University of Virginia Library

John Norton the Printer: An Attribution (1622)
by
Wayne Franklin

It seems reasonable, given his reputation as a man and a writer, that the New England minister John Norton (1606-1663) could have written An Answer to a Late Scurrilous and Scandalous Pamphlet (London, 1642), a brief anonymous work assigned to him in Donald Wing's Short-Title Catalogue. A hasty response to The Downfall of Old Common Councill Men, an attack on the city administration of London produced in the same year by one John Bond, An Answer quickly becomes the defense of established procedures and traditional prerogatives which one might expect the author of The Orthodox Evangelist (1654) and other such works to have made—as when it accuses Bond of possessing a "naturall inclination to rayle against Authoritie."[1]

But Wing's attribution raises a number of unanswered questions—for one thing, the mechanics of Norton's procuring a copy of The Downfall from London and then sending his answer back in a brief time seem rather complicated. Wing sidesteps such issues, however, by resting his attribution solely on bibliographic evidence, mainly on the one great identifying mark on An Answer, a rebus on the title-page that is easily decipherable: enclosed in an ornate box is the word "Nor," standing above a keg or "tun."

But in itself a rebus pointing to such a common name can offer only the vaguest suggestion of authorship, a fact which Wing's primary authority for anonymous works, the British Museum Catalogue of Printed Books, recognized in listing the pamphlet under Common Council Men: An Answer, simply noting that the title page bears a "rebus of Norton." Yet other sources, apparently those from which Wing's attribution was derived, are not so cautious. An earlier publication of the museum, the Catalogue of the "Thomason tracts," lists the work by its own title, but substitutes a bracketted "J. Norton" in place of a more strictly correct reference to the rebus. Likewise, Halkett and Laing, dropping the brackets, simply identify "J. Norton" as the author.[2]

Assuming that Wing derived his own identification from these last two works, I would suggest either that his Norton and theirs are not the same man, or that both Wing and his sources err. My main reason for suggesting this view is the fact that there was another John Norton, a London printer who may have died before 1642 (his death date is uncertain), but whose firm, carried on by his family, was active at the time An Answer appeared.[3] The rebus, I would argue, is a printer's mark, not an indication of authorship.

Bolstering this position is some typographical evidence linking the pamphlet with other Norton products. Specifically, the ornaments of An Answer—the type ornaments which form a border along the head of the first page, for example, are of exactly the same kind as those used in various other books printed by Norton. Composed of national symbols (the fleur-de-lis, etc.), and surmounted by crowns, these ornaments are prominent in such works as John Tatham's The Fancies Theater (STC 23704), Wilhelm Fabricius' Lithotomia Vesicae (STC 10658), and Richard Bernard's Common Catechisme (STC 1933), all of which Norton issued in 1640.[4]

More conclusive than these border ornaments, however, is the presence in An Answer of an elaborate initial letter found in other Norton books. The Letter, a hollow-stemmed "T" surrounded by a floral design, contains enough defects to be identifiable, and it plainly was printed from the same piece of type as an initial "T" in William Barlow's Summe and Substance (STC 1456), printed by Norton in 1638.[5] The best way to verify this assertion is to compare the two letters visually; for the present purpose, however, a verbal description will suffice. In each letter the joint between the stem and the crosspiece points out a noticeable defect: for the hollow area just above the joint is slightly thinner than it is at either end of the crosspiece, the border of black ink at the head of the letter being thicker here than elsewhere. The base of the stem in each case also is irregular: the left-hand side rises toward the stem proper at a greater angle than does the right. All of this is admittedly technical, but when the letters in question are compared with example T1 and T4 in C. William

Miller's "A London Ornament Stock: 1598-1683," printed in an earlier volume of Studies in Bibliography, it becomes clear that such defects can be used as the basis of defensible judgments.[6]

A final piece of evidence gives further support to my argument. Although not evident from a simple examination of An Answer, the rebus on its title-page, despite its apparent vagueness, is actually a fairly conclusive identifying mark—for at least two other members of the Norton family employed similar devices. William Norton (1527-1593), who was master of the Stationers' Company for three terms, and who seems to have been John Norton's grandfather, used a "Nor"-tun device to which was added, for further identification, an emblematic sweet-william plant—and his son, Bonham Norton (1565-1635), also employed this same rebus.[7] It seems highly likely, in light of these earlier uses of the rebus, that its occurrence in the pamphlet of 1642 strengthens my attribution of that work to the press of John Norton or his associates and successors. The New England namesake of that London printer, by the same token, would seem to be a strange candidate indeed for the role of author.[8]

Notes