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Notes
Pollard, Shakespeare's Fight with the Pirates (1920), pp. 25, 33; Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio (1955), pp. 44, 71-72, and Some Aspects and Problems of London Publishing between 1550 and 1650 (1956), pp. 75, 93. See also Leo Kirschbaum, Shakespeare and the Stationers (1955), pp. 57, 131.
The most important sections of the patent are given by Arber, who misdates it January 17 (IV, 13-14). It is printed in full in Rymer's Foedera, XVII (1727), 454-455. In his Collection of Emblemes (1635) Wither states that the late William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, restored him to the royal favor at a time when James I was offended by his "Free Lines," and that the King subsequently bestowed upon him a gift which would have enriched him if others had not thwarted its intention (sig. (*), following p. 196). I take this to be an allusion to Wither's imprisonment for the satire of Motto (1621) and to the patent which was afterwards granted him, although it has been otherwise interpreted by J. Milton French in PMLA, XLV (1930), 960. No doubt James' well known interest in sacred verse was a factor: as historians of hymnology have recognized, Hymnes and Songs has good claims to be considered the first comprehensive English hymn book.
Records of the Court of the Stationers' Company 1602 to 1640, ed. W. A. Jackson (1957) (hereafter cited as Jackson), p. 156.
The Schollers Purgatory, pp. 95-96. Wither points out the weakness of the stationers' position in attacking his monopoly in order to defend their own (p. 28).
In the form of a printed broadside (undated), purporting to represent the views of bookbinders "to the number of fourescore and upward," in the possession of the Society of Antiquaries, London (No. 225 in R. Lemon's Catalogue of A Collection of Printed Broadsides). It was no doubt printed for purposes of propaganda, but it reveals the evasive practices of the stationers too fully to have been inspired by the Company to the degree that Wither suggests.
The author of the "Letter" suggests that Wither himself invented some of the objections to his work (fol. 20v); probably, indeed, the poet does exaggerate the extent of this attack, since of the "multytude of papers in print" against his hymns and patent, to which he refers in The Schollers Purgatory (p. 28), only the bookbinders' broadside petition appears to survive.
In their petition the bookbinders complain that Wither seized copies from them, rather than from the owners directly. In The Schollers Purgatory (p. 103), Wither claims that he used his power reluctantly, and afterwards voluntarily returned the volumes which he had confiscated to the booksellers.
See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series (hereafter cited as S.P.D.), 1633-34, p. 533; 1635, p. 118; 1635-36, p. 80. According to a letter of Edward Rossingham to Sir Thomas Puckering, dated January 23, 1633, the "Board" (i.e. Privy Council?) refused at this time to uphold a patent requiring the stationers to bind Wither's metrical Psalms with all Bibles (British Museum MS. Add. 4,178, first cited by R. A. Willmott, Lives of Sacred Poets [1834], pp. 127-128). No other record appears to exist, however, that Wither ever gained such a patent, and possibly there is confusion here with the privilege for Hymnes and Songs. In their petition the bookbinders had complained that this work was too lengthy to be added to the Sternhold and Hopkins psalter when the latter was bound with the Testament and Communion Book, in accordance with the common practice. Cf. the anonymous "Letter," fol. 20v.
His first new work to be regularly printed in England after 1622 was the Emblemes in 1634-35. He claims to have printed the whole of Britain's Remembrancer (1628) with his own hands (sig. B3v), and he published his Psalmes of David (1632) in the Netherlands.
See Jackson, pp. xiv-xvi. Like Wither, Wood had secured a patent (for printing linen cloth); and he used it to cover some of his illegal activities.
Ben Jonson, ed C. H. Herford, P. and E. Simpson (1925-52), VII, 661. The editors note that in some respects this allusion suits Wood (X, 653), but are unaware of any connection between him and Wither before The Schollers Purgatory. The possibility of the identification is strengthened by the discovery of the earlier association, although Jonson's masque, which was performed on January 23, 1623, slightly antedates the patent.
"The personall Annsweares of George Wither of Lincolnes Inn gent made by vertue of his Corporall oath to the articles objected against him by his Maties Comissioners for causes Ecclesiasticall," Public Record Office MS., S.P. 14, vol. CLVII, no. 59. The document bears the poet's signature but is undated. An abstract in S.P.D., 1623-25 (p. 143) lacks many of the details of the original.
The pamphlet collates (:)4 A-H8 I2. Jackson suggests that (:) A-B were printed at one press, presumably Wood's, and C-I at another, but does not give evidence (p. 17on). The title, of which the author of the "Letter" is ignorant (although it was known to officials of the Stationers' Company after their confiscation of Wood's press), appears nowhere but on the first of the preliminary sheets.
Here Wither may well have in mind Thomas Walkley's publication in 1620 of the "foolishly intituled" Workes, to which he evidently objected on several grounds. See "The Stationer's Postscript," Faire Virtue (1622), sig. P8; and see also Leo Kirschbaum in The Library, 4th. Ser., XIX (1938-39), 339-346.
Jackson, pp. 135, 175, 466-468; Arber, IV, 53, 56. Marriot, who states that the Company brought him before the Archbishop of Canterbury, afterwards denied any deliberate defiance of the order (S.P.D., 1619-23, p. 274).
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