P RIOR to 1637, letter-founding is not specifically mentioned as a distinct industry in any of the Public Documents. We are not on that account however, (as we have endeavoured to point out), to assume either that the restrictive provisions of previous enactments which regulated printing did not apply to letter-founding, or that, as a trade, it had no separate existence before that date. The divorce of letter-founding from printing was in all probability a long and gradual process; and although it would be difficult to fix any precise date to the completion of that process, we may yet infer from the fact that the Decree of 1586 (which includes by name almost every other branch of industry connected with printing) makes no mention of letter-founding, while the Decree of 1637 particularly names it, that between these two dates printers ceased generally to be their own letter-founders.
As we have elsewhere noticed, the Stationers’ Company as early as 1597 took cognisance of letter-founding as a distinct trade, when it called upon Benjamin Sympson to enter into a bond of £40 not to cast any letters or characters, or to deliver them, without previous notice to the master and wardens. And that there was a certain body of men known in the trade as “founders” owning the authority of the Stationers’ Company in 1622, is evident {165} from the fact that in that year the Court called upon “the founders” to give bond to the Company not to deliver any fount of new letters without notice.
It would be erroneous, therefore, to imagine that the Star Chamber Decree of 1637 in any sense created letter-founding as a distinct trade. Its purpose, as in the case of printing, was to restrict the number of those engaged in it, which had probably grown excessive under the milder regime of the Decree of 1586.
In the curious little tract, to which allusion has already been made, entitled The London Printer, his Lamentation,297 the author, writing in 1660, after highly commending the Decree of Elizabeth (23 June, 1586), limiting the number of printers, says that about 1637, notwithstanding the above Decree, “printing and printers were grown to monstrous excess and exorbitant riot,” and that the law was infringed at all points. In this “monstrous excess and exorbitant riot,” it is highly probable that the letter-founders of the day figured. And it seems equally probable that John Grismand, Thomas Wright, Arthur Nicholls (or Nichols298) and Alexander Fifield, who were appointed by the Decree of 1637 as the four authorised founders, had already been founding types for several years, with or without the sanction of the authorities.
In the Registers of the Stationers’ Company, the names both of John Grismand and Thomas Wright occur as publishers of certain works, the former in 1635, the latter in 1638; from which it would appear that both before and after 1637 they may have combined the trade of bookseller and printer with that of letter-founder.299
And in another curious document, preserved among the Bagford collections, and entitled The Brotherly Meeting of the Masters and Workmen Printers, began November 5, 1621; the first Sermon being on November 5, 1628, {166} and hath been continued by the Stewards, whose names follow in this Catalogue to this present third of May 1681,300 the names of Thomas Wright, Arthur Nichols, and Alexander Fifield all appear as having served their Stewardship, although unfortunately the list does not assign dates to the respective terms of service.301
In the lists of the Stationers’ Company, however, we find that the four founders took up their freedom in the following order: John Grisman (sic), December 2, 1616; Thomas Wright, May 7, 1627; Arthur Nicholls, December 3, 1632; and Alexander Fifield, July 20, 1635.302
Respecting Wright and Fifield, after their nomination as Star Chamber founders history records nothing. It is probable that they continued to combine the callings of printer and founder, as John Grismand certainly appears to have done, for we find him named in a State Paper in 1649 as having on the 19th October of that year entered into a bond of £300, and given two sureties, not to print any seditious work.303
Of Arthur Nicholls there remains a record of a more ample and satisfactory nature, which we are glad to lay before the reader (as we believe) for the first time, being undoubtedly one of the most valuable and interesting memorials of early English letter-founding which we possess.
It appears that Nicholls, at the time of his nomination as Star Chamber founder in 1637, was also a candidate for the vacant place of printer at Oxford, at that time at the disposal of Archbishop Laud, who, as we have seen in the {167} preceding chapter, had been reserving it for a printer well versed in the Greek language. Nicholls, being unsuccessful in this matter, and driven by his straitened circumstances to seek some addition to his slender pittance as letter-founder thereupon made application to Laud to be admitted as a licensed master-printer in London, that so he might make use of his own type. His letter and the “Cause of Complaint” annexed are preserved among the State Papers,304 and are so important that we make no apology for quoting them in extenso:
“To the Right Reverend Father in God, WILLIAM, LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY, his Grace, Primate and Metropolitane of all England.
“The humble peticion of Arthur Nicholls. Showeth unto your grace:
“That the said peticioner hath spent much tyme and paines in cuttinge and foundinge of letters for divers of the printers in London, and at this tyme hath greate store of letters ready cast lying upon his hands, they refusing to take them from him att any rate.
“Besides this his imployment of founding letters is of soe small gaine that alone it will not mainteyne him and his familie but that of necessitie hee must betake himself to some other course whereby to be freed from extreame povertie, and utterly to quitt himself of that, unless your Grace be pleased out of your wonted goodness to comiserate his case.
“May it therefore please your Grace, since you have otherwise determined to dispose of the printers place att Oxford, to give him leave, for the better encouragement of that course wherein he hath so long exercised himself, to bee a printer here in London, That soe he may make use of his owne letters for the elegant performance whereof hee doth promise to use his best care and industry And ever to pray for your Grace’s honour and happinesse.”
The “Cause of Complaint” gives a lively picture of the tribulations of letter-founders at that time:
“The Cause of Complaint of ARTHUR NICHOLLS” (endorsed “Mr. Nicholls his reasons to be made printer.”)
“The Complainant being the cutter and founder of Letters for Printers is 3 quarter of a yeares time cuttinge the Punches and Matrices belonginge to the castinge of one sorte of letters, which are some 200 of a sorte, after which they are 6 weekes a castinge, that done some 2 monthes tyme is required for triall of every sorte, and then the Printers pay him what they themselves list; thus he is necessitated to lay out much money and forebeare a long tyme to little or noe benefitt.
“Likewise for the Greeke the Printers came unto him promisinge him the doinge of all the common worke, which drewe him to doe 400 Mattrices and Punches for 80 l. which weare truly worth 150 l.:
“Further they caused him to spend 5 weekes tyme in cutting the letters for the small Bible, it beinge finished was approved for the best in England, notwithstandinge they put him off aboute it from tyme to tyme for 15 weekes till (as they pretended) Mr. Patricke Yonge came out of the contry. {168}
“All which tyme he kept his servants standinge still, in regard whereof he refused to doe it, except he might doe the common worke likewise, when for feare of the displeasure of my lord his Grace, they came to him agayne but told him that if they should lett him have worke enough, he would growe to ritch.
“Albeit, of soe small benifitt hath his Art bine, that for 4 yeares worke and practice he hath not taken above 48 l., and had it not bine for other imploymente he might have perrisht.
“He seeinge himself soe slightly regarded by them, was the rather annimated to sell off the proffitablest of his worke thinking to take some other businesse in hand, whereby to free himselfe from want, being not able to subsist by workinge only for 2 or 3.
“Notwithstandinge his longe tyme spent in that Art, wherein he hath brought up his sonne to bee soe expert and able that if it please God to call him, the other is able exactly to performe anythinge touchinge the same.
“Wherefore he requesteth my lorde Grace not to confine him to these miserable uncertainties, but promiseth if he will bee pleased to grant his peticion, he shall see more done in one yeare than was ever done in England for all kindes of languages which he is assured will bee for the good of the commonwealth in general and his Graces particular content.”
Whether Nicholls’ application was successful or otherwise, is not known. In the disastrous times which immediately followed the four Star Chamber founders are lost sight of. It is scarcely likely, judging from the dismal account given above of the trade in times of peace, that they were able, any of them, to keep a business together in times of civil war. Nor is there any certainty that when, in 1649, the Commonwealth re-enacted the main provisions of the Star Chamber Decree, that the four founders then appointed were the same who had been licensed in 1637. Mores, however, leads us to suppose that they were, and for the purpose of enumerating the Oriental and learned matrices which about the year 1657 were in use in the country, treats their four foundries as one. There is, however, no reason for supposing that they worked in partnership, or that their business was in any way connected. But in one great undertaking they were associated; and the London Polyglot of 1657 has generally been regarded as the product of the types of some, if not all, of their number.
“By these or some of them,” observes Mores, “we may suppose to have been cut the letter used in The English Polyglott: but as we cannot assign to any of them their particular performances we shall till we are better able to ascertain them, call their labours by the name of the POLYGLOTT FOUNDERY, which, as nearly as that work and the Heptaglott which accompanies it instructs us, is described at the bottom of the page.305 But it is not to be doubted, considering the elegance and simplicity of the assortment which we see, that the foundery {169} was as completely furnished with that which we see not, and which, for that reason we cannot mention.”306
The London Polyglot ranks deservedly as one of the most conspicuous landmarks of English typography. Great works had gone before it, and greater followed. But in few of these has the learning of the scholar, the enterprise of the publisher, the industry of the editor, the ability of the printer, and the skill of the letter-founder been combined to so extraordinary a degree as in the production of this magnum opus of the Commonwealth press.
A brief sketch of the typographical history of this famous work may be interesting, and not out of place here.
The London Polyglot was the fourth great Bible of the kind which had been given to the world.307
In 1517308 the Complutensian Polyglot had been printed at Alcala, at the charges of Cardinal Ximenes, in six volumes, containing the Sacred Text, in Hebrew, Latin, Greek and Chaldean, including an “Apparatus” consisting of a Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon, etc. This work will always be famous, if for no other reason, for the grand, bold Greek type in which the Septuagint and New Testament are printed.
In 1572 the Antwerp Polyglot of Arias Montanus was printed, in eight magnificent volumes, by Christopher Plantin. It comprises the whole of the Complutensian texts, with the addition of the Syriac, and an Apparatus containing Lexicons and Grammars of Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac and Greek.
In 1645 the Paris Polyglot, edited by Le Jay and others, was published in ten sumptuous volumes. It comprises the whole of the texts of the Antwerp Polyglot, with the addition of Arabic and Samaritan. Owing to the abrupt completion of this work, no Apparatus was included of any description. This work was seventeen years in the press.
The London Polyglot, as we shall observe, added to the languages used in the Paris Polyglot, the Persian and Ethiopic, with an Appendix containing additional Targums, also a complete “Apparatus” and Prolegomena, with alphabetical tables of the various languages employed, and others besides. {170}