A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 Part 4

8, vol. xiv. p. 2, No. 315), so that it would look as if they were commissioned to hunt down popish heretical and seditious books. By the marriage of his daughter, Joan, to William Norton, the bookseller, who in turn named his son Bonham Norton, the history of the descendants of William Bonham can be followed up for quite a century later.

At the Long Shop in the Poultry we can see the press at work almost without a break from the early years of the sixteenth century till the close of the first quarter of the seventeenth. Upon the removal of Richard Bankes into Fleet Street its next occupant seems to have been one John Mych.e.l.l, of whose work a solitary fragment, fortunately that bearing the colophon, of an undated quarto edition of the _Life of St.

Margaret_, is now in the hands of Mr. F. Jenkinson of the University Library, Cambridge. Whether this John Mych.e.l.l is the same person as the John Mych.e.l.l found a few years later printing at Canterbury there is no evidence to show. Nor do we know how long he occupied the Long Shop. In 1542 Richard Kele's name is found in a _Primer in Englysh_, which was issued from this house. He may have been some relation to the Thomas Kele who, in 1526, had occupied John Rastell's house, the Mermaid, as stated by Bonham in his evidence. During 1543, in company with Byddell, Grafton, Middleton, Mayler, Pet.i.t, and Lant, Richard Kele was imprisoned in the Poultry Compter for printing unlawful books (_Acts of Privy Council_, New Series, vol. i. pp. 107, 117, 125). Most of the books that bear his name came from the presses of William Seres, Robert Wyer, and William Copland. Perhaps the most interesting of his publications next to the edition of Chaucer, which he shared with Toye and Bonham, are the series of poems by John Skelton, called _Why Come ye not to Courte?_ _Colin Clout_, and _The Boke of Phyllip Sparowe_. They were issued in octavo form, and were evidently very hastily turned out from the press, type, woodcuts, and workmans.h.i.+p being of the worst description. At the end of _Colin Clout_ is a woodcut of a figure at a desk, supposed to represent the author, but it is doubtful whether it is anything more than an old block with his name cut upon it.

Looking back over the work done at this time, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the art of printing in England had much deteriorated since the days of Pynson, while the best of it, even that of Berthelet, could not be compared with that of the continental presses of the same period. There was an entire absence of originality among the English printers. Types, woodcuts, initial letters, ornaments, and devices, were obtained by the printers from abroad, and had seen some service before their arrival in this country. But just at this time a printer came to the front in this country, who for a few years placed the art on a higher footing than any of his predecessors.

[Footnote 3: The _Registers of the Dutch Church, Austin Friars_, edited by W. J. C. Moens (Introduction, pp. xiii.-xiv.).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17.--John Day.]

CHAPTER IV

JOHN DAY

John Day, one of the best and most enterprising of printers, was born in the year 1522 at Dunwich, in Suffolk, a once flouris.h.i.+ng town, now buried beneath the sea.

From the fact that Day was in possession of a device found in the books of Thomas Gibson, the printer whom Latimer unsuccessfully recommended to Cromwell, it has been supposed that it was from Gibson he learnt the art. He may have done so; but whatever he learnt there or elsewhere, in his 'prentice days, he later on threw aside, and by his own enterprise and the excellence of his workmans.h.i.+p raised himself to the proud position of the finest printer England had ever seen.

In John Day's first books there was no sign of the skill he afterwards manifested. These were published in conjunction with William Seres, of whom we know little or nothing, outside his connection with Day. These partners began work in the year 1546 at the sign of the Resurrection on Snow Hill, a little above Holborn Conduit, that is somewhere in the neighbourhood of the present viaduct. They had also another shop in Cheapside. Their first book, so far as we know, was Sir David Lindsay's poem, '_The Tragical death, of David Beaton, Bishop of St. Andrews in Scotland; Wherunto is joyned the martyrdom of maister G. Wyseharte ...

for whose sake the aforesayd bishoppe was not long after slayne_' (1546, 8vo).

In the following year (1547) Day and Seres printed several other books of a religious character, nearly all of them in octavo, including Cope's _G.o.dly Meditacion upon the psalms_, and Tyndale's _Parable of the Wicked Mammon_.

Their work in 1548 included a second edition of the _Consultation_ of Hermann, the bishop of Cologne, Robert Crowley's _Confutation of Myles Hoggarde_, a sermon of Latimer's, a metrical dialogue aimed at the priesthood and ent.i.tled _John Bon and Mast Person_, and, as a relief to so much theological literature, the _Herbal_ of William Turner.

The types used in printing these books were not a whit better than anybody else's, in fact if anything they were a shade worse. There was the usual fount of large black letter, not by any means new, another much smaller letter of the same character, and a fount of Roman capitals, very bad indeed. Whether these types belonged to Day or to Seres it is impossible to say, but I think the smaller of the two belonged to Day, as it is sometimes found in his later books.

The workmans.h.i.+p was no better than the types. There was no pagination in these books, and no devices, and the setting of the letterpress was very uneven.

In 1548 Seres seems to have joined partners.h.i.+p with another London printer, Anthony Scoloker, and to have moved to a house in St. Paul's Churchyard, called Peter College; but his name still continued to appear with Day's down to the year 1551, when the partners.h.i.+p was dissolved, Day moving to Aldersgate, but retaining his shop in Cheapside.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18.--From a Bible printed by John Day. London, 1551.

4to.]

The most important undertaking of the partners.h.i.+p was a folio edition of the Bible in 1549. This was printed in the smaller of the two founts of black letter in double columns, with some good initials and a great many woodcuts that had evidently been used before, as they extend beyond the letterpress. Another edition printed by Day alone appeared in 1551, in which a good initial E, showing Edward VI. on his throne, is found.

On the accession of Queen Mary, Day went abroad and his press was silent for several years; meanwhile the ancient brotherhood of Stationers was incorporated by Royal Charter as the 'Wors.h.i.+pful Company of Stationers.'

The existence of the brotherhood has been traced to very early times, and it is frequently mentioned in the wills of printers and booksellers in the first half of the sixteenth century. By the Charter of 1556 it now received the Royal authority to make its own laws for the regulation of the trade, although, as Mr. Arber has pointed out, the charter 'rather confirmed existing customs than erected fresh powers.' There is abundant evidence that the Queen's main reason for granting the charter was the wish to keep the printing trade under closer control.

The newly incorporated company included nearly all the men connected with the book trade, not only printers, but booksellers, bookbinders, and typefounders. There were some who, for some unexplained reason, were not enrolled. On the other hand, two of those whose names appeared in the charter died the year of its incorporation. These were Thomas Berthelet, who was dead before the 26th January 1556, and Robert Toy, who died in February.

In the registers of the Company were recorded the names of the wardens and masters, the names of all apprentices, with the masters to whom they were bound, and the names of those who took up their freedom. The t.i.tles of all books were supposed to be entered by the printer or publisher, a small fee being paid in each case. As a matter of fact many books were not so entered. Entries of gifts to the Corporation, and of fines levied on the members, also form part of the annual statements.

Literary men of the eighteenth century were the first to discover and make use of the wealth of information contained in the Registers of the Stationers' Company; but it fell to the lot of Mr. Arber to give English scholars a full transcript of the earlier registers. In order to make it complete, he has supplemented the work with numerous valuable papers in the Record Office and other archives, and a bibliographical list down to the year 1603, which is of such immense value that it is impossible to be content until it has been continued to the year 1640.

The first master of the Company was Thomas Dockwray, Proctor of the Court of Arches; and the wardens were John Cawood, the Queen's Printer, and Henry Cooke.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19.--Heraldic Initial containing the Arms of Dudley, Earl of Leicester.]

It does not follow that because Day's name occurs in the charter that he was in England in 1556, but he certainly was so in the following year, for there is a Sarum Missal of that date with his imprint, besides several other books, including Thomas Tusser's _Hundred Points of Good Husserye_ (_i.e._ Housewifery); William Bullein's _Government of Health_, and sundry proclamations. But it was not until 1559 that his books began to show that excellence of workmans.h.i.+p that laid the foundation of his fame. In that year he issued in folio _The Cosmographicall Gla.s.se_ of William Cunningham, a physician of Norwich.

As a specimen of the printer's art this was far in advance of any of Day's previous work, and, moreover, was in advance of anything seen in England before that time. The text was printed in a large, flowing italic letter of great beauty, further enhanced by several well-executed woodcut initials. Amongst these was a letter 'D,' containing the arms of the Earl of Leicester, to whom the work was dedicated. There were also scattered through the book several diagrams and maps, a fine portrait of the author, and a plan of the city of Norwich. Some of these ill.u.s.trations and initials were signed J. B., others J. D. The t.i.tle-page was also engraved with allegorical figures of the arts and sciences. There can be very little doubt that Day had spent his time abroad in studying the best models in the typographical art.

Students and lovers of good books may well pay a tribute to the memory of that scholarly churchman, who rescued so many of the books that were scattered at the dissolution of the monasteries, and enriched Cambridge University and some of its colleges by his gifts of books and ma.n.u.scripts. But Matthew Parker did not stop short at book-collecting.

He believed that good books should be well printed, and on his accession to power under Elizabeth, he encouraged John Day and others, both with his authority and his purse, to cut new founts of type and to print books in a worthy form.

In 1560 Day began to print the collected works of Thomas Becon, the reformer. The whole impression occupied three large folio volumes, and was not completed until 1564. The founts chiefly used in this were black letter of two sizes, supplemented with italic and Roman. The initials used in the _Cosmographicall Gla.s.se_ appeared again in this, and the t.i.tle-page to each part was enclosed in an elaborate architectural border, having in the bottom panel Day's small device, a block showing a sleeper awakened, and the words, 'Arise, for it is Day.' At the end was a fine portrait of the printer.

Another important undertaking of the year 1560 was a folio edition of the _Commentaries_ of Joannes Philippson, otherwise Sleida.n.u.s. This Day printed for Nicholas England, the fount of large italic being used in conjunction with black letter.

Sermons of Calvin, Bullinger, and Latimer are all that we have to ill.u.s.trate his work during the next two years. But in 1563 appeared a handsome folio, the editio princeps of _Acts and Monumentes of these latter and perillous Dayes, touching matters of the Church_, better known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs.

During Mary's reign Foxe had found a home on the Continent, and may there have met with Day. In 1554, while at Strasburg, he had published, through the press of Wendelin Richel, a Latin treatise on the persecutions of the reformers, under the t.i.tle of _Commentarii rerum in Ecclesia gestarum maximarumque persecutionem a Vuiclevi temporibus descriptio_. From Strasburg he removed to Basle, and from the press of Oporinus, in 1559, appeared the Latin edition of the _Book of Martyrs_.

He did not return to England until October of that year, when he settled in Aldgate, and made weekly visits to the printing-house of John Day, who was then busy on the English edition.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20.--From Foxe's 'Actes and Monumentes,' printed by John Day, 1576.]

Foxe's _Actes and Monumentes_ is a work of 2008 folio pages, printed in double columns, the type used being a small English black letter, the same which had been used in Becon's _Works_, supplemented with various sizes of italic and Roman. It was ill.u.s.trated throughout with woodcuts, representing the tortures and deaths of the martyrs. A very handsome initial letter E, showing Queen Elizabeth and her courtiers, is also found in it. A Royal proclamation ordered that a copy of it should be set up in every parish church. From this time Foxe appears to have worked as translator and editor for John Day, and was for a while living in the printer's house.

Archbishop Parker meanwhile had induced Day to cast a fount of Saxon types in metal. The first book in which these were used was Aelfric's 'Saxon Homily,' _i.e._ the Sermon of the Paschal Lamb, appointed by the Saxon bishop to be read at Easter before the Sacrament, an Epistle of Aelfric to Wulfsine, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, all of which were included in the general t.i.tle of _A Testimonye of Antiquity_, 'shewing the auncient fayth in the Church of England touching the Sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publykely preached and also receaved in the Saxons tyme, above 600 yeares agoe.'

Speaking of Day's Saxon fount, the late Mr. Talbot Reed, in his _Old English Letter Foundries_ (p. 96), says:--

'The Saxon fount ... is an English in body, very clear and bold. Of the capitals eight only, including two diphthongs are distinctively Saxon, the remaining eighteen letters being ordinary Roman; while in the lowercase there are twelve Saxon letters, as against fifteen of the Roman. The accuracy and regularity with which this fount was cut and cast is highly creditable to Day's excellence as a founder.'

Although this book (an octavo) bore no date, the names of the subscribing bishops fix it as 1566 or 1567. In the latter year appeared the Archbishop's metrical version of the _Psalter_, which he had compiled during his enforced exile under Mary. In connection with this it may be well to point out that Day printed many editions of the _Psalter_ with musical notes. In 1568 he used the Saxon types again to print William Lambard's _Archaionomia_, a book of Saxon laws. Amongst his other productions of that year must be mentioned the folio edition of Peter Martyr's _Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans_; Gildas the historian's _De excidio et conquestu Britanniae_, 1568, 8vo; and a French version of Vandernoot's _Theatre for Worldlings_, 'Le Theatre auquel sont exposes et monstres les inconveniens et miseres qui suivent les mondains et vicieux, ensemble les plaisirs et contentements dont les fideles jouissent.' There is a copy of this very rare book in the Grenville collection. The _Theatre for Worldlings_ was translated into English the following year, and contained verses from the pen of Edmund Spenser, then a boy of sixteen. But Day's press played little part in the spread of the romantic literature with which the name of Spenser is so closely linked. Day's work was with the Reformation and the religious questions of the time. Nevertheless, that he felt the influence of the coming change is shown from a publication that issued from his press in 1570. This was the authorised version of a play which had been acted nine years before by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple before Her Majesty. It had shortly afterwards been published by William Griffith of Fleet Street as:--

'The Tragedy of Gorboduc, whereof Three Actes were wrytten by Thomas Norton and the two last by Thomas Sackvyle. Set forth as the same was shewed before the Queenes most excellent Maiestie in her highnes Court of Whitehall, the xviii day of January Anno Domini 1561, By the gentlemen of Thynner Temple in London.' Day's edition was ent.i.tled:--

'The Tragidie of Ferrex and Porrex, set forth without addition or alteration, but altogether as the same was showed on stage before the Queens Maiestie about nine yeares past, viz. the xviii day of Januarie 1561, by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple.'

Another important work of this year (1570) was Roger Ascham's _Scholemaster_, in quarto. In 1571 Day was busy with Church matters.

There was just then much talk of Church discipline, and it shows itself in the _Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum_, a quarto of some 300 pages, published by him this year. In this book we find a new device used by Day. It represents two hands holding a slab upon which is a crucible with a heart in it, surrounded by flames, the word 'Christus' being on the slab. From the wrists hangs a chain, and in the centre of this is suspended a globe, and beneath that again is a representation of the sun. Round the chain is a ribbon with the words '_Horum Charitas_.' This device was placed on the t.i.tle-page, which was surrounded by a neat border of printers' ornaments.

The _Booke of certaine Canons_, 4to, was another publication of this year for the due ordering of the Church. This, like most public doc.u.ments, was in a large black letter. There were also 'Articles of the London Synod of 1562.' As a specimen of the religious sermons or discourses of the time, we have a very good example in another of Day's publications in 1571, a reprint of _The Poore Mans Librarie_, a discourse by George Alley, Bishop of Exeter, upon the First Epistle of St. Peter, which made up a very respectable folio, printed in Day's best manner, and with a great number of founts.

But Day's prosperity roused the envy of his fellow-stationers, and they tried their best to hinder the sale of his books and cause him annoyance. This opposition took a violent form in 1572, when Day, whose premises at Aldersgate had become too small to carry on his growing business, his stock being valued at that time between 2000 and 3000, obtained the leave of the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul's to set up a little shop in St. Paul's Churchyard for the sale of his books. The booksellers appealed to the Lord Mayor, who was prevailed upon to stop Day's proceedings, and it required all the power and influence of Archbishop Parker, backed by an order of the Privy Council, to enable the printer to carry out his project.[4]

The Archbishop meanwhile had been busy furnis.h.i.+ng replies to Nicholas Sanders' book _De Visibili Monarchia_, and amongst those whom he selected for the work was Dr. Clerke of Cambridge, who accordingly wrote a Latin treatise ent.i.tled _Fidelis Servi subdito infideli Responsio_.

From a letter written by the Archbishop to Lord Burleigh at this time, we learn that John Day had cast a special fount of Italian letter for this book at a cost of forty marks.[5]

By Italian letter is here meant Roman, and not Italic, as Mr. Reed supposes, for the _Responsio_ was printed in a new fount of that type, clear, even, and free from abbreviations.