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Notes
In these registers during the period covered the year begins on March 25th. In his "Records of Players in the Parish of St. Giles, Cripplegate," PMLA, XLIV (1929), 789-826, Professor G. E. Bentley presented some interesting information about the parish and its registers.
Blagden, p. 34. Fewer than a score of the heads of households in the following list are designated in the registers as stationers only and are not identifiable in the dictionaries of Duff, McKerrow, Plomer, et al.; in Arber; or in Morrison's Index. These persons may be members of the Stationers' Company whose records have been lost (almost all of the Company's records are missing for the years 1571-76); they may be booksellers, printers, or bookbinders who were not members of the Company, so named by the clerks with reference to their trade rather than to their affiliation; they may be paper sellers; they may in a few cases (especially those involving a single entry for a name) be persons of other occupations (even members of other Companies) named as stationers in error.
Morrison and the Short-title Catalogues are rarely cited here and, therefore, should always be consulted.
According to his imprints: ". . . dwelling at the Gilden Cup in the Fore street, without Cripple Gate," 1589-1599 (Arber, V. 152, etc.).
Some of the males here listed as servants were employed in their masters' book trade. For (another?) John Fishwick see Arber, II. 163.
McKerrow states that he died early in 1635, and that his will was proved on 22 January 1634/5. Can the first of these statements have been derived from the second?
Five deaths in one household were no extraordinary event in the summer of 1603 in London. To the reader of the parish registers of St. Giles it is perfectly evident which were the plague years. The multiplication of burials during the summer months is most striking. Cf. F. P. Wilson, The Plague in Shakespeare's London (Oxford, 1927), for accounts of the plagues of 1603 and 1625.
Plomer's Robert Barker was King's Printer and Master of the Stationers' Company, with a career stretching from about 1589 to about 1635. Plomer gives the date of his death as 1645. According to Plomer, Robert Barker's son Robert predeceased his father; so the Barker of the St. Giles records may be the son of the King's Printer.
The Humphrey Bate who appears in McKerrow made his last book entry on September 8, 1587. He took apprentices as late as May 10, 1589.
There are several possible explanations for the register's showing the christening of two sons named John within eighteen months, there being no notice of the burial of the earlier John. The simplest is that the clerk made an error in one of the names.
Formerly a Grocer (Arber, II. 85). According to his imprints: ". . . dwelling at the Half Eagle and the Key in Barbican," 1588 (Arber, V. 149).
According to his imprint, he had his shop "over against St Giles's Church, without Cripple Gate," 1593-1596 (Arber, V. 172, etc.)
The vagaries of Elizabethan spelling suggest that this stationer may be identical with the James Herdson mentioned by Greg and Boswell, p.72.
In the only entry I found concerning James in the registers, the name is quite clearly written "Yallowe." I have identified him with Yarath James without any very severe misgivings. James formerly belonged to another Company (Arber, II. 28).
With John Leigh he was involved in the working of Roger Ward's illicit press in Southwark in 1590 (Greg & Boswell, pp. 36-37).
According to his imprint: ". . . dwelling at the Bell in Fore street, without Cripple Gate, near unto Grub street," 1584-1588 (Arber, V. 134, etc.).
Probably the William Jones whose shop was in Ship Alley, Redcross Street, Cripplegate, according to McKerrow.
It appears likely that this entry in the register actually concerns a daughter of John Isam. It may even be that the Cunyer of this entry is the same person as Queneree Isam.
Alice Charlewood was the widow of John Charlewood. Roberts bought Charlewood's shop from the executors (Arber, III. 702).
Rusewell, who also appears (Jackson, 437) as Rosewill, and Bradwood, who appears frequently in the registers as Broadway, offer excellent examples of the attitude of the time toward the spelling of proper names. In spite of frequent variations, given names are much more regular than surnames, presumably because there are fewer of them.
It cannot be assumed that Walter Venge was first a printer, then a weaver, then a printer, then a grocer, then a printer, then a member of the Stationers' Company, and finally a mere printer again. The clerks obviously relied much upon memory for occupations.
Wood was a turbulent person. Having bought an invention for printing on cloth from James Jenkinson, he encountered legal action from other printers on cloth. He then employed his press for printing books, especially primers and almanacs which were not his property. Though he often moved from place to place (even out of London), press after press of his was destroyed by the government; he was sentenced at one time to twelve months' imprisonment (Jackson, pp. xiv-vvi).
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