O F these two founders nothing is known beyond what is recorded in two short entries on the books of the Stationers’ Company, viz.:—
1668. The Master and Wardens requested to certify to the Archbishop of Canterbury that Thomas Goring, a member of this Company, is an honest and sufficient man, and fit to be one of the four present founders; there being one now wanting, according to the Act of Parliament.
1669. Mr. Joseph Lee and Mr. Goring to give at the next Court an account in writing, what sorts of letter they have made, and for whom, since the Act of Parliament in that case was provided.
The names of both these founders occur in the list, already referred to, of former Stewards of the Brotherly Meeting of Masters and Workmen Printers, issued in 1681.367 {194}
This founder, who was born in 1650, succeeded Joseph Moxon, probably about the year 1683,368 and transferred his foundry to Charterhouse Street, where he continued in business till 1733. His foundry, of which, Mores informs us, Moxon’s matrices formed the most considerable part, was, next to that of the Grovers, the most extensive of its day; and it would appear that, for some time at any rate, these two shared between them the whole of the English trade. Andrews’ foundry consisted of a large variety of Roman letter and Titlings; and in “learned” founts was specially rich in Hebrew, of which there were no less than eleven founts, and five Rabbinical. Of peculiar sorts, he possessed the matrices of Bishop Wilkins’ “Real Character,” also the correcting-marks used by Moxon in his Mechanick Exercises, and other symbols, besides three or four founts of square-headed music.
He also possessed the Hebrews and the Ethiopic369 used in Walton’s Polyglot; the Irish cut by Moxon for Boyle’s New Testament, and a curious alphabet of Great Primer Anglo-Norman; besides a fine specimen of old Blacks (two of which are here shown), probably handed down from some of the early English {195} printers, whose character they strongly resemble. His son, Silvester Andrews, as we shall notice later on, founded at Oxford, whither he appears to have taken matrices of some of the Romans and one fount of Hebrew from his father’s foundry.