Tudor Roses from John Tate
by
Allan
Stevenson
Most accounts of the beginnings of papermaking in England tell us
that the first mill was established near Hertford by John Tate the younger
and that his paper-mark was a Flower or Star or Wheel. There has been
some uncertainty as to whether this John Tate was the son of John Tate or
of Sir John Tate, both of them Mercers and Mayors of London.[1] And there has been much
uncertainty as
to what the device represents, for it is a conventional or mathematical
figure consisting of eight thin loops within a two-line circle about an inch
and a quarter (32 mm) across. No botanist would accept it as a composite,
for though it has rays like an aster it has no center flowers. No astronomer
would recognize it as a star, for it has eight beams roughly pointed at both
ends. And no wheelwright would fashion a wheel with spokes not reaching
the rim. Nevertheless, as there are eight of these floating spokes, as in a
comic-strip cartwheel or waterwheel, I call it
sometimes the Wheel of Tate. Briquet, caught in the same trilemma,
classifies it as a Fleur (Br 6608) and congratulates himself on
having included a single English watermark among his 16,112
filigranes.
What hardly anyone has been uncertain about is that Tate used but a
single mark. To be sure, Plomer mentioned the possibility of other marks,
but he knew only of one.[2] Heawood
reproduced just one, and that in quarter size, and then (curiously) did not
include it in
his collection published in 1950.
[3]
Shorter, without going to original sources, reproduced two mythical
examples from Powell and an acceptable mark from Clapperton;
[4] then Labarre dropped these three
sizes of
pancakes on to a ready-made grid of chainlines and wirelines which have
nothing to do with the mark.
[5]
Jenkins furnished a single engine-turned example.
[6] A more realistic tracing appears
in the
Victoria History of the County of Hertford, drawn by Lewis
Evans from a 'blank leaf' in
De proprietatibus rerum.
[7] Clapperton alone presents an
excellent
photograph, from the same book, reproduced by collotype.
[8] Though a better leaf might have
been
chosen, this is a reproduction to be grateful for. Yet all seem to have been
unaware that the watermark is twins. Briquet himself did not seek
out an original example but reproduced Jenkins' prettified tracing, and so,
contrary to Briquet's usual method, without benefit of chains.
[9] It is in accord with his practice
that
Briquet ignores the fact of twins: two similar but distinguishable marks
from the pair of moulds handled by vatman and
coucher.
[10] In this sense John Tate
certainly had more than a single mark.
Four books contain runs of this handsome Tate paper,
three proud and important folios plus one thin supplementary folio, all from
the atelier of Wynkyn de Worde:
- Bartholomaeus: De proprietatibus rerum, tr. Caxton
[1495]
- Jacobus de Voragine: The Golden Legend, tr.
Trevisa
(8 Jan. 1498)
- Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales (1498)
- Lydgate: The Assembly of the Gods [1498][11]
The Bartholomaeus has the famous verses at its end in which Wynkyn tells
us that the paper was supplied by Tate:
And John Tate the yonger Joye mote he broke
Whiche late hathe in Englond doo make this paper thynne
That now in our englyssh this boke is prynted Inne
He tells further (in effect) that Caxton had learned to print in Cologne while
working on a Bartholomaeus in Latin, and so later had translated the text
for English use. De Worde's edition is a thick volume of 478 leaves, nearly
half a ream of paper, and the fine Grenville-British Museum copy measures
12 x 8.6", whereas the Sir Joseph Banks-British Museum copy measures
only 9.9 x 7.7". The paper is fine in quality, except that not all of it is thin,
and that the mid part of the book shows bits of grit within its pulp —
as
if sand had blown across Papermill Mead and into the stuff while the
vatman was plunging his moulds into it. These imperfections are sharp to
the touch and unlike anything I have encountered elsewhere in paper.
Hereabouts the paper is a trifle rusty also.
The Legenda offers the same text that Caxton had used
in the only book he printed on large paper, made mainly by Antonio
Gallizian at Basel.[12] Now it was
printed on small paper made by the son of John Tate the elder, presumably
one of Caxton's friends of the Mercers'
Company.
[13] The volume contains 449
leaves, almost as many as the Bartholomaeus before it. As in that volume
the Wheel marks look forth from a 'window' nearly a quarter inch wide
between columns. The marks do not seem so fresh as they did, and there
are shadows along some chains; and occasionally there are small knots,
perhaps bits of wool, within the linen stuff. The rim of one mark has got
flatter or thinner in one place, as we can see in the open spaces in the
Tabula.
The Chaucer is a shorter folio of just 157 leaves. As it was finished
not long after the Legenda aurea, its paper is in a similar
state,
with perhaps a higher proportion of thick leaves. The marks are now a little
easier to see because of the jagged verse endings and reuse of the cuts that
Caxton had placed in his second edition. The book is rare, the Morgan copy
being a fine one, the British Museum copy having several early leaves in
facsimile by Harris, and others are at Folger and Illinois.[14]
The Lydgate poem contains just 16 folio leaves and represents a
continuation of the paper stock in the Canterbury Tales.
Perhaps
it was a way of using up a remainder of Tate stock. (Two other Wynkyn
de Worde editions are in quarto.) Only the Pierpont Morgan copy is
complete, for the copy bound after the British Museum Canterbury
Tales contains one leaf in facsimile, A7, and lacks the
(unwatermarked) final leaf.
The four folios contain 478+449+157+16 = 1100 leaves or 550
edition sheets. If the edition of the relatively common Bartholomaeus was
around 500 copies and those of the other three around 250, the whole effort
must have used some eight hundred reams, if we include something for
trial, make ready, and waste. In order to keep going a papermill would
need to sell considerably more paper than that.
We know of a few further edition-sheets. Presumably the mill at
Hertford began operation in 1494, for the first publication using the Tate
mark has a text dated that year. This was a reissue in Latin of the Papal
Bull of Innocent VIII, in which Alexander VI concurred, showing their
pleasure in the marriage of Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York (though
cousins of some degree) and in recognition of Henry
as the rightful occupant of the English throne. The earlier edition had been
printed by William de Machlinia as an English broadside in his
bâtard type on Gothic p paper from Lorraine (de
Worde's
country) after 27 March 1486.
[15] The
Latin Bull of Wynkyn de Worde is a document of 85 lines in textura, a
broadside printed similarly along the chains and down the sheet. There are
six copies extant.
[16]
The Library of St John's College Cambridge owns two incomplete
exemplars, halfsheet fragments, showing the twin Wheel marks in the
preserved lower portions of the sheets, behind a single layer of type. It is
thus possible to make out the relation of the marks to the individual
chain-patterns. A copy at Ripon Cathedral is much repaired. It is the copy
at Lambeth Palace Library (Maitland Fragment 7) that has been famed as
the earliest extant piece of English paper. Though it has a hundred small
wormholes, the broadsheet is intact except for two spots along creases
where parts of words have been lost. The sheet is from Mould E and it
measures 11.9 x 17" cut. The mark is clear though it has two or three small
wormholes in it. As in the St John's College copies it occurs in the lower
end of the sheet. Eton College has two copies of this Bull of [1494], used
as pastedowns in J. Reuchlin: De rudimentis hebraicis
(Pforzheim: T. Anshelm, 1506) F°. Though cropped at the top, they
are otherwise in good state, except that the rear flyleaf hangs by a thread
of paper. The front sheet hides its Wheel within pasted paper, but the rear
one shows its mark clearly enough. It also is from Mould E, to be
described presently.
It is a later abbreviated restatement of this Bull that provides the best
opportunity for studying the paper of John Tate. Though Duff assigned it
to [1495], Pollard noted that it was issued as a supplementary proclamation
by Henry VII to a further Bull of Alexander VI. The text of the Bull is in
British Museum MS Cleopatra E. III. 147 and is dated 12. kal. Jan. 1498.
'The proclamation, therefore, must be not earlier than the end of Jan. or the
beginning of Feb. 1499.'[17] The
coarsening of the watermarks and chainlines accords very well with the date
[1499], which places it after the three folios of 1498. The proclamation was
a device for reassuring the populace during the period of Perkin Warbeck's
high pretensions; and to the first Tudor monarch it seemed good to have a
pair of popes, Innocent and Alexander, on his side.
As Wynkyn de Worde printed it, the Supplementary Proclamation is
a document of just eleven textura lines in double column. Thus he found it
possible to place two different settings (with minor variants) on each
halfsheet, parallel with the chains, so that there was space between; and
these through print-and-turn became four short proclamations to the sheet.
If just one ream was printed, it made available two thousand pieces of
persuasion in favor of the Tudor dynasty.
The space between permits a clear and unimpeded view of the Wheel
of Tate, almost the only full view of the 'naked' mark in any publication.
We can examine the particular treatment of the mark by the mouldmaker,
its position on the supporting chain, its relation to the other chains in the
watermarked end of the mould. We see that the moulds were Italianate,
perhaps made for Tate by a workman from Genoa. In the unwatermarked
half of the sheet the spacing of the chains is uniform, with the spaces
averaging around 35 mm. But in the watermarked end the spacing varies,
so as to provide the watermark with a supporting chain through its center
and a place between attendant chains. Beyond these two accompanying
chains the mouldmaker has erred in his spacing on one mould but worked
out his spacing satisfactorily on the second. For convenience we may call
the mould with unequal attendant spaces Mould U and that with equal
attendant spaces Mould E, and the consequent watermarks U and E. As
the chains can be seen not merely within the blank space between the
eleven-line proclamations but within all margins of Tate books, this
space-difference proves an infallible method for distinguishing the twin
marks.
The exact measurements need to be set down. As the watermarks are
round, it is not easy to know which ends of their moulds they were sewn
on, though it was a period when marks of the Rhine valley (for instance)
commonly were moulded as twins in opposite ends of the sheet, even when
the wire designs were placed in the same end of their moulds. When there
are no inscriptions or heraldic bearings that prevent, we commonly reckon
with the mould side of the paper up. With marks such as Tate's which are
ambiguous in their orientation we may treat them as in either end of the
sheet. Here, for later comparison, we shall consider them as in the right
end, and so measure from the quire-fold across chains and mark towards
the edge or deckle, or else across chains in the margins.
In practice measurements, in so narrow a unit as the millimeter, vary
slightly, because chains are not absolutely parallel, because some move
slightly on the mould, because paper sometimes shrinks, because
we cannot use the same steel ruler or transparent plastic ruler (which
themselves are slightly variable) in all situations and over a span of years.
In earlier measurements I tried to read them to the nearest tick on the scale;
in later measurements I have given chains that clearly fall between ticks a
half-millimeter value. Yet despite the variables facts and truth emerge from
a series of measurements. Luckily, because of the supporting chain, this
Tate watermark does not wander or slip along the laid wires in the manner
of Bull's heads and other small marks of the time. See the appendix table
on Chainspaces Accompanying the Tate Wheel Watermark.
All the while the twin marks from the Tate moulds differ, as twin
marks do, in details of shape and sewing dots and position between
attendant chains. For instance, in the Bartholomaeus (Newberry copy) Mark
U measures 36|8[17|16]8|28 mm and Mark E 35|8[16|17]10|36 mm,
reading from left to right with marks in right folio. The vertical lines
indicate chains, the square brackets the width of the watermark. It is
amusing to note that in the Uneven Mould the mark is centered neatly
within its broad chainspace, while in the Even Mould it is not quite
centered. If one could always see that distinction, that would be sufficient
for distinguishing the two marks. The shapes are sufficiently regular to
make for uncertainties, though Mark E is actually slightly taller (more oval)
than the other. Also, a sharp eye may note that the rim of Mark E is more
even than that of Mark U, which (with right-end mould-side orientation) has
bulges in the southeast and southwest. And some of the Dots are
misleading because they are situated on the star points, while those on the
circles are a score or more but small and hard to see behind type. It is thus
more convenient to distinguish them by means of their chain-patterns. What
is evident at a glance is that the spaces beyond the attendant chains are
definitely unequal in one mould and virtually
equal
in the other. In Mould U these attendant spaces average 36 and 28 mm,
with a difference of about 8 mm. In Mould E the corresponding attendant
spaces measure 34 and 35 or 35 and 36 mm, with a difference of no more
than 1 mm. As these chains, clear in the watermark space in the
Supplement, are regularly visible in margins, this method of distinction
becomes the one to use while we turn the leaves of a Tate folio or
quarto.
Of this Supplement (Duff 229, STC 14098) five copies
are now known. The fountainhead was Magdalen College Oxford, where
four remainders of the broadside were found stuffed in a binding. Magdalen
magnanimously distributed copies to the British Museum, the Bodleian, and
the University Library Cambridge; but the Eton College
Library copy turned up in one of their own bindings.
[18] In all these copies the mark is
clear and
photographable, except that the Bodleian copy shows paste and the
Cambridge a little ink on the mark. The Eton copy of the Supplement is a
halfsheet found in the binding of Gabriel Zerbus:
Liber anathomie
corporis humani (Venice: B. Locatellus, 1502) F°. When I
examined this piece of Tate paper, there was an anxious moment. The four
copies emanating from Magdalen College had proved one by one to be all
from Mould E. Naturally I hoped now for the other mould. As the leaf law
within its host volume, I could see faintly the rounded form of the Wheel
rim. The mark was in the preserved end of the sheet. Breathless, I turned
the leaf up to the light. The attendant spaces were unequal! At last I beheld
Mark U without interfering black type. It was photogenic. See the
plate.
[19]
The search for further examples of Tate's watermarks, of further
books printed on the earliest English paper, has produced interesting
results. First it is well to note the latest known appearance of the paper, in
'Loose sheets' at the Library of Canterbury Cathedral, dated 1512. This
paper was recorded by Michael Beazeley, F.R.G.S., Hon. Librarian, within
the excellent collection of tracings which he made from Canterbury
documents in 1896-1900 and presented to the British Museum in
1912.[20] Again the mark he
reproduces is from Mould E. But Beazeley is the only filigranist to show
the attendant chains and spaces. As he reproduces them, the measurements
across the mark are 36|4[20.5|18.5]7|34; but the bulges on the rim seem
to be overemphasized, so that the rim varies from 1 mm to 4 mm in
thickness. He notes that there are 30 wirelines to an inch and that the sheet
measures 13.75 x 19” uncut. This is most interesting information.
This first
English paper was of the size known as Bastard, that is oversize in
comparison with the norm.[21] In an
accompanying notebook Beazeley says this is 'The first & only
specimen
met with of John Tate's paper among the Canterbury materials'.
Two further Tate books have been discovered by H. Clifford Maggs,
among Wynkyn de Worde's books after the turn of the century. In Maggs
Catalogue 830 (1957), in discussing the Legenda aurea with
its
Wheel mark, Mr Maggs noted that Tate paper occurs in two later quartos.
In a letter of 29 July 1957 he kindly informed me of his research at the
British Museum in 1935, when he examined Wynkyn de Worde books of
1501 to 1517 and came upon Tate Wheels in Thordynary of crysten
men (1506) and The Justyces of paes (1510)
(STC 5199 and 14864).
The Justyces of paes is a typical example of a book
containing an intrusive remnant of paper hidden within the volume in the
manner suggested by Moxon.[22] Such
a random sheet would not be useful for dating an undated book. As Mr
Maggs indicated, there is just one instance in the British Museum copy,
within the inner gully of sheet d: d2.3, where the rim of the Wheel emerges
from the spine in both leaves. A similar sheet occurs in the Bodleian copy
but not in the Huntington fragment.[23]
One might suspect that this sheet is a gathering from an earlier edition, such
as the 1506 quarto at the Huntington (STC 14863); but the
point
is not yet resolved. Other sheets of the 1510 edition show Pot marks within
narrow chainspaces of 23 mm, paper from Champagne or
Normandy.
Thordynary of 1506 had been preceded by a quarto of
1502, entitled The Ordynarye of Crystyanyte or of crysten
men
(STC 5198). As Frank Isaac shows in pages reproduced from
both quartos, they were set in different 95 texturas.[24] The 1502 quarto contains only
Hand
watermarks, from Genoa or Piedmont. The 1506 quarto collates
Aa4
A6 B-X4/8 AA-MM4/8
NN4 OO-PP6 = 218 leaves
or 54.5 sheets. The alternating pattern of single and double quarto sheets
gives the printer opportunities for using up remnants of paper. I first
examined the Harmsworth-Folger copy (in 1958) and was pleased to find
in its gullies remnants of the Wheel paper in gatherings A, D, and X, much
as Mr Maggs had led me to expect. From three instances of Tate paper at
intervals within a volume containing runs of other Flower paper and Hand
papers (with once only a Gothic y from Champagne), it was easy to infer
that de Worde was making use of Wheel
paper left
over from his supply for the
Legenda aurea and the
Canterbury Tales. But this inference proved only partly
right.
When later I was able to examine a copy at the British Museum, the
copy that Maggs had handled, then a copy at Cambridge, and on return to
America the copy at the Pierpont Morgan Library, I was amused and then
puzzled at the way in which the Wheels moved about in the book. I began
to make watermark collations showing the positions of the Wheels among
the Hands and the Flowers, which I now saw were Roses, broken within
the quarto fold. The Wheels were not behaving in the manner of other
remnants that I had encountered in printed books. In Hamlet
Q2, for instance, the remnant Pot from the Lower Loire with the date 1598
on its belly is hidden away in a middle gathering (as Moxon later
recommended). But here the Wheel paper appeared in well separated
gatherings: at B D X in the BM copy examined by Maggs, at D H in a
second BM copy, at B C D X in the Douce copy at Bodley, at A C D F in
the other Bodleian copy, at A D X in the ULC copy, at D X in the Folger
copy, and at C D P X
in the Morgan copy. Sometimes the position varied in two-watermark
gatherings. The only consistent set of occurrences was in single-sheet D,
though also the Wheel turned up five times out of seven in the inner sheet
of X.
Not until I returned to the Folger copy, after examining three others,
did I know the answer. Then suddenly I realized that
Thordynary contains other paper manufactured by John Tate.
Among the ambiguities three principal facts stood out: the Roses so
intermingled with the Wheels are surely Tudor Roses . . . and the two
papers have the same Italian chain pattern and the same substance.
A Tudor Rose is of course a double rose compounded of the Red
Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York. Though the Rose
watermark has no contrasting colors, it shows prettily and convincingly five
cordiform petals with sepals between and in the midst thereof a similar
group of five small petals overlapping the larger ones. It is a free treatment
of the heraldic rose, not a Gallic or garden rose with multiple petals. Here
it arrives auspiciously as a symbol of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York,
within their reign, which lasted till 1509, and within the lifetime of John
Tate, who died in 1507, the year after Thordynary was
published. In his will, now at Somerset House, Tate mentions supplies of
paper still on hand: 'as moche whit paper or other paper as shall extende
to the somme of xxvj s 8 d . . . owte of my
paper
myll at Hartford'.[25] As this was a
particular bequest to Thomas Bolls of
Hertford (who may have been Tate's foreman) and evidently not all the
paper on hand, the common assumption that paper manufacture at the Sele
Mill (or its predecessor) lasted through the time of Wynkyn's folios of 1498
only is probably incorrect.
It may be objected that such Roses may have come instead out of
Italy or France. The chain pattern indeed might suggest Genoese make or
influence, just as it did for the Wheel marks. But Briquet knew of few
double roses in Italian paper. As for France, an enterprising Norman maker
appears to have anticipated the Tudor Rose by a year or so. Consider
Briquet 6628, a Rose with stem and leaves which comes from Cuy (Orne)
near Argentan dated 1484.[26] Three
quarters of a century later a Rose of Tudor form appears upon a small
Shield in petit petit papier (24.5 x 31 cm): Br 6431 (1561).
As
Briquet found this mark among the Archives of Calvados in
tabellionage from Troarn, east of Caen in the direction of
Lisieux, the paper probably came from the Pays d'Auge, which had
supplied Unicorn paper to England. The Shield contains, above the rose,
one of the earliest names in Norman paper: I LOYSEL. A century still later
Rose paper was made in the
Bocage near Sourdeval with the name-abbreviation MLO for M LOYSEL,
as well as NGM for N GERMAIN and ILG for I LEGRAND (Heawood
1886, 1888-9, 1902a). The Rose MLO paper occurs for example in Daniel
King: The Vale-Royall of England (J. Streater 1656) pot
F°.[27] These double Roses come
from the region that supplied paper to England for nearly two
centuries.
Nevertheless it was proper for an English mill to make her own
roses. Around 1600 England again had a white paper mill, in which John
Spilman, Elizabeth I's jeweler and papermaker, made suitable paper for
printed books and manuscripts. Curiously, no Jenkins, Heawood, or Shorter
has sought out more than two or three of Spilman's watermarks, whereas
I have encountered perhaps eight.[28]
But this is not Spilman's inning, except for a Tudor Rose that seems
to be his. It occurs, with pitiful irony, in the midst of that Proclamation
which denounces the Earls of Essex, Rutland, and Southampton as traitors
(1600/1) (
STC 8279). The Tudor Rose is unmistakable in the
Huntington copy, where I first came upon it, as also in two British Museum
copies. For Essex this symbol of Tudor authority must have seemed the
unkindest of his career, and its thorn cut to the heart — as Lytton
Strachey would have enjoyed saying. Other evidence have I none, except
that the texture and chain-rhythm of the Essex paper fit neatly and
persuasively with those of other sorts of paper made at Dartford in
Kent.
And this is partly the nature of the proof for the Tudor Roses of John
Tate. It is probable that the same Italian mouldmaker who had made the
Wheel moulds and marks made the Rose moulds and marks as well. For the
Roses are situated on supporting chains precisely in the manner of the
Wheels, with a few millimeters on either side within the watermark double
space and similar attendant spaces beyond. The two Roses are so similar
that they may well derive from the same design. Indeed, when I first
admired these Roses in the BM copy of Thordynary stamped
with the royal arms,[29] I grew amazed
that there should seem to be but one mould — a thing unparalleled
in my
experience with small paper, though I could understand the possibility of
it in the making of so huge a size as Antiquarian. But then when I turned
to the King's Library copy, I was able to make out small differences. I
began to make sketches of the bits of Roses showing in the gullies,
as they slid back and forth across the spine, building up two similar but
different designs, never seeing as much as half a rose between fold and
type. As often in such situations of near-identity, it was a chainline the top
heart-shaped petal at contrasting points, though the difference is hardly
more than two millimeters. Because no photograph can present the
composite effect from a number of gullies, I reproduce these
pencil-sketches, rough and inaccurate as they are, to fill in selected
Contoura prints.
It will be seen that in one mould the supporting chain cuts near the
vent in the top petal and then between two smaller center petals, and in the
other along the edge of the top petal and then across an inner heartlike
petal. If we look at the indented or mould side, the edge coinciding with the
chain is to the right. But again it may be more convenient to differentiate
by chain-pattern. In the mould with the chain cutting near the center of the
petal, reading the chains from
fold to foot, we find they measure 34.5 33.5 23.5 18.5 36.5 36; and in the
sheets with chain slong the petal edge they measure 33 34.5 19.5 16.5 33.5
36.5; wherefore the first may be called Mould U, with a 3 mm difference
between attendant spaces, and the second Mould E, with a 1 mm
difference. Always (or almost always) in Filigranistan there are two
moulds; always they are distinguishable.
[30]
As yet I can give no precise measurements for both Rose marks.
When they turn up, as they should, in some manuscript, perhaps a royal
one, then we can measure with mathematical glee.
All this may seem insufficiently convincing that the Rose paper is
Tate's. But final and sufficient evidence resides in the character and the
texture of the paper, the stuff from which it was made. For the Rose paper
and the Wheel paper obviously came out of the same vatstuff. In this
volume they have the same yellow-whiteness, with the same liability to
slight foxing, the same tendency to closefelted thickness, some sheets of
both being overly thick, and, most telling of all, the same flecks and
occasional clots of foreign matter, perhaps knots from woolen underwear.
For the paper is indeed 'naughty', as Moxon would have said. Tate's
once-beautiful paper has slipped a long way in quality. Or else this is paper
remaining after the good sheets have been culled out, used along with good
quires or reams. As there are about a dozen known copies of
Thordynary of crysten men, bibliographers can examine the
book and judge the evidence for themselves. In an accompanying table I
show the Distribution of Watermarks in seven copies. The distribution
suggests that de Worde used the Wheel and Rose papers as if they were
one, except for the runs of Wheel in gatherings D and X, or else that the
paper came from the mill with some reams made up of both sorts. In any
case short runs of Rose paper occur, into which the Wheel paper intrudes;
and sometimes the Wheel in one copy is opposite a Rose in other
copies.
We might be satisfied to let the argument rest there. But the
distribution table brings forward another question which has lurked behind
the Wheel and Rose papers. Is there a third Tate paper in this volume?
What of the Hand & star paper which we find associated with the Rose
paper? The question is worth a short exploration. Unfortunately we do not
know how many presses the printer was using, how he fed paper to them,
whether there was an advantage for him (beyond ease in binding) in
printing in alternating fours and eights.[31]
There are two contrasting sorts of Hand paper in the book. The main
one, the one associated with the Rose and Wheel papers, has a Hand &
star mark with close fingers and is situated on a regular chain in the
Genoese manner. It is the sort of Hand that the Norman paper-makers
began to imitate twenty years later, producing what the printer Thomas
Berthelet called 'jene' in his bill to Henry VIII.[32] The chain-spaces are 30-32 mm
wide,
with a tranchefile space of about 17 mm.[33] Though in these points the Hand
paper
does not correspond to the Rose and Wheel papers, the fineness of the wire
or laid lines does. The other, coming late in the volume, is a Hand mark
without star but with separated fingers, of a sort preferred by other makers
at Genoa and in Piedmont. And now we note that this open-fingered paper
uses supporting chains in the manner of the Rose and Wheel papers. Some
of these separated Hands show an x or α on
the palm and others a pair of circlets, and these may indicate twin marks.
This paper comes of a sudden in a single run of seven to ten sheets at the
end of the book. It represents a definite shift in paper stock. The Hand
&
star paper, on the other hand, though it appears mainly in runs, is
interrupted by Rose or Wheel paper. Or vice versa. Thus in gatherings B
C E the Hand interrupts the flow of Rose-Wheel paper. Then the main run
of Hand & star begins with the inner sheet of gathering J and
continues
for about thirty-two sheets except for interruptions of Rose-Wheel in L P
R S T X BB DD, after which Hand & star runs an uninterrupted
course
for seven sheets, until it yields to the run of separated Hands. It looks as
if Wynkyn de Worde regarded the Rose-Wheel and Hand & star
papers
as a sufficiently homogeneous stock of paper and the Hand separated paper
as a satisfactory one to follow with.
Are there clues in the physical character of the Hand papers? When
I reëxamined the Folger copy, I began to think that the Hand papers
might also be Tate's. For again these papers have occasional thick sheets
and similar flaws or knots in the stuff, though less often than the Rose and
Wheel papers. And there is some variation from copy to copy. If the British
Museum copies seem cleaner in this respect than some others, the Oxford
and Cambridge copies definitely show the telltale blemishes and bits of
foreign matter — some of them apparently bits of brown wool.
Perhaps
a chemist can determine the contents of
these naughty sheets. Meanwhile it looks probable that we now know four
kinds of Italianate paper used by John Tate the younger. Joye mote he
broke.
In conclusion we may consider some of the values in such a study as
this. In the present state of our knowledge of paper and what to expect of
it in a bibliographical way we see that something has been accomplished,
that much remains to do. The gains are of two main kinds.
1) As the history of paper is the history of an important human
activity, it deserves notice both for its own sake and for its implications for
economics and culture. The French frequently honor it as the
suppôt des pensées. Yet among literary historians
and
critics, and even among 'bibliographers', there are numerous scholars who
treat paper as if it were manna from heaven, always there for the picking
up, whereas any printer, ancient or modern, can tell them how wrong they
are. The availability of paper, of sorts suitable to the book at hand for
printing, also considerations of format, quality, and price have continually
conditioned the production of books down through time. Yet even most
descriptive bibliographers treat it, ostrich-like, almost as if it did not exist.
Ignorance has set a pattern which ignorance follows, and thus ignorance
becomes a part of standard method, while all the while it is evident that
paper and print are the things that books are
made of, and thus are worth mention. If this is so, any real increase in
information on les origines has an historical value, and thus
a
use in book description.
When we consider writing the first chapter in the history of English
paper, a history shorter than that of other nations, we find, not too much
to our astonishment, that few have adequately reproduced the first English
watermark. Indeed, there are acceptable tracings by Jenkins, Lewis, and
Beazeley, but only the last of these (not published) provides the chainlines
essential for accurate depiction and in this case for distinguishing one mould
from another. But tracings are always distortions (more or less), always
fallible interpretations by the human hand and eye, and sometimes (as in
this geometrical design) prettifications of what shows in the paper. Only
Clapperton (it seems) has published a photographic collotype, and that in
a costly limited edition, and presumably more for showing the normal
appearance of the mark in a Wynkyn de Worde folio than for making
details of the mark clear. This can be done, for instance, from the Tabula
in the Golden Legend. A dozen years
ago Erwin Morkisch, the gifted photographer at the Huntington Library,
placed the twin Wheel marks on
microfilm for me, and I have shown the resultant slides a number of times.
Now I offer collotype reproductions of the Tate Wheels from Contoura
prints of Mark E in the British Museum copy of the Supplementary
Proclamation of [1499] and Mark U from the Eton College copy. I use
photocopies rather than photographs because photographers often err as to
correct size. The collotypes show the chain-patterns in part so that all may
tell the difference between the two moulds.
I am not able to do as well by the Tudor Roses. Here as the marks
have not yet turned up in folio blanks but mainly in the gullies of one
quarto, I have had recourse to partial reproduction through Contoura prints
and rough pencil sketches, except for an example which shows through a
narrow folio window, to be noted presently. But even these imperfect
reproductions should make it possible to seek out examples of John Tate's
second watermark more suitable for reproduction in a history of English
paper, probably from B-radiographs.
In any case something new has been accomplished. Where it has been
generally supposed that Tate had but one mark or pair of marks, we now
see that he had at least two. The Tudor Roses are surely his, the Hand
&
star marks probably his, the Hand separated marks possibly his. Always in
this art there is something for further investigation. Incidentally, a careful
study of the Wheel marks has shown that Tate had but one pair of them,
whose prolonged life extended from 1494 to 1499, whereas moulds
producing paper in great demand commonly lasted but a year or two. At the
same time the study of the Wheel paper has provided a more important
gain: a method for demonstrating that the Tudor Rose paper
associated with the Wheel paper belongs to John Tate. For bibliographers
always searching for new methods this is a real advance. At the same time
the device is tricky: where the paper substance is clearly the same, as in the
Wheel and Rose papers, we can be certain; where the
substance is similar yet a little less knotty, as in the Hand papers, we
proceed more cautiously.
2) Naturally, for the bibliographer, studies of paper and watermarks
become most interesting when they lead to discovery of facts in the history
of book production — and thus often clarification of the texts printed
on
the paper. It may be that little of this sort will arise from a study of Tate's
paper; we may have to be content mainly with historical values. But the
spadework must be done before the hyacinth grows and blooms. Like minor
Briquets we make ready for future discoveries that we cannot foresee. As
the Wheel has a supporting wire to hold it in place, and the Rose also, we
do not have the information afforded by a mark that slides along the laid
wires. Yet even here the
chains accompanying the Wheel become worn and curve at their ends, and
the bumps on the rims become more noticeable. Thus even without the facts
that have come to light concerning the Supplementary Proclamation since
Duff described it, we might have judged that it is closer to 1500 than to
Duff's date around 1495. And there also is the upstart Perkin Warbeck to
persuade us.
One reason for getting acquainted with a paper as special as Tate's
is that doing so may bring to light facsimiles and fakes, and so help in the
valuation of costly but imperfect books. For instance the titlepage of
Bartholomaeus De proprietatibus rerum is a black woodcut
containing just those four words and no more. It is thus not difficult to
provide a 'reasonable facsimile' and even to deceive by means of it. This
title on the Pierpont Morgan copy is known to be a facsimile, and was
admitted to be a facsimile in the original Morgan Catalogue
edited by Alfred W. Pollard.[34] It
hardly takes an expert on paper to decide that a Bartholomaeus title on
wove paper is not so good as it ought to be. The answer is not quite so easy
for a Bartholomaeus in the collection of Paul Mellon. The copy is
handsome and its titlepage appears acceptable, but the paper proves
otherwise. For the paper has a chain-rhythm reminiscent of the close chains
accompanying the Wheel mark but not of the broader spaces beyond. A
person not conversant with this Italianate chain-pattern might spot the fault,
but it helps to have made some slight study of the Tate product. Whether
or not the facsimilist intended to deceive, he took advantage of the fact that
the blackness of the woodcut would obscure the place of the watermark. But
holding the leaf aslant to sunlight or lamplight, with the chains parallel with
one's eyes, reveals the grooves and the fact that a watermark is not
there.
A related example is furnished by the British Museum copy of the
Lydgate folio Assembly of the Gods. I do not know that this
book has ever before been listed among the Tate-paper books, though it
comes as an appendage to the Canterbury Tales and thus on
the
same paper. This sameness of paper gives a date to an undated piece of
printing: [1498]. But it also gives the lie, unhappily, to leaf 13. It is on
paper with chainspaces similar in size to those in the Wheel watermark
areas of the same Chaucer-and-Lydgate folio. Actually the facsimile is
signed minutely by the expert and honest workman: 'F.s H.', that is Harris.
The work is so good that it might deceive almost any bibliographer
who pays little attention to paper. It did for instance Gordon Duff.
[35]
And now comes a small discovery with a problem attached. I have
spent a number of unexciting hours ranging through the folios containing
long long runs of the Wheels of John Tate. Recently I leafed through the
British Museum copy of the Legenda aurea of 1498, holding
each leaf to the light. Each sheet contained the expected Wheel, either from
Mould U or from Mould E — until I came to M3, folio '286' in
'The lyf
of saynt Edward kynge'. There came a surprise and a very acceptable one:
a Tudor Rose! Once only in the book, for from that point again the Wheels
roll on to folio '398'. It was the first time I had seen the Rose within a
folio leaf, and here it was mainly limited to an intercolumn space of less
than a quarter of an inch. The mark measures about 35|6[18|16.5]2|34 in
right folio and is from Mould U. Shortly after, I ascertained that leaf M3
in the Cambridge and Oxford copies also contains the Rose, and again only
that one leaf. The Cambridge Rose is E and the
Bodleian Rose is U. If we might use a β-radiographic plate for taking
pictures of these Roses, we would need to look no farther. For radiography
ignores the obscuring type.
But what may be the significance of the single Tudor Rose on leaf
M3 of the Legenda? Presumably it means a cancel or else a
reprint to complete the edition-sheet. That is, Wynkyn de Worde found he
had made a grievous error and so reprinted, or else he ran out of copies of
sheet M3.6 and so reprinted. The leaves are conjunct. As the book is dated
precisely 8 January 1498, this reprinting probably occurred in 1498 or
1499. There remained but five reasonably complete copies to investigate.
With the kindly aid of the custodians of these copies, the votes have come
in. The Pierpont Morgan copy has a Rose in M3. The Phillis & John
Gordan copy has a Rose in the conjunct M6. The John Rylands copy has
a Rose in the same sheet. There is a Rose in the St David's College copy
at M3. And also in the Golden Legend at Trinity College
Cambridge. What monotony! Where is the assumed
cancellatum? But TCC reports also a Tudor Rose, not far
away,
in K6. There is always
something further to investigate.
Many years ago a copy of the Tate-de Worde Legenda
was damaged in a fire and the remaining leaves were dispersed. The
Newberry Library has nine of these leaves, including four with Wheel
marks, and Dartmouth College Library has a similar fragment.[36] Even the writer
of these pages has four leaves carefully selected to represent two pairs of
Wheel watermarks.
[37] Today Maggs
Bros. still offer a leaf from this dismembered copy — and the price
has
risen to 5 guineas. The leaves are now scattered far and wide. Who, oh
who, if anyone, owns leaf M3 or its conjunct? Some mute unsung
bibliophile, some country college with a Rare Book Room containing but
one leaf may hold the key to the mystery. . . .
As the eight copies of the Legenda already examined
all
have the Rose leaf, chances seem to favor the cancel hypothesis. If so,
whether or not the cancellatum has disappeared, the Rose
paper
should belong to 1498. If the leaf or sheet is a reprint in order to make up
copies, it may belong to 1499 or later.
The situation presents a pleasant possibility. As we know from the
Household book of Henry VII, he was at Hertford Castle on 23 May 1498
and on the 25th he saw the papermill. The entry reads:
For a rewarde geven at the Paper Mylne, 16s
8d
The interesting thing is that a similar entry occurs in the following year:
Geven a rewarde to Tate of the Mylne, 6
s
8
d
[38]
What is the meaning of the additional reward? Apparently the King did not
revisit the mill. I suggest that after the visit of May 1498 Tate's Italian
workman fashioned new moulds emblazoned with the royal symbol and that
at Westminster (say) John Tate presented to Henry VII a supply of writing
paper marked with Tudor Roses.
Chainspaces Accompanying the Tate Wheel Watermark Right
halfsheet, left to right, fold towards edge
Mould U |
|
|
S |
Bull [1494] |
St John's CC |
35.5 |
24.5:23.5 |
27 mm |
Bartholomaeus [1495] |
CSmH |
37 |
24 :23 |
27 |
|
DFo |
36 |
24. :23 |
28 |
|
ICN |
36 |
25 :24 |
28 |
Jacobus de V (1498) |
ICN |
37 |
26 :24 |
29 |
Thordynary (1506) |
King's BM |
35.5 |
24 :23 |
28 |
|
NNP |
36.5 |
24.5:23.5 |
28 |
Mould E |
|
|
S |
Bull [1494] |
Lambeth |
34.5 |
24 :25.5 |
36 |
|
St John's CC |
35.5 |
24.5:26 |
35.5 |
Bartholomaeus [1495] |
CSmH |
34 |
25 :27 |
35 |
|
DFo |
36 |
24 :26 |
36 |
Jacobus de V (1498 |
ICN |
34 |
25 :26 |
35 |
Supplement [1499] |
BM |
34.5 |
24.5:25.5 |
34.5 |
|
ULC |
34.5 |
23.5:26.5 |
34.5 |
Thordynary (1506) |
King's BM |
35 |
23.5:26 |
35 |
|
DFo |
35 |
24 :26 |
35 |
Justyces of paes (1510) |
BM |
35 |
24.5:25.5 |
34.5 |
Loose sheet, 1612 (Beazeley) S = Supporting Chain |
Cant |
36 |
24.5:25.5 |
34 |
Distribution of Watermarks in Thordynary of crysten
men (1506)
|
BM 224.g.3 |
|
BM C.25.f.7 |
|
Bod A.7.14 |
|
Bod Douce |
|
ULC Sel. |
|
NNP |
|
|
|
|
King's |
|
Linc. |
|
O.164 |
|
5.65 |
Aa4
|
H* |
|
H* |
|
H* |
|
H* |
|
H* |
|
H* |
A6
|
R |
|
R |
|
W |
R |
R |
|
R |
W |
R |
B4
|
R |
|
W |
|
H |
|
W |
|
R |
|
R |
C8
|
R |
y |
R |
y |
W |
H |
W |
W |
R |
y |
W |
y |
D4
|
W |
|
W |
|
W |
|
W |
|
W |
|
W |
E8
|
R |
R |
H |
R |
H |
R |
H |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
F4
|
R |
|
R |
|
W |
|
R |
|
R |
|
R |
G8
|
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
H4
|
W |
|
R |
|
R |
|
R |
|
R |
|
R |
J8
|
R |
H |
R |
H |
R |
R |
R |
H |
R |
H |
R |
H |
K4
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
L8
|
H |
— |
H |
H |
H |
— |
H |
— |
H |
H |
R |
H |
M4
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
N8
|
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
O4
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
P8
|
H |
R |
H |
R |
H |
R |
H |
R |
H |
R |
H |
W |
Q4
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
R8
|
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
R |
H |
S4
|
R |
|
R |
|
R |
|
R |
|
R |
|
R |
T8
|
H |
H |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
H |
— |
R |
R |
U4
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
X8
|
H |
R |
H |
W |
R |
R |
R |
W |
R |
W |
R |
W |
AA4
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
R |
|
H |
|
H |
BB8
|
R |
R |
H |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
R |
CC4
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
DD8
|
R |
R |
H |
R |
H |
R |
H |
R |
R |
R |
H |
R |
EE4
|
H |
|
H |
|
R |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
FF8
|
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
GG4
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
HH8
|
H |
H |
H |
H |
lacking |
|
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
H |
JJ4
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
|
H |
KK8
|
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
LL4
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
MM8
|
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
NN4
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
OO6
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
|
Hs |
|
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
PP6
|
H |
|
H |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
Hs |
- H* = Hand & star (Italian)
- W = Wheel (English)
- y = Gothic y (Champagne)
- H = Hand & star (probably English)
- R = Rose (English)
- Hs = Hand separated (perhaps English)
Notes