University of Virginia Library

II

With the final transfer of Dorothy Hutchinson's share to the control of Williams and Welham, the history of Charles and Matthew Barker's patent in the King's Printing Office comes to an end. On January 10, 1710, this patent expired, and the interests of Charles Bill and the assigns of Thomas Sawbridge were terminated. The new thirty-year term, which began on the same date, had been granted by Charles II to Henry Hills and Thomas Newcombe I on December 24, 1675.[24] Its transmission to their successors had followed the pattern outlined above for their shares in the Barker grant. Early imprints under the new patent read: "The Assigns of Thomas Newcombe and Henry Hills, deceased"; in 1711 the name of John Baskett was added.

Questions of the date and the circumstances surrounding the origin of Baskett's interest in the office have been raised by A. F. Johnson, who inferred correctly that Baskett purchased a share in the Newcombe-Hills patent, though he had found no document confirming this and no account of Baskett's being sworn in as King's Printer.[25] The original documents have still not come to light, but a relatively detailed account of the transactions by which Baskett became King's Printer is given in a 1715 Bill of Complaint filed by the patentees against Edward Berrington, printer of the Evening Post.[26]

According to the bill, those shareholders in the patent whose terms expired in January, 1710, had intended when they withdrew from the office to "take away their part & share of the printing presses letters tools & other utensills & stock used & employed in the carrying on the business of the sd office. . . ." John Williams and Thomas Welham, described in the bill as custodians and managers "of the person and estate of . . . Dorothy Hutchinson . . . during her lunacie (which still continues)," had felt that it would be "more for the advantage of the office & the sd Dorothy Hutchinson . . . to lett in another partner into the sd office who should lay down such a sume of mony as should be sufficient to purchase in the share & interest of the partners and proprietors whose term was then expiring rather than suffer them to withdraw & take away the same in specie. . . ." Gilham Hills, administrator of his late father's half interest in the new patent, had agreed, whereupon Williams and Welham had applied for and been granted an order in Chancery permitting them to sell a portion of Dorothy Hutchinson's share in the office to John Baskett.

By an indenture dated May 20, 1710, between Williams and Welham, Gilham Hills, and Baskett, one-third of Dorothy Hutchinson's moiety was conveyed to Baskett for a sum unspecified in the Bill of Complaint. A notation among documents relating to the Newcombe-Hutchinson estate reveals that in April, 1710, the month before Baskett purchased his interest, an appraisal of the "books, paper, printing materials, additional building &c." belonging to the Printing Office was made by Robert Knaplock and John Walthoe, two of the leading booksellers in London. Their valuation of the property totalled £13,812 4s. 3¾d. This would appear to place the value of Baskett's sixth interest at just over £2,300.[27]

Continuing the account of Baskett's title to the office, the Bill of Complaint states that after his purchase, "to wit on or about the month of April [1712] . . . John Baskett by & with the consent of . . . Thomas Welham John Williams and Gilham Hills & for the benefitt of them & the sd John Basket[t] was duly admitted & sworne printer to her late Majesty Queen Anne as hath been formerly accustomed in the like cases[,] & in or abt the month of November last [1714] . . . was also duly admitted & sworne printer to his prsent Majesty King George. . . ."

In February, 1718, some six years after Baskett's official appointment as King's Printer, Dorothy Newcombe Hutchinson died, having never, apparently,

recovered her sanity.[28] Surviving documents indicate that John Williams and Thomas Welham still retained custody of her property at the time of her death, and they were responsible for it for several years thereafter. Among various accounts and memoranda relating to the estate which are preserved in the Public Record Office, one is of particular interest. It is a general inventory, probably compiled by John Williams, of the stock and equipment at the King's Printing Office in March and April of 1720.[29] I reproduce it here, normalizing abbreviations which cannot be reproduced in type.

An Accompt of the Books, paper & printing Materials, &c. in His Majestys Printing Office

                                   

1719[20]		£	S	D
March 2d.	Printing Letter, presses, & other Materials for printing	1828	4	10
	Printing and Writing paper, about . . . . . . .	700	--	---
	1250 Bibles Nonp11. 12°, at 1s:6d Nett . . . . .	93	15	---
	10,000 Com-prayers Nonp11. 24° at 6d. 26 paying for 24	230	15	6
	10,000 Bibles Nonsuch and Minion 8°. 41 Sheets printed at London and 27 Sheets & ½ printed at Oxford, the whole Book sold at 3s per Book 13 to the Dozen, comes to 1384£:13s.__the proportion printed at London is . . . . . .}	826	18	10½
	35 Bermuda's Laws, 22 Sheets, at 3s:6d Neat . .	6	2	6
	30 New York Laws, 77 Sheets, at 9:- Neat . . . Acts of Parliamt. of King William and Queen Mary, Queen Anne and King George about}	13	10	---
		250	--	---
	500 Land Tax Acts at this Session Fine papr. at 2s:6d	60	--	---
	525 Acts ditto Ordinary at 2s . . . . . . . . .	50	8	---
	500 Acts for the punishing Mutiny &c fine at 1s.	24	--	---
	1450 Ditto Ordinary at 9d . . . . . . . . . .	52	4	---
	500 Malt Acts, Fine paper at 3d . . . . . . . .	6	--	---
	1900 Ditto Ordinary, at 2d . . . . . . . . . .	15	4	---
1720	500 South Sea Acts, Fine paper at 3s . . . . . .	72	--	---
April 18.	1750 Ditto Ordinary, at 2s:6d . . . . . . . . .	210	--	---
	£	4439	2	8½

The inventory seems to have been compiled primarily as an aid to the appraisal of Dorothy Hutchinson's estate. Despite its promising title, it is disappointingly vague about the equipment of the printing house. Nevertheless,

several features in the list of printed stock are of interest: the division between London and Oxford of octavo Bible production, for example (reflected in the imprints of the Old and New Testaments, 1718-19), and the fact that relatively inexpensive editions of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer comprised slightly more than sixty per cent (£1,151 9s. 4½d.) of the total value of the stock. Impressions on fine paper of the individual Acts of Parliament were intended, perhaps, for the libraries of discriminating lawyers and the reference shelves of governmental offices. The final item in the list, the South Sea Act, must have enjoyed a substantial sale between April, 1720, and the bursting of the "Bubble" four months later.

From the date of his appointment as King's Printer until the expiration of the Newcombe-Hills patent, John Baskett's name dominated the official imprints. In 1723, five years after Dorothy Newcombe Hutchinson's death, the imprints read: "Printed by John Baskett, Printer to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, And by the Assigns of Thomas Newcombe and Henry Hills, deceased." In the following year, the reference to Newcombe's assigns—probably John Williams and Thomas Welham—dropped out. While I have found no explanation for this among the Chancery records, Baskett's purchase of privileges as King's Printer in Scotland between 1711 and 1725 and his acquisition in 1715 of a thirty-year reversion upon the English patent makes it seem probable that by 1724 he had purchased the remaining two-thirds of the Newcombe moiety in the 1710-1740 patent.[30] Between 1725 and 1727 the name of Thomas Norris, described as "assignee to George Hills," was added to the imprints, but in 1728 Baskett's name is found alone. A. F. Johnson states that from 1727 until his death in 1742 Baskett's name appeared alone on publications of the King's Printing Office, [31] but I have observed that A Table of the Statutes, Publick and Private for the year 1729 was "Printed by the Assigns of His Majesty's Printer, and of Henry Hills, deceas'd," and the title-page of a quarto New Testament dated 1731 bears the same imprint. This would indicate that Baskett did not gain exclusive rights to the Newcombe-Hills patent until after 1730, if indeed he ever did.

I have found among the Public Records no new information about the King's Printers during the final decade of the Newcombe-Hills patent term. When it expired in 1740, the thirty-year reversion which—partly as a result of Jonathan Swift's influence—had been granted in 1713 to Benjamin Tooke and John Barber became effective.[32] Baskett's name continued

in the imprints, and it has been assumed, in the absence of documentary evidence, that he had purchased the Tooke-Barber reversion.[33] The assumption is now further substantiated by litigation of 1747 in which Thomas Baskett, John's son and successor as King's Printer, declared that the 1740-1770 patent had "become legally vested in John Baskett" by virtue of "several assignments and other good acts in the law."[34] The same Chancery suit reveals that Robert Baskett, who with Thomas inherited his father's rights to the Printing Office in 1742, assigned his moiety in the office, by an indenture of June 18, 1744, to William Mount and Thomas Page, partners in bookselling and publishing on Tower Hill. These matters, however, belong to a later chapter in the History of the King's Printing Office. That important and exacting work should one day be undertaken.