CHAPTER IV

GEORGE I.--GEORGE II.--GEORGE III.--GEORGE IV.--WILLIAM IV.

On the succession to the English crown passing to the Hanoverian line, another important change was made in the royal coat of England. George I. substituted for the fourth quarter, which had been hitherto a repetition of the first, the arms of his family, Brunswick, impaling Luneburg, and in the base point the coat of Saxony, over all an escutcheon, charged with the crown of Charlemagne, as a badge of the office of High Treasurer of the Holy Roman Empire. George II. bore the same coat as did George III. up to 1801, when, on the legislative union of Great Britain and Ireland, the coat was officially altered to first and fourth England; second, Scotland; third, Ireland, with over all an escutcheon, bearing the arms of the royal dominions in Germany, ensigned with the electoral bonnet, which was again changed to the Hanoverian royal crown when Hanover was elevated to the rank of a kingdom in 1816. This last coat was used by George IV. and William IV., and, without the Hanoverian escutcheon, it is the present royal coat of England.

The bindings of George I. and George II. are generally much alike. There are good specimens of each at Windsor. They are generally in red morocco, with either coats-of-arms in the centre or monograms. At Windsor there is one bound in vellum, it is a manuscript _Report on States of Traytors_, 1717, and bears the full royal coat in the centre, enclosed in rectangular mitred borders, with delicate gold stamped work at the sides. In the British Museum is a finely stamped _Account of Conference concerning the Succession to the Crown_, 1719, very delicately and tastefully ornamented, having the coat-of-arms in the centre, with crowned initials at the corners, and delicate gold work of floral sprays and curves borrowed from Le Gascon, a great French binder.

There are several of George II. bindings at Windsor, made for him when he was Prince of Wales. These generally bear the Prince of Wales' feathers as a chief motive, and they often have broad borders, much of the ornamentation of which contains stamps of crowns, sceptres, and birds, which are attributed to Eliot and Chapman. There are other inlaid bindings made for George II. which often have doublures. Some of these are figured in Mr. Holmes's _Bookbindings at Windsor_. Bindings of a similar kind that were made for Frederick Prince of Wales, and for his wife, the Princess Augusta, are also preserved at Windsor. These have always heraldic centres, and generally the broad Eliot and Chapman outer borders.

For George III., both when Prince of Wales and King, books were bound with coloured inlays by Andreas Lande. There are specimens of his work both in the British Museum and at Windsor, they are not in particularly good taste. During the reign of George III. a remarkable English bookbinder worked in London. This was Roger Payne; and, although he himself does not seem to have bound any royal books, he strongly influenced many who did, more particularly Kalthoeber, who bound many of the books in the King's Library at the British Museum. Although these bindings are by no means so good as their originals, they are a very great advance upon their immediate predecessors; and a delicately worked and effective instance covers a copy of the Gutenburg Bible now at the British Museum.

Another English binder of note, James Edwards of Halifax, also flourished in the reign of George III. This binder has not, I think, received sufficient appreciation, as he discovered an entirely new way of treating vellum by which it was rendered transparent. He painted designs on the under side of the vellum and bound his books with it, the result being that, if the vellum is clean on the outside, the protected painting underneath it is as fresh as when it was first done. A fine example of this curious work is on a copy of a Prayer Book, printed at Cambridge, 1760, which belonged to Charlotte of Mecklenburg, queen of George III. (Fig. 26). Her arms, in proper heraldic colours, are in the centre of the upper cover, enclosed by a blue and gold border of Etruscan design. At the lower edge is a miniature of a ruin in monotone, and at each side of the coat and above it are ornamental scrolls, with conventional flowers, birds, animals, and figures. On the lower cover is a central oval, with an allegorical figure in monotone, enclosed in a similar border to that on the upper cover, at each side of which are flowering trees in urns, birds, etc., and in each panel of the back is also a decorative design. Altogether this is the prettiest royal binding done at this period. It has the crowned initials "C. R." painted in silver inside the upper cover, and on the front edge, in an oval, is a painting of the Resurrection under the gold. Between this and the edges, painted for James II., there were no books adorned in this way for royal owners.

The bindings done for George IV., at Windsor, are generally bound in red morocco, with heraldic centres and broad borders, sometimes inlaid with coloured leathers. The borders are sometimes like those used by Eliot and Chapman, and sometimes conventional patterns. A good example in the British Museum is on the cover of the letter written to Lord Liverpool by the king in 1823, concerning the gift of his father's library to the nation. A copy of the Book of Common Prayer, which belonged to William IV., and is now at Windsor, is bound in blue morocco. It bears in the centre the star of the Order of the Garter, within a crowned Garter, dependent from which is an anchor, and at the sides "G. R. III." There are anchors in the corners, and a decorative outer border. The generality of the books belonging to him have the usual heraldic centres, within borders designed in more or less good taste. The king presented to the British Museum, and signed with his own name, an _Inventory of the Crown Plate_, 1832. It is bound by William Clark, and bears in the centre the full royal coat-of-arms, and has a handsome rectangular border of triple gold lines, broken at each side by bold arabesque ornaments.

EPILOGUE

In the foregoing detailed descriptions I have included only the work of English binders. There are, however, many books existing that have been bound for English royal personages abroad. Instances of these occur notably for Henry VIII., Elizabeth, James I., Henrietta Maria, Henrietta Anna, Charles II., the Chevalier St. George, and Cardinal York. It will be noticed that generally the ornamentation of English royal books is heraldic, and that crowned initials are constantly used from the time of Henry VIII. to William IV. To understand the royal coat-of-arms of England it is necessary, at all events, to note the larger rearrangements of the various quarterings, which on the Tudor bindings were simply France and England, quarterly. The two great changes took place on the accession of the Stuart line, when the coats of Scotland and England were introduced; and on the accession of the Hanoverian line, when the family coat of the Guelphs was introduced. There are several minor alterations and additions, but these I have mentioned as they have occurred, and the only other important change to remember is concerning the supporters. From the time of Henry VII. until 1528 these were a dragon and a greyhound, and from that time until Elizabeth they were a lion and a dragon. Since the time of James I. they have been a lion and unicorn. Badges are constantly found on Tudor and early Stuart bindings. They are the well-known ones of Tudor origin--the double rose, portcullis, pomegranate, fleur-de-lis, and falcon. The fleur-de-lis remains longest of these. The Prince of Wales' feathers is commonly found on books from the time of Edward VI.

The styles of bindings used by these great royal houses have also characteristics common to each of them. The bindings of the Tudor period are most diversified in styles, and the majority of the leather books are either bound by Thomas Berthelet, royal binder to Henry VIII., and his successors, or in his style. Under Elizabeth, the Italian fashion of double boards, the upper of which is pierced, was used for very choice work. Berthelet took his inspiration originally from Italian models, but shortly developed a style of his own. Vellum was much used in connection with gold stamped work, the first use of which in England is credited to this binder.

The bindings of the early Stuart period may be considered remarkable for the extensive use of what are called semées, successive and symmetrical impressions from small stamps powdered over the sides of the book; and the stamped velvet work done at Little Gidding is one of the glories of the reign of Charles I.

Samuel Mearne was royal binder to Charles II., and many of his bindings are of great beauty. His influence on English bookbinding remained for a very long time, weakening gradually, until superseded by the newer style introduced by Roger Payne.

In the time of George III. there was some improvement in royal bindings due to the imitators of Roger Payne, another binder, whose influence was strongly felt after his death. Eliot and Chapman, during the eighteenth century, introduced the use of broad borders with small stamps, among which are frequently found crowns and sceptres; and many of these are found on royal bindings.

Names of many royal binders, from early times, are preserved in various records, but there is considerable uncertainty about the work of most of them; and, although many lists exist of books bound for certain kings by certain workmen, very few of them have been identified. From the constant appearance of personal badges of different kinds, it may be considered likely that, especially among the earlier sovereigns, considerable personal interest has been taken in the covering of their books. We even find the livery colours of the Tudors--green and white--duly used on some of their bindings; and the prevalence of red and blue, the livery colours of the Hanoverian line, is common enough among the Georgian bindings.

LIST OF MOST IMPORTANT WORKS CONSULTED

Almack. A Bibliography of the King's Book. London, 1896.

Burlington Fine Arts Club. Catalogue of Bookbindings. 1891.

Edwards. Lives of the Founders of the British Museum. London, 1870.

Fletcher. English Bookbindings in the British Museum. London, 1895.

Holmes. Specimens of Bookbinding selected from the Royal Library, Windsor Castle. London, 1893.

Horne. The Binding of Books. London, 1894.

Prideaux. An Historical Sketch of Bookbinding. London, 1893.

Tuer. History of the Horn-Book. London, 1896.

Willement. Regal Heraldry. London, 1821.

And various articles on Bookbinding in _Archæologia_, _Bibliographica_, _The Gentleman's Magazine_, and _The Queen_ newspaper.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

The original text includes Greek characters. For this text version these letters have been replaced with transliterations.

End of Project Gutenberg's Royal English Bookbindings, by Cyril Davenport