CHAPTER V.

THE STATE CONTROL OF ENGLISH LETTER-FOUNDING.

Our Statute Books and Public Records do not throw any very important light on the early history of English letter-founding. Although a busy import trade in type appears to have been maintained by the earliest printers, and although as early as the days of De Worde, as we have seen, there were English printers who not only cast types for themselves, but are supposed to have supplied them to others, we search in vain for any definite reference to letter-founding in the decrees and proclamations which, prior to 1637, had for their object the regulation or repression of printing. It is true that the term printing was at that period wide enough to cover all its tributary arts, from paper-making to book-selling. At the same time, it is noteworthy that, whereas in many of the early decrees paper-making, book-binding and book-selling are distinctly mentioned, letter-founding is invariably ignored. If any inference is to be drawn from this fact, it is that type was one of the latest of the printer’s commodities to go into the public market. A printer’s type was his own, and no one else’s; and if occasionally one great printer was pleased to part with founts of his letter to his brother craftsmen, either by favour or for a consideration, it was not till late in the day—that is, not for about a century after the introduction of printing into England—that English-cast types became marketable ware in the country.

It is not our purpose here to review in detail the various decrees and {124} proclamations which regulated printing in this country[203]; but it will be interesting to notice such of them as appear to have special reference to letter-founding.

The earliest Statute relating to printing was made in 1483, before the art had well taken root in the country; and proclaimed free trade in all printed matter imported from abroad. In 1533 this enactment was repealed, on the ground that “at this day there be within this realm a great number of cunning and expert in the said science or craft of printing.”[204]

More direct control was assumed in 1556, when the charter was granted to the Stationers’ Company, constituting that body the “Master and Keepers, or Wardens and Commonalty, of the Mystery or Art of a Stationer of the City of London.”[205] Under this comprehensive term, there is little doubt, founders of type, had any at that time been practising in London, would be included; and such being the case, it would become necessary for them, as well as for paper-makers, printers, binders, booksellers and others, to become members of the Stationers’ Company, and subsequently, in compliance with the enlarged powers conferred on the Company in 1559 and 1556, to give surety to that body for the due observance of the ordinances by virtue of which they held their privileges.

The powers conferred on the Company by its charter related exclusively to the publication of printed matter; and the rights of search granted in the subsequent Acts confirming the charter appear to have been directed rather against the possession of smuggled or illegally printed books than against the possession of the materials necessary to produce them.

In 1582 was tried a celebrated lawsuit known as the Star Chamber case of John Day _versus_ Roger Ward and William Holmes, for illegal printing of an {125} _A B C_ and _Catechism_.[206] In the course of the inquiry occurs an interesting reference to the practice of printers as their own letter-founders, which we reproduce as being one of the earliest direct notices of letter-founding in the Public Records. Amongst the questions put to the recalcitrant Roger Ward[207] the following three were intended to discover whether the illicit _A B C_ was printed by him in his own type, or whether (with a view to remove suspicion from himself) he had printed it in the type of another printer:―

“QUESTION XIII. Did any person or personns Ayde help or assist you with paper letters (_type_) or other necessaries in this work?

“ANSWER. He was not with paper letters (_type_) or other necessaryes in the said worke aidyd holpen or assistyd by any manner of personne or persons but that one Adam a Servant of Master Purfo(o)ttes dyd lend him some letters wherewith he imprinted the said boke.

“QUESTION XVIII. Whether were the Letters wherewith you imprinted the sayd _A B C_ your owne yea or no? If not whose were they and by what meanse came you by them, And whether with the Consent of the owner or not? And whether have you redelivered them back againe and how long since, And what nomber of Reames did you imprint with the said letter?

“ANSWER. That all the letters wherewith he impryntyd the said _A B C_ were not his owne for he dyd borrowe of one Adame, a man of one master Purfott all the Inglisshe (_i.e._, _Black_) Letters to the said worke and he borrowyd these letters without the consent of the said master Purfytt and hath the same as yet in this defendants custodye and have not Redelyvered of the same sithes he borrowyd the same as aforesaid and to his Remembrance he Did imprynt with the sayd letter the nomber of Twentie Reames of paper.

“QUESTION XIX. Whether have you cast any new Letter of your owne since the first printinge of the said _A B C_, and what nomber of the same have you printed of that letter (_in that type_)?

“ANSWER. He confessyth that he hath sythes the first imprintyng of the said _A B C_, cast a newe letter of his owne and yet he hath not pryntyd any of that letter (_in that type_).”

This testimony was generally corroborated by the other printers and persons examined, to many of whom it appeared to be notorious that Roger Ward had printed the book in a letter not his own, and that he had since cast a new fount of type for his own use. The whole inquiry throws a curious light on the methods of business of the printers of the day. Composition then, as Mr. Arber points out, was not necessarily done in the master-printer’s house where he kept {126} his press. Of course that which was done by himself and his apprentices was done there, but work given out to journeymen (who were generally householders), was probably done in their houses and paid for by piecework. “A custom which,” continues Mr. Arber, “was facilitated by most of the books then printed being almost always in some one size of type. Therefore there could not be so much control exercised over the literature in respect to the guardianship of the type—however easy it was for printers of that day to identify the printer of a book by its typography—neither do we find any such attempted; but only in respect to the custody of the hand printing press, which was doubtless well secured every night as a dangerous instrument, lest secret nocturnal printing should go on without the owner’s consent.”[208]

In the same year, 1582, Christopher Barker, the Queen’s printer, drew up an able report on the condition of printing as it then existed, in which, among other matters, he referred to the cost of making type, and its consequent effect on publishers and printers. “In King Edward the Sixt his Dayes,” he says, “Printers and printing began greatly to increase; but the provision of letter, and many other thinges belonging to printing was so exceeding chargeable, that most of those printers were Dryven throughe necessitie, to compound before[hand] with the booksellers at so low value, as the printers themselves were most tymes small gayners and often loosers . . . The Bookesellers . . now (1582) . . keepe no printing howse, neither beare any charge of letter, or other furniture, but onlie paye for the workmanship . . . so that the artificer printer, growing every Daye more and more unable to provide letter[209] and other furniture . . . will in tyme be an occasion of great discredit to the professours of the arte.”

The report goes on to mention that at that time (December 1582) “there are twenty-two printing howses in London, where eight or ten at the most would suffise for all England, yea, and Scotland too.”[210]

In May of the following year there were twenty-three printers with fifty-three presses among them, and during the next two years the number appears to have increased so considerably as to call for that sweeping enactment, the Star Chamber decree of 1586. This famous measure prohibits all presses out of London, except one each at the two Universities, and “tyll the excessive {127} multytude of Prynters havinge presses already sett up be abated,” permits no new press whatsoever to be erected.[211] The Stationers’ Company have authority to inspect all printing offices, “to search take and carry away all presses, letters and other pryntinge instrumentes sett up, used or employed . . contrary to the intent and meaninge hereof; . . . and thereupon shall cause all suche printing presses, or other printing instruments, to be Defaced, melted, sawed in peeces, broken, or battered . . . and the stuffe of the same so defaced, shall redelyver to the owners thereof againe within three monethes next after the takinge or seizinge thereof as aforesayd.”[212]

The Company were not slow in making use of their enlarged powers, and the refractory Roger Ward appears to have had considerable experience of the rigours of the new decree. In October 1586 the wardens seized on his premises “3 presses and divers other parcells of pryntinge stuffe,” and ordered them to be defaced and rendered unserviceable, according to the tenor of the decree. In 1590 they made a further visitation, and discovered that “he did kepe and conceale a presse and other pryntinge stuff in a Taylor’s house near adjoyninge to his owne, and did hide his letters in a hen house near St. Sepulchure’s Churche, expressely against the Decrees of the Star Chamber. All the whyche stuff were brought to Stacioners Hall” and duly destroyed. But the dauntless Roger Ward was not thus to be extinguished, and scarcely six months later, at Hammersmith, another press, “with 5 formes of letters of Divers sortes and 3 cases with other printing stuffe,” were impounded and rigorously defaced.

Nor was Ward the only victim. In a Secret Report presented in September 1589 to Lord Burleigh respecting the authors of the famous Marprelate Tracts, it is stated that the printer of the first three of these, “all beinge printed in a Dutch letter,” was Robert Waldegrave; and “towchinge the printinge of the two last Lebells in a litle Romaine and Italian letter,” the report states—once more showing how in those days a printer was known by his types—“the letter that these be printed in is the same that did printe the _Demonstration of Discipline_ aboute Midsommer was twelve moneth (24 June, 1588), which was printed by Waldegrave neere Kingston upon Thames, as is discovered. When his other letters and presse were defaced about Easter was twelve moneth {128} (7th April, 1588) he saved these lettres in a boxe under his Cloke, and brought them to Mistris Cranes howse in London, as is allso confessed; and they are knowen by printers to be Waldegrave’s letters; And it is the same letter that was taken with Hodgkys. These two last Libells came abroade in July (1589) last. Now it is confessed by the Carier that John Hodgkys that is taken, did send from a gentlemans howse in Woltonam in Warwikeshier unto Warrington immediatlye after whitsontyde last (18 May 1589), a printinge presse, two boxes of letter, a barrell of nicke (_incke ?_), a baskett and a brasse pott, which were delyvered to him at Warrington,” etc.[213]

The Stationers’ Company, on the whole, had a busy time during the few years following the Star Chamber decree, in hunting up and destroying disorderly presses and the “stuffe” appertaining thereto. The numerous monopolies and patents of which they were the appointed guardians provoked a regular secret organisation of unprivileged printers,[214] who pirated right and left, sometimes with impunity, sometimes at the cost of losing their whole plant and stock-in-trade by a raid of the authorities.

These raids must have kept the typecasters of the day well occupied, and it is even possible that the “stuffe” which from time to time fell into the hands of the Company may have included punches, matrices and moulds, which it would be far less easy to replace than presses, ink and balls.

A printer liable to such visitations would prefer, if possible, to procure his type out of doors, rather than maintain the valuable plant requisite to make it himself; and it is probable that the outside demand thus created may have been among the causes which led to the establishment of one or two small foundries, unconnected with any one printing office in particular, whose business it would be to supply any purchaser with type from its matrices.

The Stationers’ Company, who from time to time supplemented the powers conferred upon them by the Star Chamber with regulations of their own on matters such as standing formes, apprentices and prices, would naturally recognise a source of danger in a new foundry starting under the circumstances described, and were prompt to assert their authority.

Accordingly we find the following entry in the Index to the Court Books of the Company under date 1597:―

“BENJAMIN SYMPSON, letter founder, to enter into a £40 bond not to cast any letters or characters, or to deliver them, without advertising the Master and Wardens in writing, with the names of the parties for whom they are intended.—1597.” {129}

Here we have the first historical record of letter-founding as a distinct and recognised trade.[215] Of Benjamin Sympson and his types nothing is known. His name does not occur in any of the lists of printers of the period, nor does it appear that he was even a member of the Stationers’ Company. Whether he was called upon at his own request to qualify as a typefounder, or whether the resolution of the Court was arrived at in consequence of his previous transactions with one or more of the disorderly printers, is equally uncertain.

In 1598 the Stationers’ Company made a regulation respecting the price of work, which is also of interest, as indicating the bodies of type at that time most commonly in use for bookwork. It was as follows:―

“No new copies without pictures to be printed at more than the following rates: those in pica Roman and Italic and in English (_i.e._, _Black letter_) with Roman and Italic at a penny for two sheets; those in brevier and long primer letters at a penny for one sheet and a half.”[216]

A further regulation regarding typefounders shows that in 1622 the trade had more than one recognised representative:―

“The Founders bound to the Company by bond, not to deliver any fount of new letters, without acquainting the Master and Wardens—1622.”

The Act of 1586, despite the rigour with which, at first at any rate, it was enforced, appears to have fallen into contempt, and to have been openly {130} disregarded by the printers of the first quarter of the seventeenth century. According to the account of the “London Printer,” who wrote his _Lamentation_ in 1660, printing and printers, about 1637, were grown to such “monstrous excess and exorbitant disorder” as to call for the prompt and serious attention of the Court of Star Chamber, who in that same year, because the former “Orders and Decrees have been found by experience to be defective in some particulars; and divers abuses have sithence arisen and been practiced by the craft and malice of wicked and evill disposed persons,” put forward the famous Star Chamber Decree of 1637.[217]

In this decree, the severity of which called forth from Milton his noble protest, the _Areopagitica_,[218] letter-founding is formally recognised as a distinct industry, and shares with printing the rigours of the new restrictions. The following is the text of the clauses relating to founders:―

XXVII.—_Item_, The Court doth order and declare, that there shall be foure Founders of letters for printing allowed, and no more, and doth hereby nominate, allow, and admit these persons, whose names hereafter follow, to the number of foure, to be letter-Founders for the time being, (viz.) _John Grismand_, _Thomas Wright_, _Arthur Nichols_, _Alexander Fifield_. And further the Court doth Order and Decree, that it shall be lawfull for the Lord Arch-bishop of _Canterbury_, or the Lord Bishop of _London_ for the time being, taking unto him or them, six other high Commissioners, to supply the place or places of those who are now allowed Founders of letters by this Court, as they shall fall void by death, censure, or otherwise.

Provided that they exceede not the number of foure, set down by this Court. And if any person or persons, not being an allowed Founder, shall notwithstanding take upon him, or them, to Found, or cast letters for printing, upon complaint and proofe made of such offence, or offences, he, or they so offending, shal suffer such punishment, as this Court, or the high Commission Court respectively, as the severall causes shall require, shall think fit to inflict upon them.

XXVIII.—_Item_, That no Master-Founder whatsoever shall keepe above two Apprentices at one time, neither by Copartnership, binding at the Scriveners, nor any other way whatsoever, neither shall it be lawfull for any Master-Founder, when any Apprentice, or Apprentices shall run, or be put away, to take another Apprentice, or other Apprentices in his, or their place or places, unless the name or names of him, or them so gone away, be rased out of the Hall-booke of the Company, whereof the Master-Founder is free, and never admitted again, upon pain of such punishment, as by this Court, or the high Commission respectively, as the severall causes shall require, shall be thought fit to bee imposed. {131}

XXIX.—_Item_, That all Journey-men-Founders be imployed by the Master-Founders of the said trade, and that idle Journey-men be compelled to worke after the same manner, and upon the same penalties, as in case of the Journey-men-Printers is before specified.[219]

XXX.—_Item_, That no Master-Founder of letters, shall imploy any other person or persons in any worke belonging to the casting or founding of letters, than such only as are freemen or apprentices to the trade of founding letters, save only in the pulling off the knots of mettle hanging at the ends of the letters when they are first cast, in which work it shall be lawfull for every Master-Founder, to imploy one boy only that is not, nor hath beene bound to the trade of Founding letters, but not otherwise, upon pain of being for ever disabled to use or exercise that art, and such further punishment, as by this Court, or the high Commission Court respectively, as the severall causes shall require, be thought fit to be imposed.

XIV.—_Item_, That no Joyner, or Carpenter, or other person, shall make any printing-Presse, no Smith shall forge any Iron-Worke for a printing Presse, and no Founder shall cast any Letters for any person or persons whatsoever, neither shall any person or persons bring, or cause to be brought in from any parts beyond the Seas, any Letters Founded or Cast, nor buy any such Letters for Printing, Unlesse he or they respectively shall first acquaint the said Master and Wardens, or some of them, for whom the same Presse, Iron-works, or Letters, are to be made, forged, or cast, upon paine of such fine and punishment, as this Court, or the high Commission Court respectively, as the severall causes shall require, shall thinke fit.

Respecting the four founders thus nominated, and their types, we shall have occasion to speak in a following chapter. Continuing here our cursory review of the Statutes which affected letter-founding, it is necessary to remind the reader that this tremendous decree, which for severity eclipsed all its predecessors, was short-lived.

On November 3, 1640, the Long Parliament assembled, and with it the Star Chamber disappeared, and its decrees became dead letters. Then for a season there was virtually free trade in printing, and advantage was taken of the new condition of affairs to infringe existing rights on every hand, the King’s Patent Printers (if we are to believe the “London Printer,” above quoted) being the chief and most unscrupulous transgressors.

Parliament was not slow to take up the mantle dropped by the late Star Chamber, and in 1643 attempted to stem “the very grievous” liberty of the press, reinvesting the Stationers’ Company with powers to search and seize all unlicensed presses and books, and to apprehend the “authors, printers and other persons whatsoever employed in compiling, printing, stitching, binding, {132} publishing and dispersing the said scandalous, unlicensed and unwarrantable papers, books and pamphlets.”

This ordinance, in which once more typefounders are conspicuous by their absence, was strengthened by a further decree in 1647, and two years later the Act of Sept. 20, 1649, virtually reimposed the old Star Chamber regulations, requiring, among other provisions, that printers should enter into a £300 bond not to print seditious or scandalous matter; also that no house or room should be let to a printer, nor implements made, press imported, or letters founded, without notice to the Stationers’ Company. The penalties attached to a breach of these orders were severe. This Act was renewed in 1652, but it failed to remedy the abuses it was intended to meet. Private presses sprung up on all hands; the art was degraded and prostituted to all manner of base uses; workmen as well as master printers joined in their complaints against disorders which were working their ruin. The number of printers, restricted since 1586 to twenty, had grown to sixty; the Royal printers themselves were interlopers, two of them not even being practical printers, and all of them being political incendiaries.

Such being the condition of affairs, it is not surprising that in 1662 the remonstrances raised on all sides should result in an Act of Parliament intended to dispose finally of the abuses complained of.

The Act of 1662 (13 and 14 Charles II, c. 33) reimposes the provisions of the Star Chamber decree of 1637 with additional rigour.[220] It enacts that no type is to be founded or cast, or brought from abroad, without licence from the Stationers’ Company. The number of founders is again limited to four, and all {133} vacancies in the number are to be filled up by the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Bishop of London.[221] Masters of the Stationers’ Company, past and present, may have three apprentices, liverymen two, and the commonalty only one. Master founders must see that their journeymen are kept at work; and these journeymen must be all Englishmen and freemen, or sons of freemen. Founders working for the trade who offend are to be disabled from following their craft for three years, and on a second offence to be permanently disqualified, besides suffering punishment by fine or imprisonment, or “other corporal punishment not extending to life and limb.”

This uncompromising Act was continued from time to time, with temporary lapses, until 1693,[222] when, in the tide of liberty following the Revolution, it disappeared. Despite its stern provisions, we find from a petition entitled _The Case of the Free Workmen Printers_, presented to the House about 1665, praying for its renewal, that the number of printing-houses had already grown to seventy, with one hundred and fifty apprentices; and in 1683 we have the evidence of Moxon that the number of founders, as well as of printers, was grown “very many.” It does not, however, appear that at any time during the continuance of the Act, that the number of founders ever exceeded four. How far they complied with the regulation requiring them to account to the Company for all type cast, we are unable, in the absence of any register of such accounts, to say; but that a register was duly kept is evident from the following important minute of the Court in 1674:―

“All the Letter-founders to give timely notice to the Master and Wardens, of all such quantities of letter as they shall cast for any person; which notice shall be entered by the Clerk in a register book to be provided for that purpose.—1674.”

In 1668, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the Company had, in discharge of their authority, nominated Thomas Goring to the Archbishop of Canterbury as “an honest and sufficient man” to be one of the four founders allowed by the Act, there being then a vacancy in the number. And that the penal clauses were not neglected is equally evident from the resolution of the Court in 1685, withholding Godfrey Head’s dividend until he should comply with the Act by giving an account to the Company of what type he was casting. {134}

The latest minute on the Court Books relating to letter-founding was in 1693—the year in which the Act expired—when the following order was made:―

“Printed papers to be delivered to all Founders, Press Makers and others concerned, requiring obedience to that Clause in the Act for preventing abuses in Printing, whereby all Letter Founders, Press Makers, Joiners, and others are commanded to acquaint the Master or Wardens what Presses or Letters they shall at any time make or cast.—1693.”

After 1693, letter-founding came from under all restraint. Laws of copyright and patent still clung to printing,[223] but, except for a proposal made about 1695 by one W. Mascall[224] that every printer, letter-founder and press-maker should enter with a statement on oath the number of his presses, the weight of his letter and the extent of his other utensils, we find no reference to letter-founding in the Public Records for upwards of a century.

Notwithstanding this liberty, the number of founders during the eighteenth century appears rarely to have exceeded the figure prescribed by the Star Chamber Decree of 1637, and occasionally to have been less.

One more attempt was made in the closing days of the eighteenth century to control the freedom of the press by law. There is something almost grotesque in the efforts made by legislators in 1799 to refit, on a full-grown and invincible press, the worn-out shackles by which the Stuarts had tried to curtail the growth of its childhood; and the Act of the 39th George III, cap. 79,[225] in so far as it deals with printing, will always remain one of the surprises, as well as one of the disgraces, of the Statute-book. Among its worst provisions, the following affect letter-founders and letter-founding:―

Sec. 23 ordains that no one, under penalty of £20, shall be allowed to possess or use a printing-press or types for printing, without giving notice thereof to a Clerk of the Peace, and obtaining from him a certificate to that effect.

Sec. 33 provides that any Justice of the Peace may issue a warrant to search any premises, and seize and take away any press or printing-types not duly certificated. {135}

The following sections we give in full:―

Sec. 25. “That from and after the Expiration of Forty Days after the passing of this Act, every Person carrying on the Business of a Letter Founder or Maker or Seller of Types for Printing or of Printing Presses, shall cause Notice of his or her Intention to carry on such Business to be delivered to the Clerk of the Peace of the . . . Place where such Person shall propose to carry on such Business, or his Deputy in the Form prescribed in the Schedule of this Act annexed.[226] And such Clerk of the Peace or his Deputy shall, and he is hereby authorized and required thereupon to grant a Certificate in the Form also prescribed in the said Schedule,[227] for which such Clerk of the Peace or his Deputy shall receive a Fee of One Shilling and no more, and shall file such Notice and transmit an attested Copy thereof to one of his Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State; and every Person who shall, after the expiration of the said Forty Days, carry on such Business, or make or sell any Type for Printing, or Printing Press, without having given such Notice, and obtained such Certificate, shall forfeit and lose the Sum of Twenty Pounds.”

Sec. 26. “And be it further enacted, That every Person who shall sell Types for Printing, or Printing Presses as aforesaid, shall keep a Fair Account in Writing of all Persons to whom such Types or Presses shall be sold, and shall produce such Accounts to any Justice of the Peace who shall require the same; And if such Person shall neglect to keep such Account, or shall refuse to produce the same to any such Justice, on demand in Writing to inspect the same, such Person shall forfeit and lose, for such offence, the Sum of Twenty Pounds.”

Such was the law with regard to typefounding at the time when the widows of the two Caslons were struggling to revive their then ancient business, when Vincent Figgins was building up his new foundry, and Edmund Fry, Caslon III and Wilson were busily occupied in cutting their modern Romans to suit the new fashion. And such the law remained nominally until the year 1869,[228] {136} just upon four centuries after the introduction of the Art into this country. It is probable that, during the first few disturbed years of its existence, the Act may have been enforced, that certificates may have been registered, and accounts dutifully furnished.[229] But its provisions appear very soon to have fallen into contempt, and certainly, as far as we can ascertain, failed to trouble the peace of any British letter-founder.

* * * * *

Such is a hasty and very cursory review of the various laws which from time to time have taken letter-founding under control. Whether they succeeded in placing any real check on the progress of the art, it is difficult to determine. But it is certain that the heaviest restrictive measures have generally been accompanied not only by the most grievous abuses in the spirit of the press, but by distinct degeneration in the quality of the typographical work executed. A privileged printer, sure of his monopoly and safe from competition, would have little or no inducement to execute his work at more cost or pains than was necessary. Old type would do as well as new, and bad type would do as well as good. Free trade and open competition were the great evils to be dreaded, because free trade and open competition would demand the best paper, and type and workmanship. The typography of the entire Stuart period is a disgrace to English art. Fine printing was an art unknown; and only a few works like Walton’s _Polyglot_, which were produced in an atmosphere untainted by mercenary considerations, stand out to redeem the period from unqualified reproach.

On the other hand, the removal of the restrictions was the signal for a revival which may be traced in almost every printed work of the early eighteenth century. In the absence of any great English founder, the best Dutch types came freely into the English market. Books came to be legible, paper became white, ink black, and press-work respectable. Caslon came in on the tide of the revival, as also did Bowyer, Watts, Bettenham, and artists of their rank; and the emancipated press, among them, made up the leeway of a wasted century, and, no longer in the grip of faction, but the free servant of the great and wise of the land, raised for itself monuments which will remain a lasting glory not only to English scholarship and English eloquence, but also to English typography, for which liberty has been, and always will be, the surest road to achievement.

{137}