Stationars and printers, a privilegial, not municipal companie or corporation, however their properties to bee individually conserved, humbly presented to the Honorable Committee for Examination, &c. / William Ball.

Stationars and printers, a privilegial, not municipal companie or corporation, however their properties to bee individually conserved, humbly presented to the Honorable Committee for Examination, &c. / William Ball.

Table of contents

Stationars and Printers, a Privilegial, not Municipal Companie or Corporation, however their Proprieties to bee individually conserved, Humbly presented to the Honorable Committee for Examinations, &c.

[Page]

[Page]

Stationars and Printers, a Privilegial, not Municipal Companie or Corporation, however their Proprieties to bee individually conserved, Humbly presented to the Honorable Committee for Examinations, &c.

HAving lately (as far as I might) discerned the subtle, yet ambiguous desires of som, (not the soundest nor most able Printers) I finde their pretences to bee Regulation, as in order to themselvs, but no way in relation to the Common-wealth: And their chief ends to apply to themselvs Communicatively the chiefest Copies, being the proprieties of other men. Wherefore that these innovating men should, if they would, better understand themselvs, I have directed these sequels.

1. A Companie Municipal is such an one which subordinately utitur regulis suis in ordine ad se; useth their own Rules and Constitutions in relation to themselvs, as do Mercers, Drapers, Fish-mongers, &c. Also Gold-smiths, Brasiers, Shoo-makers, &c. All of whom can buy, barter, sell, contract, work, &c. without any special privilege, order, or licence from any Superior, Superiors, Supervisor or Supervisors. But Printers, Book-binders, and Book-sellers cannot by Decrees and Ordinances (hitherto thought fit to continue) print, binde, or sell a Book (imprinted within this Nation) but by special licence and allowance; nor import from other Nations, but with like regard. And in France, Germanie, Spain, and other Countries, they cannot print, but for a certain determined time, such or such a Book; nor sell, but for such a price (a convenience, which, I suppose, would bee useful in this Common-wealth,) especially for som Books. So that albeit the Printers, Book-binders, and Book-sellers, are a Companie which subordinately utitur suis regulis, in som things; yet they use such Rules and Constitutions in ordine ad alios, viz. Their Superiors (or rather the Common-wealth) not ad se; as the forementioned Companies do; And are therefore to bee accounted a Privilegial, not a Municipal Companie.

2. And whereas the Printers would not only invade other mens Proprieties (thereby endeavouring to null, as much as in them lie's, Meum & Tuum, and inducing, as far as may bee, an example of ill consequence to this Common-wealth) but they would also destroy (as I am credibly informed) Patrimonial Right; that is, that the Father of a free Stationar shall not make his Son free; and consequently that his Son shall not bee capable of having or enjoying the benefit of Printing his Father's Copies; This their endeavour I conceiv to bee most injurious; For many a Stationar (including the Printers) have many times little or nothing to leav their Wives and Children, but their Copies: Which if they should, by the indirect device of these innovating Printers, be deprived of; then they cannot other way subsist. Moreover, why should any free Stationar bee debarred from such Right, which by the Rules and Constitutions general of the honorable Citie of London every Free-man enjoyeth; to wit, to make his Son a Free-man? This I take to bee a device of the Printers against Matthew Barker, and others, whose Rights they would invade. So that (in my opinion) it would bee requisite, that neither the Book-sellers, nor the Printers, being (as I have alreadie instanced, but privilegial, and not properly municipal) debate nor draw any Act or Acts, on their own behalf, for regulating of Printers & Printing: But that such Act or Acts bee from henceforth debated by the Honorable Council of State, or by such as they shall appoint, and by them drawn up and recommended to the Parlament, for the regulating of Printing it self in a true Decorum, as also of all Proprieties individually. And if this of Proprieties were but exactly considered and reported, these new (and for the most part mean) Innovators, would (in all probabilitie) desist from further troublesom solliciting the Honorable Council of State, and apply themselvs to bee ruled and governed, as their Honors, and high Court of Parlament should in their Wisdoms think fit.

If it should bee said, That none ought to exercise the Art or Mysterie of Printing, but such as have served seven years to a Printer, in regard that Printing may be said to bee a manual occupation, and consequently to bee comprehended within the Act of Elis. 5. c. 4. I answer, That albeit Printing may in regard of its labor, bee said to bee a manual occupation; yet in regard of its END, it is a Privilegial, and not a Popular manual occupation, no otherwise then Coyning. And that Act of Elis.&c. intend's onely manual occupations popular, not privilegial; as the clauses thereof manifest. So that the privilege of Printing, or right of Copies, may reside in one or more, who are no Artists; and the performance of Printing in such onely who are Artists in Printing.

Januarie 2. 1651.

William Ball.

Information about this book

Title statement

Stationars and printers, a privilegial, not municipal companie or corporation, however their properties to bee individually conserved, humbly presented to the Honorable Committee for Examination, &c. / William Ball.

Ball, William

Edition statement

1651

Publication

Publisher

Text Creation Partnership,

Place of publication

Ann Arbor, MI ; Oxford (UK) :

Date

2009-10 (EEBO-TCP Phase 1).

ID [DLPS]

B01857

ID [STC]

Wing B595A

ID [STC]

ESTC R172568

ID [EEBO-CITATION]

51784363

ID [OCLC]

ocm 51784363

ID [VID]

174789

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. B01857)

Transcribed from: (Early English Books Online ; image set 174789)

Images scanned from microfilm: (Early English Books, 1641-1700 ; 2698:3)

Source

— Stationars and printers, a privilegial, not municipal companie or corporation, however their properties to bee individually conserved, humbly presented to the Honorable Committee for Examination, &c. / William Ball., Ball, William.

Extent

1 sheet ([1] p.)

s.n.,. [London :: 1642]. (Place and date of publication taken from Wing (2nd ed.)) (Reproduction of original in: Universität Göttingen Bibliothek.)

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.