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3. London Publishing

McKenzie has observed that "There is still no satisfactory model of the
economics of the London trade which usefully structures the dense and
complex relationship between writers, printers, booksellers and readers during
the hand-press period."[48] As I have shown, by blending title-page and
Stationers' Register data with evidence derived from a physical examination
of surviving books, we can begin to sketch patterns of large-scale printinghouse
activities. However, little financial documentation has survived the
ravages of time and fire, and thus mapping the terrain of publishing activity
in mid-Jacobean London is much more difficult. A title page might provide
an imperfect glimpse at the business deals behind the book, but at best we
can only use the collected data in broad strokes. During the five-year period
in question, nearly 200 different names or organizations appear on title pages,
over half of whom, according to title-page evidence, averaged less than 10
edition sheets per year. At the other end of the scale, the four establishments
who controlled protected printing published 44% of the output during the
same period. Table 5 details the twenty-two stationers who published or
controlled the publication of at least 80 sheets a year, with the data broken
down by total output, percent of output that is reprinted material, and subject
classification.

As was the case with most commerce in early modern England, monopolies
played a large role in determining who printed what texts, and the four
most productive entities dealt primarily with protected printing. Henry VIII
awarded patents for printing on royal privilege, while Edward gave limitedperiod
patents for individual titles. Elizabeth, however, greatly expanded the
concept of patents by awarding lifetime rights to print whole classes of books.
It was during her reign that individuals began acquiring sole rights to biblical
publication, prayer books, law books, Latin and Greek printing, almanacs,
and the like. Poorer stationers infringed on the growing number of
restricted texts, resulting in a stream of small squabbles within the Company.
At the request of the Stationers' Company, the Star Chamber in 1586 reorganized
the jumbled patent situation and most of the discord died away.
In 1603 the materials that became known as the English Stock were awarded
to the Company in perpetuity, including primers, Psalters, psalms, almanacs,
and prognostications. This collection of protected works earned a significant
income, and when the Stationers bought Abergavenny House in 1611 for
their new hall they did so "from the stocke of the [par]tners in the Privilege."[49]
A few years later in 1616 the English Stock was expanded and the
Latin Stock formed; the latter was mainly concerned with the importation
of Latin works from the continent and did very little domestic publishing.

Table 5. London publishing by output and genre, 1614-1618 (in edition sheets)

                                               

			Genre
Establishment[50]	Total	Proportion reprinted[51]	Information	Ephemera	History	Law & Politics	Literature	Official Docs.	Religion
King's Printing House	6069	73%	97	21	4	748	151	342	4706
Stationers' Company[52]	4898	63%	329	183	64	3071	259	—	992
Adam Islip	3751	63%	572	—	314	2550	56	1	258
John Legat	1970	50%	683	—	76	—	146	3	1062
Thomas Adams	1285	65%	619	—	390	—	96	—	180
Henry Featherstone	1268	62%	—	3	73	—	556	—	636
Thomas/Jonas Man	1242	58%	144	—	—	—	19	—	1079
Nathaniel Butter	1046	42%	—	40	—	—	185	2	819
Walter Burre	1036	43%	64	—	793	24	58	—	97
William/Isaac Jaggard	1021	17%	329	1	—	3	11	21	656
Officina Nortoniana[53]	967	0%	—	19	22	19	23	—	884
Matthew Lownes	871	33%	114	18	157	—	255	—	327
Mab/Edwards/Bloome[54]	751	39%	—	—	—	—	—	—	751
Arthur Johnson	672	66%	40	—	210	—	42	—	380
Roger Jackson	576	44%	268	—	—	—	57	—	251
Alsop/Creede	530	79%	39	—	40	—	385	—	66
William Barrett	530	33%	—	11	33	—	108	—	378
John Budge	487	37%	55	—	—	—	39	7	386
Nicholas Okes	474	40%	124	—	62	33	122	1	132
John Beale	462	9%	—	5	—	22	250	5	180
Simon Waterson	462	63%	5	—	180	—	31	—	246
Edward Blount	429	72%	—	1	—	—	134	—	294

Acquisition and ownership of book trade patents were not limited to stationers,
but the bulk of these awards went to members of the trade.[55]

By the middle of James I's reign, protected printing fell into four groups:
the English Stock, the Latin Stock, the King's Printer material (see below),
and the Ballad partners.[56] The English Stock is the most important of these
classes of texts, for it served the dual purpose of providing a steady return to
those who could afford to invest in the stock (shares ranged from £50-200)
while at the same time generating a pool of funds to assist poor stationers (a
printer obtained the right to produce one edition by paying sixpence in the
pound for the poor). Overall, the effect of these patents was to channel certain
classes of books to a select group of stationers, the impact of which will
become evident in the examination of individual printing houses that follows.

The most important and potentially profitable printing establishment in
Jacobean London was the King's Printer. For the first 100 years of printing
in England, royal publishing was essentially on a contractual or commission
basis, with the title "King's Printer" or "Queen's Printer" applied only to a
particular work or set of works and their production undertaken by private
printing houses. However, when Christopher Barker was awarded the post
in 1577 it became recognized as a distinct office in which publication rights
lay not with an individual house or title but with the office itself. Barker also
purchased Bacon House in 1579 and established it as a separate printing

office, a move that "led ultimately to the concept of a royal printing house
under joint ownership."[57] When Barker retired ten years later his deputies
George Bishop and Ralph Newberry ran the institution. In 1593 Barker's
eldest son Robert became a third deputy, eventually acquiring the position
and its patents outright in 1600.

Despite the broad variety of patents under its control, the office of the
King's Printer experienced frequent financial difficulties. For a number of
years Bonham Norton had dealings with Robert Barker, and at some point
Norton and John Bill apparently became partners with Barker in the King's
Printing Office, perhaps as part of an investment arrangement to pay for the
so-called `Authorized Version' of the Bible in 1611. Early in the partnership
things went smoothly, so smoothly in fact that Barker's eldest son Christopher
and Norton's eldest daughter Sarah were married in 1615. However, Norton's
aggressive and often unscrupulous activities soon resulted in Barker filing a
suit in Chancery in 1618 to recover the office, an action that marked the beginning
of a series of legal squabbles that would ultimately result in Norton's
imprisonment in 1630 and subsequent retirement to Shropshire. Given the
tangled business dealings of Barker, Bill, and Norton during this period, I
am treating their individual and corporate efforts under the general heading
of the King's Printer.

The bulk of the patents acquired over the years and controlled by the
King's Printer consisted of a monopoly on the printing of large- and smallformat
Bibles, some prayer-books, and certain classes of official documents, of
which the printing of Bibles consumed a majority of the office's time and
resources. The large folio Royal Bible (containing the text of what is commonly
called the King James Bible of 1611) could be a massive undertaking,
for it was printed lectern size to be read in churches. The 1616 Royal Bible
ran in 273 edition sheets (STC 2244), while one printed the next year required
366 (STC 2247),[58] or a total of 639 edition sheets for two Bibles (by
comparison, the total five-year output of Purfoot's house was 637 sheets). The
slightly smaller Geneva Bibles, usually printed in quarto format for personal
use, were nonetheless large undertakings in themselves, with the two editions
of the work published in 1615 accounting for 138 edition sheets apiece
(STC 2241, 2242). Barker rarely ventured beyond Bibles, proclamations, and
prayers: on one occasion in 1614 he printed a sermon by Lancelot Andrewes,
Bishop of Ely (STC 622); around the same time he printed a couple of broadsides
(without his name on the title page), one outlining table manners (STC
23634.7), the other extolling the virtues of rosemary (STC 24844.7); in 1616
he printed some anti-Catholic tracts with John Bill (STC 6996, 6998). Other
than these minor diversions, however, Barker seems to have focused solely

on printing materials whose patents he controlled. When Bill and Norton
began to take a more active role in the office, their first task seems to have
been printing a large retrospective collection of the proclamations of Elizabeth
(STC 7758.3, 7886 sqq.). Once this project was underway they commenced
printing the same materials that took all of Barker's attention. They
also, under the auspices of the Officina Nortoniana and the royal patent for
printing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, printed a number of non-biblical controversial
works and religious commentaries.

Overall, the King's Printer accounted for 6069 edition sheets, or roughly
17% of all London printing from 1614-1618, with slightly over one-half of
that total devoted to Bibles and the Book of Common Prayer, while almost
three-quarters of the office's production consisted of reprints. The scope of
this particular paper does not go beyond output and genre, but it is part of
a larger study that includes a detailed examination of the year 1616 and
from which we can catch a glimpse of how the business managed its workflow.
During this year the printing house issued 740 edition sheets of biblical
text: two 2° Bibles, one 4° Bible, an 8° New Testament, a 24° New Testament,
and a 24° collection of five Old Testament books. The office used three
different type bodies (nonpareil, brevier, pica) and two different faces (roman
and black letter), giving it extraordinary flexibility when juggling the setting,
proofing, and printing of the texts. For example, the two large folios (a
Geneva and a Royal Bible) were both set in a pica body, although one employed
a roman face while the other was black letter. In practical terms this
meant that the books could be set simultaneously since they used separate
typecases. The proofing and printing could also take place simultaneously,
with a sheet of black letter text being proofed while the roman text was
being machined and vice versa. Likewise the 8° and 24° New Testaments
could be printed concurrently, for the former volume was set in brevier while
the latter was set in nonpareil. Efficiency may have been of particular importance
in 1616, for in addition to biblical texts, Barker and Bill teamed
up to print King James's A Collection of His Majesties Workes (STC 14344),
a 154-sheet folio that must have tied up the press's font of english body type
for a stretch of time. For all works produced by the King's Printer in 1616,
roughly two-thirds of the composition was in pica, one-third in brevier and
english, with a small amount of nonpareil and great primer.

While the King's Printer held the patent on large- and small-format
Bibles, prayer books and the like, Adam Islip had upon Thomas Wight's
death in 1605 bought the rights to print law books belonging to the English
Stock. As a result, for much of his career he was engaged in producing multiple
editions of a relatively small collection of titles. For example, between
1605 and 1629 (when the law patent expired and the rights passed to the
assignees of John More), he published over thirty-two editions of the highly
profitable law reports of Sir Edward Coke (averaging from forty to eighty
edition sheets each, STC 5493-5526.5) as well as Coke's massive 1614 Booke
of Entries (368 edition sheets, STC 5488), and large law compilations such as
the 1618 folio A Collection of Sundrie Statutes (382 edition sheets, STC

9328). The exact value of the volumes printed by Islip is unknown—the
order awarding him the right only noted he be charged "such reasonable
rate & alowance as shalbe judged to be sufficient . . . from tyme to tyme"[59] —
but evidence exists to indicate that the Company held these patents in high
regard. For example, when the Stationers purchased the rights to Ashe's Le
Primier Volume del Promptuarie they contracted to pay James Pagett of the
Middle Temple £50 a year for six years.[60]

The Company also contributed financing to the production of these
titles, especially during the first years after Islip's assumption of the printing
rights. Between 10 November 1606 and 12 October 1607, Islip was awarded
sums by the Company to help pay for the publication of an octavo edition
of Christopher St. German's The Dialogue in English, Betweene a Doctor of
Diuinities, and a Student in the Lawes of England (23 sheets, STC 21578), a
folio edition of Coke's law digest La Size Part des Reports (46 sheets, STC
5509), an octavo edition of William Lambard's Eirenarcha: or the Office of
the Iustices of the Peace (44 sheets, STC 15171), and what is likely a lost
edition of one or both parts of William Fulbecke's A Parallel or Conference
of the Civil Law, the Canon Law, and the Common Law of England (approximately
twenty-three sheets for Part 1 and thirty-one sheets for Part 2,
STC 11415 and 11415a).[61] The records concerning the last two titles include
the size of the edition and the price allowed for paper, from which we can
estimate that Islip was paid roughly £29 for the Lambard volume[62] and
perhaps £13 or £14 for Fulbecke's Parallel.[63] Ten years later Islip received
nearly £300 for the Collection of Sundrie Statutes mentioned above,[64] while
in 1622 he and John Haviland were awarded an undetermined sum for
printing Richard Montagu's Analecta Ecclesiasticarum Exercitationum (106
sheets, STC 18029).

Of course, the individual books themselves had value, and care was taken
to prevent those who had the right to produce them from printing a few
extra copies for private sale. In 1627 the Stationers' Court issued an edict
calling for strict accounting of the paper supplied for each work so that the
Company could check for surreptitious extra copies by comparing the amount
of material consumed with the number of books printed. Islip himself testified
in 1622 that he paid each workman 4d a title "in liewe of a Copie due to
them by the Custome of the Companie,"[65] and was compensated for his
expense. Islip was also a member of the ill-fated Irish Stock when it was
created in 1618.

During the 1614-1618 period, Islip printed a little over 3750 edition

sheets, or roughly 10% of the total London production. Of these works, twothirds
were legal volumes, 15% were education-related (mainly a couple of
French vocational works and John Rider's Latin-English dictionary, STC
21034), 10% history (a translation of Pierre d'Avity's The Estates, Empires
& Principallities of the World, STC 988), 8% religion (an annotated New
Testament), and a smattering of literary publishing. Indeed, with the exception
of the five large volumes parenthetically mentioned, almost everything
Islip printed during this period derived from the lawbook patent and
the English Stock. When compared with the London trade in general, Islip
printed half of all material classified under Law and Politics, with the only
significant work of law not printed by Islip being Ashe's Le Primier Volume
(printed by John Beale).

The overwhelming emphasis on large lawbooks is reflected in the size
and format of Islip's output as well. While the average size of a work printed
in London during this time was a little more than twenty-one sheets (see
above), over the same period Islip averaged eighty-five sheets per title. He
also printed mainly folio volumes, with 71% of his output printed in that
format, 19% quarto, 9% octavo, and the remaining 1% contained in a pair
of small duodecimos. After the lawbook patent expired, Islip remained an
active and important member of the Stationers' Company, serving as warden
and master. He died in the fall of 1638.

Beyond the London trade a smaller market for specialized books existed
at the two universities. A charter in 1534 gave Cambridge University the
right to erect a press for its own use, although it wasn't until 1583 that
Thomas Thomas set up a house and began printing books for the local
market. The London Stationers attempted to crush what they viewed as an
infringement on their prerogative, and although a Star Chamber decree in
1586 recognized the right of the university to maintain one press, disagreements
continued well into the seventeenth century. John Legat was wellconnected
within the Company, apprenticing with Christopher Barker and
moving to Cambridge, first as the assistant and then in 1588 the successor to
Thomas, who was also his father-in-law. Legat ran the Cambridge office for
twenty-two years before moving his enterprise to London around 1610, where
he operated until his death in 1620. Both Thomas and Legat were independent
businessmen who ran a house licensed by the university but not owned
by it. Thus when Legat moved to the larger London market he took all his
equipment and materials with him, leaving his successor in rather bad
straits.[66] With the exception of Nicholas Okes, Legat is the only master
printer listed of the period not to be liveried. The Stationers had been a
livery Company since 1560, and this gave them certain rights in city and
parliamentary governance. Individual stationers called to livery could vote
in Company and city elections as well as stand for office, and it also made
one eligible to purchase shares in the English Stock. A stationer who was

called to livery and refused could be fined,[67] although there is no record of
Legat being either called or fined.

As one might expect from a stationer associated with the Cambridge University
(even after the move to London he continued to call himself "Printer
to the University" and to use the Cambridge device),[68] a significant amount
of Legat's output was aimed at the academic and intellectual market; roughly
32% of his output was informational, with the bulk of that total resulting
from a single reprint of the 233-sheet folio Praxis Medicinae Universalis in
1617 (STC 25865). The remainder of his production was religious (58%),
supplemented by a smattering of literature (6%) and history (4%). Almost
all of Legat's religious output consisted of large-format volumes of commentary
or instruction by divines like William Perkins, with 58% imposed in
folio and 29% in quarto. Consequently the average size of his titles is twice
that of the trade in general—over forty-one edition sheets per work. He died
in 1620 and his son, also named John, took over the business.

Ranking publishers by total output clearly displays the primacy of protected
printing. If we view publishing activity according to specific types of
works being produced, however, certain other patterns begin to emerge. In
some areas a handful of concerns dominated the trade, for example in Law
and Politics where the Stationers' Company (3071 sheets) and Islip (2550
sheets) were responsible for the bulk of the output. Likewise the King's
Printing House controlled the printing of Official Documents while the
Stationers, with the Almanac patent, determined who printed most extant
Ephemera. In other areas the work is much more dispersed. Legat and Islip
published a significant amount of works of Information, but eleven others
published at least 100 edition sheets from 1614-1618 (see table 6). Even

Table 6. London information publishing by output, 1614-1618

                           

Publisher	Edition sheets
John Legat	683
Thomas Adams	619
Adam Islip	572
Stationers	329
William & Isaac Jaggard	329
Roger Jackson	268
Thomas & Jonas Man	144
John Tapp	136
John Browne	133
Nicholas Okes	124
Richard Field	123
John Marriot	117
Matthew Lownes	114

more diverse is literary publishing, where 17 stationers published at least
100 edition sheets during the period of this study (see table 7). History is
dominated by Walter Burre, whose two editions of Walter Ralegh's History
of the World in 1614 and 1617 (STC 20637 and 20638, 394 sheets each) place

Table 7. London literary publishing by output, 1614-1618

                                   

Publisher	Edition sheets
Henry Fetherstone	556
Alsop/Creede	385
Stationers	259
Matthew Lownes	255
John Beale	250
Humble & Sudbury	231
Laurence Lisle	230
John Smethwick	188
Nathaniel Butter	185
King's Printing House	151
John Legat	146
Edward Blount	134
George Norton	133
Nicholas Okes	122
Thomas Archer	112
William Barrett	108
Thomas Purfoot	105

him far ahead of Thomas Adams (390 sheets), Adam Islip (314 sheets), Arthur
Johnson (210 sheets), Simon Waterson (180 sheets), Matthew Lownes (157
sheets), and George Purslowe (128 sheets). Fewer than forty stationers in all
can be identified as working with this subject area.

Finally, the more complex area of religious publication is a mixture of
dominance and diversity. The King's Printing House controlled the printing
of most Bibles and all Books of Common Prayer (although Islip and Adams
did publish some New Testaments), while the Stationers determined Psalm
printing; these works constituted about one-quarter of the total religious
publishing during this time. A slightly larger group marketed devotional
works, where five concerns issued half the output—John Budge (170), Nicholas
Bourne (155), Sam & Joyce Macham (139), the Stationers' Company (115),
and the joint venture of Ralph Mab, George Edwards and Jacob Bloome
(114). Likewise, three-quarters of the controversial works were published by
the King's Printing House (740), Officina Nortoniana (656), Matthew Lownes
(283), William Barrett (196), Nathaniel Butter (124), and Henry Fetherstone
(122). Eleven different establishments contributed to the publication of religious
instruction (see table 8), while even more worked with commentary
(see table 9).

Sermon publishing is a little more difficult to outline. While two groups
of stationers stand out from the rest—Ralph Mab, George Edwards and

Table 8. London religious instruction publishing by output, 1614-1618

                       

Publisher	Edition sheets
John Legat	428
Thomas & Jonas Man	303
Arthur Johnson	212
Mab/Edwards/Bloome	208
William & Isaac Jaggard	143
Thomas Pavier	135
Richard Woodroffe	121
William Barrett	112
Edward Blount	108
John Hodgets	107
Nathaniel Butter	102

Table 9. London religious commentary publishing by output, 1614-1618

                             

Publisher	Edition sheets
John Legat	587
William & Isaac Jaggard	485
Thomas & Jonas Man	464
Nathaniel Butter	458
Henry Fetherstone	395
William Aspley	286
William Bladen	238
King's Printing House	228
Officina Nortoniana	228
Thomas Chard	162
Sam & Joyce Macham	127
Richard Field	116
Mab/Edwards/Bloome	103
Simon Waterson	100

Jacob Bloome (327 sheets), and Thomas and Jonas Man (292 sheets)—roughly
half of all stationers that we can identify as being involved in publishing
during this period printed at least one sermon. The top five sermon publishers
controlled approximately one-third of the output, the next fourteen
controlled another third, and the remaining 75+ the final third. Compare
this with Commentary (36 publishers), Controversial (35 publishers), Devotional
(59 publishers), and Instructional (73 publishers).