A Long Use of a Setting of Type
by
Edwin Eliott Willoughby
News of the Savoy Conference and of the planning of a new
revision of the Bible brought a money-making idea into the
business-like mind of John Speed. He acted upon it with little
delay and was soon hard at work, probably with the help of the
great Hebrew scholar, Hugh Broughton, preparing a table, The
Genealogies Recorded in the Holy Scriptures . . . with the Line of
Our Savious, Jesus Christ, which he believed would prove a
valuable supplement to the new versions of the Bible. King James
was no doubt pleased by the emphasis which Speed placed upon the
royal descent of the Saviour and on October 31, 1610, granted him
the right to print and to insert into every edition of the
Authorized Version of the Bible his Genealogies and a Map
of
Canaan.
[1] On February 4, 1617, this
special license was renewed to Speed for seven years.
[2] Speed died on July 28, 1629. In
1638,
his privilege (which had been renewed) and his blocks were bought
by the Stationers' Company.
[3]
Speed prepared editions of his Genealogies and Map for
every format in which the Bible was printed. In physical form each
edition of the Genealogies consisted of a series of engraved
wood-blocks and several pages of letter-press. To print them Speed
employed John Beale (who at first had as a partner, William Hall)
and, later, John Dawson. The printer no doubt ran off large numbers
of copies in the required formats which stationers purchased to
complete the sheets of the Bibles which they procured from Barker
or his assigns, Norton and Bill. It is probable at other times that
Barker or his assigns bought copies of the Genealogies from
Speed or his heirs and completed Bibles before selling them to
stationers.
How many Genealogies were printed is still impossible
to
estimate. S.T.C. has lumped all editions and issues of
Speed's Genealogies under one number—23039.
We are concerned here with but one of the octavo editions. It is
made up of two sheets and two quarter-sheets and signed
A-B8,
C-D2. With the exception of four pages, it is composed
of
engraved blocks which bear on sigs. C1v and
C2r the
engraver's mark of a member of the van Sichem family— probably
Christoffel van Sichem, the younger. Four pages are in
letter-press: The first page (the title-page), the second page ("To
the Christian Reader"), and—on the back of the Map—two
pages of
topographical matter entitled "Description of Canaan", sig.
C1r
and C2v.
The printer saved the cost of the composition by keeping these
four pages of type tied up (stored, no doubt, with the blocks) and
using the same setting of type to print the letter-press of
successive issues of the Genealogies. He made necessary
changes in the date on the title-page—usually a change of but one
numeral. Accidents also introduced a few small differences between
issues as the printing proceeded.
This I conclude from reports which Mr. Herman R. Mead, of the
Huntington Library (HN), Dr. William H. Bond of the Harvard Library
(HD), Miss E. L. Paford of the Pierpont Morgan Library (PML), and
Mr. Lewis M. Stark of the New York Public Library (NY)—to all
of
whom I here record my hearty thanks—have sent me, along with
information which I was able to obtain from Folger Shakespeare
Library (FOLG) copies.
My correspondents made their reports by comparing copies in
their libraries with photostats from a Folger copy and noting
agreements and differences.
That the same setting of type was used to print the letter-press
of issues of an octavo of Speed's Genealogies from at least
as early as 1631 and until at least as late as 1640, may be seen by
the following table. The first item of it is the date on the title
page of each reported issue of the Genealogies. This is
followed by symbols of the libraries reporting the issue and the
S.T.C. number of the Bible or other book with which it is
bound.
- N.d. HN 2296†
- 1631 HN 2296††
- 1633 NY 2311; NY 2314; PML 2314
- 1634 HD 2324; HD 2314
- 1635 HD 2318
- 1636 FOLG 16408; HD Bible, 1642
- 1637 NY 2328
- 1638 PML 2329; HD 2329; NY 2324; NY 2337; FOLG 25140;
HN
2337
- 1640 NY 2342
More issues of this edition of Speed's Genealogies,
printed from this setting of type could probably be found. The
printers of the Genealogies, also, almost certainly used
this method of printing the letter-press portion of other formats
of the work. But at this time I am content merely to call attention
to a long use of setting of type.
