A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898. Henry Robert Plomer

      n the year 1500 Wynkyn de Worde moved from Westminster to the 'Sunne' in Fleet Street. His business had probably outgrown the limited accommodation of the 'Red Pale,' and the change brought him nearer the heart of the bookselling trade then, and for many years after, seated in St. Paul's Churchyard and Fleet Street. He carried with him the black letter type with which he had printed the Liber Festivalis in 1496, and continued to use it until 1508 or 1509, when he seems to have sold it to a printer in York, Hugo Goes. He brought with him also the scholastic type in use in 1499.

      Besides these, we find, e.g. in the 1512 reprint of the Golden Legend, two other founts of black letter. The larger of the two seems to have been introduced about 1503, to print a Sarum Horæ. The smaller fount came into use a few years later. It was somewhat larger, less angular, and much more English in character, than that which the printer had brought with him from Westminster. The bulk of Wynkyn de Worde's books to the day of his death were printed with these types. They were, doubtless, recast from time to time, but a close examination fails to detect any difference in size or form during the whole period.

      De Worde first began to use Roman type in 1520 for his scholastic books, but he does not seem ever to have made any general use of it, remaining faithful to English black letter to the end of his days. The only exceptions are the educational books, which he invariably printed, as in fact did all the other printers of the period, in a miniature fount of gothic of a kind very popular on the Continent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, being used by the French and Italian printers as well as those of the Low Countries. De Worde's, however, was an exceptionally small fount. Those most generally in use averaged eight full lines of a quarto page, set close, to the inch, whereas De Worde's averaged nine lines to the inch. But in 1513 he procured another fount of this type, in which he printed the Flowers of Ovid, quarto, and in this the letters are of English character, as may be seen particularly in the lowercase 'h.' This fount, which was slightly larger, averaging only eight lines to the inch, he does not seem to have used very frequently. As Julian Notary printed the Sermones Discipuli in 1510, in the same type, it may have been lent by one printer to the other. In or about 1533 De Worde introduced the italic letter into some of his scholastic books, and in Colet's Grammar, which was amongst the last books he printed, we find it in combination with English black letter, the small 'grammar type,' and Roman.

      In these various types, between the beginning of the century and his death in 1534, Wynkyn de Worde printed upwards of five hundred books which have come down to us, complete or in fragments. Thanks to the indefatigable energy of Mr. Gordon Duff, we possess now a very full record of his books, enabling us not only to estimate his merit as a printer, but to see at a glance how consistently as a publisher he maintained the entirely popular character which Caxton had given to his press.

      As regards books which required a considerable outlay, he was far less adventurous than Caxton, his large folios being confined almost entirely to those in which his master had led the way, such as the Golden Legend, of which he issued several editions, the Speculum Vitæ Christi, the Morte d'Arthur, Canterbury Tales, Polychronicon, and Chronicles of England. The Vitas Patrum of 1495 he could hardly help printing, as Caxton had laboured on its translation in the last year of his life, and it may have been respect for Caxton also which led to the publication of his finest book, the really splendid edition of Bartholomæus' De Proprietatibus Rerum, issued towards the close of the fifteenth century, from the colophon of which I have already quoted the lines referring to Caxton's having worked at a Latin edition of it at Cologne. The Book of St. Albans was another reprint to which the probable connection of the Westminster and St. Albans presses gave a Caxton flavour; and when we have enumerated these and the Dives and Pauper, produced apparently out of rivalry with Pynson in 1496, and a few devotional books such as the Orcharde of Syon and the Flour of the Commandments of God, to which this form was given, very few Wynkyn de Worde folios remain unmentioned.

      But to one book in folio, Wynkyn de Worde printed some five-and-twenty in quarto, eschewing as a rule smaller forms, though now and again we find a Horæ, or a Manipulus Curatorum, or a Book of Good Manners for Children in eights or twelves.[2]

      He was in fact a popular printer who issued small works in a cheap form, and without, it must be added, greatly concerning himself as to their appearance. Popular books of devotion or of a moral character figure most largely among the books he printed; but students of our older literature owe him gratitude for having preserved in their later forms many old romances, and also a few plays, and he published every class of book, including many educational works, for which a ready sale was assured. The majority of these books were illustrated, if only with a cut on the title-page of a schoolmaster with a birch-rod, or a knight on horseback who did duty for many heroes in succession. When the illustrations were more profuse, they were too often produced from worn blocks, purchased from French publishers, or rudely copied from French originals, and used again and again without a thought as to their relevance to the text. It must also be owned that many of Wynkyn de Worde's cheap books are badly set up and badly printed, and that altogether his reputation stands rather higher than his work as a printer really deserves. But he printed some fine books, and rescued many popular works from destruction, and we need not grudge him the honour he has received—an honour amply witnessed by the high prices fetched by books from his press whenever they come into the market.

       Fig. 9.—De Worde's 'Sagittarius' Device.

      There was no originality about Wynkyn de Worde's devices, of which he used no fewer than sixteen different varieties. The most familiar, as it was the earliest of these, was Caxton's, and next to this must be placed what is usually described as the Sagittarius device. There were two forms of this, a square and an oblong. It consisted of three divisions, the upper part containing the sun and stars, the centre, the Caxton device, and the lower part, a ribbon with his name, with a dog on one side and an archer on the other. There are three distinct stages of this device, that used between 1506–1518 being replaced in 1519, and again in 1528. This last is distinguished by having only ten small stars to the left of the sun and ten to the right, whereas the two preceding had eleven stars to the left of the sun and nine to the right. The oblong block had the moon added in the top compartment, and in the bottom division the sagittarius and dog are reversed. This block continued in use from 1507 to 1529, and the stages in its dilapidation are useful in dating the books in which it occurs. Besides these, and some smaller forms, Wynkyn de Worde used a large architectural device, sometimes enclosed with a border of four pieces, the upper and lower of which seem to have afterwards come into the possession of John Skot.

      Wynkyn de Worde died in 1534, his will being proved on the 19th January 1535. His executors were John Byddell, who succeeded to his business, and James Gaver, while three other London stationers, Henry Pepwell, John Gough, and Robert Copland were made overseers of it, and received legacies.

      Julian Notary remained at Westminster two years after the departure of Wynkyn de Worde, when he too flitted eastwards, settling at the sign of the Three Kings without Temple Bar, probably to be nearer De Worde. He combined with his trade of printer that of bookbinder, and probably bound as well as printed many books for Wynkyn de Worde. His printing lay principally in the direction of service books for the church, but he printed both the Golden Legend and the Chronicle of England in folio, one or two lives of saints, and a few small tracts of lighter vein, such as 'How John Splynter made his testament,' and 'How a serjeaunt wolde lerne to be a frere,' both in quarto without date.

      In the Golden Legend of 1503 and the Chronicles of England