celeberrimae typographeo." But Thomas and John Buck and Roger Daniel, in various combinations, were responsible for a good many publications.

While Burghley was Chancellor of Cambridge, Dudley, Earl of Leicester, held the Oxford Chancellorship, and doubtless felt that, charter or no charter, it concerned his honour to see that his University should be allowed all the privileges possessed by the other. Under his auspices a press was started late in 1584 or early in 1585 by Joseph Barnes, an Oxford bookseller, to whom the University lent 100 to enable him to procure the necessary equipment, and on Leicester's visiting the University on 11 January, 1585, a _Carmen gratulatorium_ in four elegiac couplets was presented to him, printed on an octavo leaf at the new press. The first book to appear was a _Speculum Moralium Quaestionum in uniuersam Ethicen Aristotelis_, by John Case, a former fellow of S.

John's, with a dedication to Leicester by the author and another by the printer. In the latter the promise was made "ea solum ex his praelis in lucem venient que sapientum calculis approbentur & Sybille foliis sint veriora," but the remaining publications of the year were a polemical treatise by Thomas Billson, two issues of a Protestant adaptation of the _Booke of Christian exercise appertaining to Resolution_, by Robert Persons, the Jesuit, and two sermons. In 1586 no fewer than seventeen books were printed (a number not again attained for several years), and among them was an edition of six homilies of S. Chrysostom, "primitiae typographi nostri in graecis literis preli." After this the press settled down to an average production of from eight to a dozen books a year, including a fair number of cla.s.sical texts and translations, with now and then a volume of verse which brings it into connection with the stream of Elizabethan literature. Among the more interesting books which it produced, mention may be made of the _Sixe Idillia_ of Theocritus (1588), poems by Nicholas Breton and Thomas Churchyard (1592), Richard de Bury's _Philobiblon_ (1599), the _Microcosmus_ of John Davies of Hereford (1603), Captain John Smith's _Map of Virginia, with a description of the Countrey_ (1612), and Burton's _Anatomy of Melancholy_ (1621). In the 'twenties of the seventeenth century the average annual output was still only 14; in the 'thirties, under the fostering care of Laud, it had risen as high as 25. In 1641 it was but 19. Then, on the outbreak of the Civil War, the King came to Oxford, and under the stress of official publications and royalist controversy the numbers shot up to about 147 in 1642, followed by 119 in 1643, about 100 in 1644, and 60 in 1645. Then they become normal again, and in 1649 under the Parliamentary _regime_ sink as low as seven. These statistics are taken from the various works of Mr. Falconer Madan, mentioned in our bibliography, and from the same source we learn that until the nineteenth century the annual average of production, calculated by periods of ten years, never exceeded thirty-two.

Similar causes to those which brought about the sudden increase in the Oxford output in 1642 led to the establishment of presses at Newcastle and York. In 1639, when Charles I marched against the Scots, his head-quarters were at Newcastle, and the Royal Printer, Robert Barker,[61] printed there a sermon by the Bishop of Durham, the _Lawes and Ordinances of Warre_, and some proclamations. In March, 1642, again Barker was in attendance on the King at York, and printed there _His Majesties Declaration to both Houses of Parliament_, in answer to that presented to him at Newmarket, and some thirty-eight other pieces.

Another London printer, Stephen Bulkley, was also given employment, and in the years 1642-4 printed at York some twenty-eight different pieces.

Bulkley also attended the King at Newcastle in 1646, when he was in the hands of the Scots, and remained printing there and at Gateshead until the Restoration, when he returned to York, where a Puritan press had in the meantime been set up by Thomas Broad.

Charles I left York on 16 August, 1642, and six days later the Royal Standard was raised at Nottingham. _His Majesties Instructions to his Commissioners of Array_, dated "at our Court at Nottingham, 29th August, 1642," were printed by Barker at York. Two days later the King ordered that the press should be brought to Nottingham, but we next hear of Barker at Shrewsbury, where he served the King's immediate needs, and then remained at work for the rest of the year and the greater part of 1643 reprinting Oxford editions and publishing other royalist literature. After the capture of Bristol for the King on 2 August he removed once more and printed there during 1644 and 1645.

During the confusion of the Civil War an Exeter stationer, Thomas Hunt (the local publisher of Herrick's _Hesperides_), had a book printed for him--Thomas Fuller's _Good Thoughts in Bad Times_--which is described in the dedication as the "First Fruits of the Exeter Presse," and another is said to have been printed there in 1648. But we hear of no other presses being set up. After the Restoration printing was allowed to continue at York. Otherwise provincial printing outside the Universities was once more non-existent. The arrival of William of Orange caused some broadsides to be printed at Exeter in 1688, and in the same year Thomas Tillier printed at Chester, not only _An account of a late Horrid and b.l.o.o.d.y Ma.s.sacre in Ireland_ on a single leaf, but also a handsome folio, _The Academy of Armory_, for Randall Holme, who rewarded him for any risk he may have run by devising for him a fancy coat. Nevertheless, despite the change of Government, the Act of Parliament restricting printing to London, Oxford, Cambridge, and York was not allowed to expire till 1695. A press was set up at Bristol the same year. Plymouth and Shrewsbury followed in 1696, Exeter in 1698, and Norwich in 1701, the first provincial newspaper, _The Norwich Post_, dating from September in that year. By 1750 about seventy-five provincial towns possessed presses, cities and small country places starting them at haphazard, not at all in the order of their importance. The dates for some of the chief are as follows (all on the authority of Mr. Allnutt): 1708, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; 1709, Worcester; 1710, Nottingham; 1711, Chester; 1712, Liverpool; 1715, Salisbury; 1716, Birmingham; 1717, Canterbury; 1718, Ipswich, Leeds, and Taunton; 1719, Manchester and Derby; 1720, Northampton; 1721, Coventry and Hereford; 1723, Reading; 1731, Bath; 1737, Sheffield; 1745, Stratford-on-Avon; 1748, Portsmouth.

As a side-consequence of the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695, it became possible for any private person to buy a printing press, hire a journeyman printer, and start printing any books he pleased. Several private presses were thus set up during the second half of the eighteenth century, the most famous of them being that of Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, near Twickenham. Walpole started in 1757 by printing two of the Odes of his friend Gray, and at intervals during the next twenty-seven years printed several of his own works, and a few other books, of which an edition of Grammont's _Memoires_ was the most important. Walpole's example was followed by George Allan, M.P. for Durham, and Francis Blomefield, the historian of Norfolk; also in the nineteenth century by Thomas Johnes, who printed his translation of Froissart in four large quarto volumes at his own house at Hafod in Cardiganshire in 1803-5, and followed them up with a Joinville in 1807 and a Monstrelet in 1810. Between 1813 and 1823 Sir Egerton Brydges caused a number of interesting literary reprints to be issued for him in limited editions from a press in or near his house at Lee Priory in Kent. The work of both these presses, like that of Walpole's, was perhaps equal to the best commercial printing of its day, but was not superior to it, and perhaps the same may be said of the few reprints manufactured, in still more jealously limited editions, by E. V.

Utterson between 1840 and 1843 at Beldornie House, Ryde. Sir Thomas Phillipps, who printed numerous antiquarian doc.u.ments between 1822 and 1862 at Middle Hill in Worcestershire, and between 1862 and 1872 at Cheltenham, set even less store by typographical beauty and accuracy.

The other private presses of the first half of the nineteenth century are not more interesting, though that of Gaetano Polidori at Park Village East, near Regent's Park, 1840-50, has become famous as having printed Gabriel Rossetti's _Sir Hugh the Heron_ in 1843, and Christina Rossetti's first volume of verse four years later, Polidori being the grandfather of the young authors on their mother's side.

Pa.s.sing north of the Tweed, where the most formidable compet.i.tors of the London printers now abide, we find the first Scottish press at work at Edinburgh in 1508. In September of the previous year Andrew Myllar, a bookseller who had gained some experience of printing at Rouen, and Walter Chapman, a merchant, had been granted leave to import a press, chiefly that they might print an Aberdeen Breviary, which duly appeared in 1509-10. The books which antic.i.p.ated it in 1508 were a number of thin quartos, _The Maying or Disport of Chaucer_, dated 4 April, the _Knightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane_, dated 8 April, the _Porteous of n.o.blenes_, "translated out of franche in scottis be Maistir Andrew Cadiou," dated 20 April, and eight undated pieces, three of them by Dunbar (_The Goldyn Targe_, _The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedy_, and the _Twa Marrit Wemen and the Wedo_, with other poems), the others being the _Ballad of Lord Barnard Stewart_, _Orpheus and Eurydice_, the _Buke of Gude Counsale_, _Sir Eglamoure of Artoys_, and _A Gest of Robyn Hode_. All these have survived (some of them much mutilated) in a single volume, and it is at the reader's pleasure to decide whether they represent the harvest of some careful person who bought up all Chapman and Myllar's fugitive pieces, or are merely the remnants of a much larger output. The Aberdeen Breviary, which the printers were encouraged to produce by protection against the importation of Sarum books from England or abroad, is really handsomely printed in black and red. At the end of one of the four or five copies of it now known is an addendum, the _Officium Compa.s.sionis Beatae Virginis_ (commemorated on the Wednesday in Holy Week), which bears the colophon "Impressum Edinburgi per Johannem Story nomine & mandato Karoli Stule," which Scottish bibliographers a.s.sign to about 1520. A fragment of a _Book of the Howlat_ may belong to the same period. Thus although Scottish writers, such as John Vaus and Hector Boece of Aberdeen, had to send their books to France to be printed, it is possible that presses were at work in Edinburgh or elsewhere in Scotland, of which nothing is now known.

The next printer of whom we have certain information is Thomas Davidson, who in February, 1541 (1542), produced a handsome edition of _The New Actis and Const.i.tutionis of Parliament maid be the Rycht Excellent Prince Iames the Fift_. This was his only dated book, but he issued also a fine edition of _The hystory and croniklis of Scotland_, translated by "Johne b.e.l.l.e.n.den, Archdene of Murray, chanon of Ros," from the Latin of Hector Boece, and some smaller works.

The next Scottish printer is John Scot, whom the best authorities, despite the fact that he is first heard of in Edinburgh in 1539, refuse to identify with the John Skot who printed in London from 1521 to 1537.

Whoever he was, he had no very happy existence, as notwithstanding some efforts to please the Protestant party, the work he did for the Catholics twice brought him into serious trouble. His first dated book, Archbishop Hamilton's _Catechism_, did not appear till 29 August, 1552, and was printed not at Edinburgh, but at St. Andrews. How he had been employed between 1539 and this date we have no means of knowing. At St.

Andrews Scot printed Patrick c.o.c.kburn's _Pia Meditatio in Dominicam Orationem_ (1555), and probably also Lauder's _Dewtis of Kingis_ (1556).

Scot also printed controversial works on the Catholic side by the Abbot of Crosraguell (Quentin Kennedy) and Ninian Winzet, and for the opposite party _The Confessione of faith Professit and Belevit be the Protestantes within the Realme of Scotland_ (1561). He issued also two editions (1568 and 1571) of the works of Sir David Lindesay, while his undated books include some of Lindesay's single poems.

Since John Scot printed mainly on the Catholic side, the Protestant General a.s.sembly in December, 1562, started a printer in opposition to him, Robert Lekpreuik, lending him "twa hundreth pounds to help to buy irons, ink and papper and to fie craftesmen for printing." He had previously, in 1561, like Scot, printed the _Confession of the Faith_, also Robert Noruell's _Meroure of an Chr[i]stiane_ and an _Oration_ by Beza. The grant allowed him was in connection with an edition of the Psalms, which eventually appeared in 1565, together with the _Form of Prayer and Ministration of the Sacraments used in the English Church at Geneva_ and the Catechism (dated 1564). Lekpreuik continued active till 1574, and after an interval issued three books in 1581 and perhaps one in 1582. In Mr. Aldis's List he is credited with ninety-one publications (mostly controversial) as against four a.s.signed to Davidson and fifteen to Scot. During 1571 he printed at Stirling, and the next two years at St. Andrews. Like Scot, he found printing perilous work, his intermission after the beginning of 1574 being due to imprisonment.

Thomas Ba.s.sandyne, who had previously published books at Edinburgh, began printing there in 1572. He produced but ten (extant) books and doc.u.ments in all, but his name is famous from its connection with the first Scottish Bible, of which he produced the New Testament in 1576, the Old Testament being added, and the whole issued by his successor, Alexander Arbuthnot, in 1579. Besides the Bible, only five books were printed by Arbuthnot. Between 1574 and 1580 twenty-six were produced by John Ross, and on his death Henry Charteris, a bookseller, took over his material, and by the time of his death in 1599 had printed forty more.

But the best Edinburgh work towards the end of the century was produced by two craftsmen from England, Thomas Vautrollier, who produced ten books in 1584-6, and Robert Waldegrave (1590-1603), who had to flee from England for his share in the Marprelate tracts, and during his thirteen years in Edinburgh issued 119 books.