The original and growth of printing

The original and growth of printing

Table of contents

The Original and Growth of PRINTING.

[Page]

The Original and Growth of PRINTING.

COncerning the Time of bringing this Excellent ART into England, and by whose Expence and Procurement it was brought; Modern Writers of good Reputation do most Erroniously agree together. Mr. Stow, in his Survey of London, speaking of the 37th year of Henry the sixth his Reign, which was in 1459. saith, That the Noble Science of PRINTING was about this time found in Germany at Mentz by John Guttenberg a Knight, And that William Caxton of London Mercer, brought it into England about 1471. And first practised the same in the Abby of St. Peter at Westminster; With whom Sir Rich. Baker in his Chronicle agrees throughout. And Mr. Howell in his Historical Discourse of London and Westminster, agrees with both the former in the Time, Person, and Place in general; but more particularly declares the place in Westminster to be the Almory there; And that Islip Abbot of Westminster set up the first Press of Book-Printing that ever was in England. These three famous Historians having filled the World with the supposed truth of this Assertion, (Although possibly it might arise through the mistake of the first Writer only, whose Memory I perfectly honour) makes it the harder Task upon me to undeceive the World again: Nor would I undertake this Work, but under a double notion; As I am a Friend to Truth, and so it is unfit to suffer one Man to be intituled to the worthy Achievements of another. And as a Friend to my self, not to lose one of my best Arguments of Intituling the King to this ART in his private Capacity.

Historians must of necessity take many things upon trust, they cannot with their own but with the Eyes of others see what things were done before they themselves were, Bernardus non videt omnia; 'Tis not then impossible they should mistake. I shall now make it appear they have done so from their Own, as well as from other Arguments: Mr. Stows Expressions are very dubious, and the matter exprest very Improbable; He saith PRINTING was found in Mentz, which presupposes it was practised some where else before, and lost: And further, That 'twas found in the Reign of Henry the sixth, in 1450. and not brought into England till Eleven years in the succeeding Reign of Edward the Fourth, being twelve years after, as if it had been lost again. If this be true, there was as little Rarity as Expedition in obtaining it, the age of twelve years time having intervened, and so indeed it might be the Act of a Mercer rather than a more eminent Person: But when I consider what great advantage the Kingdom in general receives by it, I could not but think a publick Person and a publick Purse must needs be concerned in so publick a Good. The more I Considered of this, the more inquisitive I was to find out the truth of it: At last, a Book came to my hands Printed at Oxford, in 1468. which was three years before any of the recited Authors would allow it to be in England; which gave me some reward for my Curiosity, and encouragement to proceed further: And in prosecution of this Discovery, the same most worthy Person who trusted me with the aforesaid Book, did also present me with the Copy of a Record and Manuscript in Lambeth-House, heretofore in his Custody, belonging to the See, (and not to any particular Arch-Bishop of Canterbury;) the Substance whereof was this, (though I hope, for publick satisfaction, the Record it self, in its due time, will appear.)

Thomas Bourchier, Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, moved the then King Henry the Sixth, to use all possible means for procuring a Printing-Mold (for so 'twas there called) to be brought into this Kingdom; the King (a good Man, and much given to Works of this Nature) readily hearkned to the Motion; and taking private Advice, how to effect His Design, concluded it could not be brought about without great Secrecy, and a considerable Sum of Money given to such Person or Persons, as would draw off some of the Work-men from Harlem in Holland, where John Guttenberg had newly invented it, and was himself personally at Work: 'Twas Resolv'd, that less then one Thousand Marks would not produce the desir'd Effect: Towards which Sum, the said Arch-Bishop presented the King with Three Hundred Marks. The Money being now prepared, the Management of the Design was committed to Mr. Robert Turnour, who then was of the Robes to the King, and a Person most in Favour with Him, of any of his Condition: Mr. Turnour took to his Assistance Mr. Caxton, a Citizen of good Abilities, who Trading much into Holland, might be a Creditable Pretence, as well for his going, as stay in the Low-Countries: Mr. Turnour was in Disguise (his Beard and Hair shaven quite off) but Mr. Caxton appeared known and publick. They having received the said Sum of One Thousand Marks, went first to Amsterdam, then to Leyden, not daring to enter Harlem it self; for the Town was very jealous, having imprisoned and apprehended divers Persons, who came from other Parts for the same purpose: They staid till they had spent the whole One Thousand Marks in Gifts and Expences: So as the King was fain to send Five Hundred Marks more, Mr. Turnour having written to the King, that he had almost done his Work; a Bargain (as he said) being struck betwixt him and two Hollanders, for bringing off one of the Work-Men, who should sufficiently Discover and Teach this New Art: At last, with much ado, they got off one of the Under-Workmen, whose Name was Frederick Corsellis, who late one Night stole from his Fellows in Disguise, into a Vessel prepared for that purpose; and so the Wind (favouring the Design) brought him safe to London.

'Twas not thought so prudent, to set him on Work at London, (but by the Arch-Bishops means, who had been Vice-Chancellor, and afterwards Chancellor of the University of Oxford,) Corsellis was carryed with a Guard to Oxford; which Guard constantly watch'd, to prevent Corsellis from any possible Escape, till he had made good his promise in Teaching how to Print: So that at Oxford Printing was first set up in England, which was before there was any Printing-Press, or Printer, in France, Spain, Italy, or Germany, (except the City of Mentz) which claims Seniority, [...]s to Printing, even of Harlem itself, calling her City, Ʋrbem Moguntinam Artis Typographicae Inventricem primam, though 'tis known to be otherwise, that City gaining that Art by the Brother of one of the Workmen of Harlem, who had learnt it at Home of his Brother, and after set up for himself at Mentz.

This Press at Oxford was at least ten years before there was any Printing in Europe (except at Harlem, and Mentz) where also it was but new born. This Press at Oxford, was afterwards found inconvenient, to be the sole Printing-place of England, as being too far from London, and the Sea: Whereupon the King set up a Press at St. Albans, and another in the Abby of Westminster, where they Printed several Books of Divinity and Physick, for the King, (for Reasons best known to himself and Council) permitted then no Law-Books to be Printed; nor did any Printer Exercise that ART, but onely such as were the Kings sworn Servants; the King himself having the Price and Emolument for Printing Books.

Printing thus brought into England, was most Graciously Received by the King, and most Cordially Entertained by the Church, the Printers having the Honour to be sworn the Kings Servants, and the Favour to Lodge in the very Bosom of the Church; as in Westminster, St. Albans, Oxford, &c. By this means the ART grew so famous, that Anno prim. Rich. 3. cap. 9. when an Act of Parliament was made for Restraint of Aliens, from using any Handicrafts here, except as Servants to Natives, a special Proviso was inserted, that Strangers might bring in Printed or Written Books, to sell at their pleasure, and Exercise the ART of Printing here, notwithstanding that Act: So that in the space of 40 or 50 years, by the special Industry and Indulgence of Edward the Fourth, Edward the Fifth, Richard the Third, Henry the Seventh, and Henry the Eighth, the English prov'd so good Proficients in Printing, and grew so numerous, as to furnish the Kingdom with Books; and so Skilful, as to Print them as well as any [...]yond the Seas, as appears by the Act of the 25 Hen. 8. cap. 15. which Abrogates the said Proviso for that Reason. And it was further Enacted in the said Statute, That if any person bought Forreign books Bound, he should pay 6s. 8d. per Book, &c.

But Printing became now so dangerous to the Commonwealth, That there were more Books Burnt in Ten years, then could be Printed in Twenty: So that it Concern'd the Prince altogether as much to Suppress the Abuse, as it did before to Obtain the Use of Printing; And had there not been a Reserve of Licensing such Books as should be Printed still remaining in the Crown, they might have published the wickedness of their own Imaginations with Authority. But Queen Elizabeth at her very first Entrance to the Crown, finding so great Disorders in Church and State, by reason of the abuse in Printing, Secures in the first place the Law and the Gospel, of both which the Kings and Queens of England have Inherent Right as Heads of the Church, and Supream of the Law; and not onely in their publick, but private Capacity, as Proprietors; the Power and Signiory of this, under Favour, cannot be severed from the Crown: The Kings being the Trustees of the People, who have formerly taken an Oath at their Coronation, That they shall keep all the Lands, Honours, and Dignities, Rights, and Freedoms of the Crown of England, in all manner whole without any manner of minishment; and the Right of the Crown, hurt, decay'd, or lost, to their Power shall call again into the Ancient Estate. Which Oath, the said Queen kept inviolably, and liv'd the more quietly for it all the time of her Reign, and died in Peace. True it is, they may, and do gratifie their Friends and Servants, in giving them the Emoluments and Profits that arise from Printing; but the Power they cannot alienate from the Crown, without losing the most precious Stone out of their Diadem. To shew you one Example for all: The said Queen, the first Year of her Reign, grants by Patent the Priviledge of sole Printing all Books, that touch or concern the Common-Laws of England, to [...]ottel a Servant to her Majesty, who kept it intire to his Death: After him, to one Yestweirt, another Servant to Her Majesty: After him, to one We [...]t and Norton; and after them, King James grants the same Priviledge to More, one of His Majesties Clerks of the Signet; which Grant continues to this Day; and so for the Bible, the Statute-Laws, the Book of Common-Prayer, Proclama [...]ons, as much as the Grammer, the Primme [...], &c. are all [...] by Kings and Queens, not onely to gratifie their Frien [...] and Servants, but to preserve the Regal Power and Authority [...] Foot, and these Books from being Corrupted.

Information about this book

Title statement

The original and growth of printing

Edition statement

1660

Publication

Publisher

Text Creation Partnership,

Place of publication

Ann Arbor, MI ; Oxford (UK) :

Date

2008-09 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1).

ID [DLPS]

A26138

ID [STC]

Wing A4134

ID [STC]

ESTC R30711

ID [EEBO-CITATION]

11413865

ID [OCLC]

ocm 11413865

ID [VID]

47739

Availability

This keyboarded and encoded edition of the work described above is co-owned by the institutions providing financial support to the Early English Books Online Text Creation Partnership. This Phase I text is available for reuse, according to the terms of Creative Commons 0 1.0 Universal. The text can be copied, modified, distributed and performed, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission.

Series

Early English books online.

Notes

(EEBO-TCP ; phase 1, no. A26138)

Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 47739)

Images scanned from microfilm: (Early English books, 1641-1700 ; 1453:52)

Source

— The original and growth of printing, Atkyns, Richard, 1615-1677..

Extent

1 broadside.

s.n.,. [London? :: 1660?]. (Attributed by Wing to Richard Atkyns.) (Reproduction of original in Chetham's Library.)

Creation

Created by converting TCP files to TEI P5 using tcp2tei.xsl, TEI @ Oxford.

Editorial practices

EEBO-TCP is a partnership between the Universities of Michigan and Oxford and the publisher ProQuest to create accurately transcribed and encoded texts based on the image sets published by ProQuest via their Early English Books Online (EEBO) database (http://eebo.chadwyck.com). The general aim of EEBO-TCP is to encode one copy (usually the first edition) of every monographic English-language title published between 1473 and 1700 available in EEBO.

EEBO-TCP aimed to produce large quantities of textual data within the usual project restraints of time and funding, and therefore chose to create diplomatic transcriptions (as opposed to critical editions) with light-touch, mainly structural encoding based on the Text Encoding Initiative (http://www.tei-c.org).

The EEBO-TCP project was divided into two phases. The 25,363 texts created during Phase 1 of the project have been released into the public domain as of 1 January 2015. Anyone can now take and use these texts for their own purposes, but we respectfully request that due credit and attribution is given to their original source.

Users should be aware of the process of creating the TCP texts, and therefore of any assumptions that can be made about the data.

Text selection was based on the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature (NCBEL). If an author (or for an anonymous work, the title) appears in NCBEL, then their works are eligible for inclusion. Selection was intended to range over a wide variety of subject areas, to reflect the true nature of the print record of the period. In general, first editions of a works in English were prioritized, although there are a number of works in other languages, notably Latin and Welsh, included and sometimes a second or later edition of a work was chosen if there was a compelling reason to do so.

Image sets were sent to external keying companies for transcription and basic encoding. Quality assurance was then carried out by editorial teams in Oxford and Michigan. 5% (or 5 pages, whichever is the greater) of each text was proofread for accuracy and those which did not meet QA standards were returned to the keyers to be redone. After proofreading, the encoding was enhanced and/or corrected and characters marked as illegible were corrected where possible up to a limit of 100 instances per text. Any remaining illegibles were encoded as <gap>s. Understanding these processes should make clear that, while the overall quality of TCP data is very good, some errors will remain and some readable characters will be marked as illegible. Users should bear in mind that in all likelihood such instances will never have been looked at by a TCP editor.

The texts were encoded and linked to page images in accordance with level 4 of the TEI in Libraries guidelines.

Copies of the texts have been issued variously as SGML (TCP schema; ASCII text with mnemonic sdata character entities); displayable XML (TCP schema; characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or text strings within braces); or lossless XML (TEI P5, characters represented either as UTF-8 Unicode or TEI g elements).

Keying and markup guidelines are available at the Text Creation Partnership web site.