University of Virginia Library

3. London Publishing

McKenzie has observed that "There is still no satisfactory model of the economics of the London trade which usefully structures the dense and complex relationship between writers, printers, booksellers and readers during the hand-press period."[35] As I have shown, by blending title-page and Stationers' Register data with evidence derived from a physical examination of surviving books, we can begin to sketch patterns of large-scale printing-house activities. However, little financial documentation has survived the ravages of time and fire, and thus mapping the terrain of publishing activity in mid-Jacobean London is much more difficult. A title page might provide an imperfect glimpse at the business deals behind the book, but at best we can only use the collected data in broad strokes. During the five-year period in question, nearly 200 different names or organizations appear on title pages, over half of whom, according to title-page evidence, averaged less than 10 edition sheets per year. At the other end of the scale, the four establishments who controlled protected printing published 44% of the output during the same period. Table 5 details the twenty-two stationers who published or controlled the publication of at least 80 sheets a year, with the data broken down by total output, percent of output that is reprinted material, and subject classification.

As was the case with most commerce in early modern England, monopolies played a large role in determining who printed what texts, and the four most productive entities dealt primarily with protected printing. Henry VIII awarded patents for printing on royal privilege, while Edward gave limited-period patents for individual titles. Elizabeth, however, greatly expanded the concept of patents by awarding lifetime rights to print whole classes of books. It was during her reign that individuals began acquiring sole rights to biblical publication, prayer books, law books, Latin and Greek printing, almanacs, and the like. Poorer stationers infringed on the growing number of restricted texts, resulting in a stream of small squabbles within the Company. At the request of the Stationers' Company, the Star Chamber in 1586 reorganized the jumbled patent situation and most of the discord died away. In 1603 the materials that became known as the English Stock were awarded to the Company in perpetuity, including primers, Psalters, psalms, almanacs, and prognostications. This collection of protected works earned a significant income, and when the Stationers bought Abergavenny House in 1611 for their new hall they did so "from the stocke of the [par]tners in the Privilege."[36] A few years later in 1616 the English Stock was expanded and the Latin Stock formed; the latter was mainly concerned with the importation of Latin works from the continent and did very little domestic publishing.

Table 5. London publishing by output and genre, 1614-1618 (in edition sheets)

                                               

			Genre
Establishment[a]	Total	Proportion reprinted[b]	Information	Ephemera	History	Law &Politics	Literature	Official Docs.	Religion
King's Printing House	6069	73%	97	21	4	748	151	342	4706
Stationers' Company[c]	4898	63%	329	183	64	3071	259	—	992
Adam Islip	3751	63%	572	—	314	2550	56	1	258
John Legat	1970	50%	683	—	76	—	146	3	1062
Thomas Adams	1285	65%	619	—	390	—	96	—	180
Henry Featherstone	1268	62%	—	3	73	—	556	—	636
Thomas/Jonas Man	1242	58%	144	—	—	—	19	—	1079
Nathaniel Butter	1046	42%	—	40	—	—	185	2	819
Walter Burre	1036	43%	64	—	793	24	58	—	97
William/Isaac Jaggard	1021	17%	329	1	—	3	11	21	656
Officina Nortoniana[d]	967	0%	—	19	22	19	23	—	884
Matthew Lownes	871	33%	114	18	157	—	255	—	327
Mab/Edwards/Bloome[e]	751	39%	—	—	—	—	—	—	751
Arthur Johnson	672	66%	40	—	210	—	42	—	380
Roger Jackson	576	44%	268	—	—	—	57	—	251
Alsop/Creede	530	79%	39	—	40	—	385	—	66
William Barrett	530	33%	—	11	33	—	108	—	378
John Budge	487	37%	55	—	—	—	39	7	386
Nicholas Okes	474	40%	124	—	62	33	122	1	132
John Beale	462	9%	—	5	—	22	250	5	180
Simon Waterson	462	63%	5	—	180	—	31	—	246
Edward Blount	429	72%	—	1	—	—	134	—	294

Acquisition and ownership of book trade patents were not limited to stationers, but the bulk of these awards went to members of the trade.[37]

By the middle of James I's reign, protected printing fell into four groups:the English Stock, the Latin Stock, the King's Printer material (see below), and the Ballad partners.[38] The English Stock is the most important of these classes of texts, for it served the dual purpose of providing a steady return to those who could afford to invest in the stock (shares ranged from £50-200) while at the same time generating a pool of funds to assist poor stationers (a printer obtained the right to produce one edition by paying sixpence in the pound for the poor). Overall, the effect of these patents was to channel certain classes of books to a select group of stationers, the impact of which will become evident in the examination of individual printing houses that follows.

The most important and potentially profitable printing establishment in Jacobean London was the King's Printer. For the first 100 years of printing in England, royal publishing was essentially on a contractual or commission basis, with the title "King's Printer" or "Queen's Printer" applied only to a particular work or set of works and their production undertaken by private printing houses. However, when Christopher Barker was awarded the post in 1577 it became recognized as a distinct office in which publication rights lay not with an individual house or title but with the office itself. Barker also purchased Bacon House in 1579 and established it as a separate printing

office, a move that "led ultimately to the concept of a royal printing house under joint ownership."[39] When Barker retired ten years later his deputies George Bishop and Ralph Newberry ran the institution. In 1593 Barker's eldest son Robert became a third deputy, eventually acquiring the position and its patents outright in 1600.

Despite the broad variety of patents under its control, the office of the King's Printer experienced frequent financial difficulties. For a number of years Bonham Norton had dealings with Robert Barker, and at some point Norton and John Bill apparently became partners with Barker in the King's Printing Office, perhaps as part of an investment arrangement to pay for the so-called `Authorized Version' of the Bible in 1611. Early in the partnership things went smoothly, so smoothly in fact that Barker's eldest son Christopher and Norton's eldest daughter Sarah were married in 1615. However, Norton's aggressive and often unscrupulous activities soon resulted in Barker filing a suit in Chancery in 1618 to recover the office, an action that marked the beginning of a series of legal squabbles that would ultimately result in Norton's imprisonment in 1630 and subsequent retirement to Shropshire. Given the tangled business dealings of Barker, Bill, and Norton during this period, I am treating their individual and corporate efforts under the general heading of the King's Printer.

The bulk of the patents acquired over the years and controlled by the King's Printer consisted of a monopoly on the printing of large- and small-format Bibles, some prayer-books, and certain classes of official documents, of which the printing of Bibles consumed a majority of the office's time and resources. The large folio Royal Bible (containing the text of what is commonly called the King James Bible of 1611) could be a massive undertaking, for it was printed lectern size to be read in churches. The 1616 Royal Bible ran in 273 edition sheets (STC 2244), while one printed the next year required 366 (STC 2247),[40] or a total of 639 edition sheets for two Bibles (by comparison, the total five-year output of Purfoot's house was 637 sheets). The slightly smaller Geneva Bibles, usually printed in quarto format for personal use, were nonetheless large undertakings in themselves, with the two editions of the work published in 1615 accounting for 138 edition sheets apiece (STC 2241, 2242). Barker rarely ventured beyond Bibles, proclamations, and prayers: on one occasion in 1614 he printed a sermon by Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Ely (STC 622); around the same time he printed a couple of broadsides (without his name on the title page), one outlining table manners (STC23634.7), the other extolling the virtues of rosemary (STC 24844.7); in 1616 he printed some anti-Catholic tracts with John Bill (STC 6996, 6998). Other than these minor diversions, however, Barker seems to have focused solely

on printing materials whose patents he controlled. When Bill and Norton began to take a more active role in the office, their first task seems to have been printing a large retrospective collection of the proclamations of Elizabeth (STC 7758.3, 7886 sqq.). Once this project was underway they commenced printing the same materials that took all of Barker's attention. They also, under the auspices of the Officina Nortoniana and the royal patent for printing Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, printed a number of non-biblical controversial works and religious commentaries.

Overall, the King's Printer accounted for 6069 edition sheets, or roughly 17% of all London printing from 1614-1618, with slightly over one-half of that total devoted to Bibles and the Book of Common Prayer, while almost three-quarters of the office's production consisted of reprints. The scope of this particular paper does not go beyond output and genre, but it is part of a larger study that includes a detailed examination of the year 1616 and from which we can catch a glimpse of how the business managed its work flow. During this year the printing house issued 740 edition sheets of biblical text: two 2° Bibles, one 4° Bible, an 8° New Testament, a 24° New Testament, and a 24° collection of five Old Testament books. The office used three different type bodies (nonpareil, brevier, pica) and two different faces (roman and black letter), giving it extraordinary flexibility when juggling the setting, proofing, and printing of the texts. For example, the two large folios (a Geneva and a Royal Bible) were both set in a pica body, although one employed a roman face while the other was black letter. In practical terms this meant that the books could be set simultaneously since they used separate typecases. The proofing and printing could also take place simultaneously, with a sheet of black letter text being proofed while the roman text was being machined and vice versa. Likewise the 8° and 24° New Testaments could be printed concurrently, for the former volume was set in brevier while the latter was set in nonpareil. Efficiency may have been of particular importance in 1616, for in addition to biblical texts, Barker and Bill teamed up to print King James's A Collection of His Majesties Workes (STC 14344), a 154-sheet folio that must have tied up the press's font of english body type for a stretch of time. For all works produced by the King's Printer in 1616, roughly two-thirds of the composition was in pica, one-third in brevier and english, with a small amount of nonpareil and great primer.

While the King's Printer held the patent on large- and small-format Bibles, prayer books and the like, Adam Islip had upon Thomas Wight's death in 1605 bought the rights to print law books belonging to the English Stock. As a result, for much of his career he was engaged in producing multiple editions of a relatively small collection of titles. For example, between 1605 and 1629 (when the law patent expired and the rights passed to the assignees of John More), he published over thirty-two editions of the highly profitable law reports of Sir Edward Coke (averaging from forty to eighty edition sheets each, STC 5493-5526.5) as well as Coke's massive 1614 Booke of Entries (368 edition sheets, STC 5488), and large law compilations such as the 1618 folio A Collection of Sundrie Statutes (382 edition sheets, STC

9328). The exact value of the volumes printed by Islip is unknown—the order awarding him the right only noted he be charged "such reasonable rate & alowance as shal be judged to be sufficient . . . from tyme to tyme"[41] —but evidence exists to indicate that the Company held these patents in high regard. For example, when the Stationers purchased the rights to Ashe's Le Primier Volume del Promptuarie they contracted to pay James Pagett of the Middle Temple £50 a year for six years.[42]

The Company also contributed financing to the production of these titles, especially during the first years after Islip's assumption of the printing rights. Between 10 November 1606 and 12 October 1607, Islip was awarded sums by the Company to help pay for the publication of an octavo edition of Christopher St. German's The Dialogue in English, Betweene a Doctor of Diuinities, and a Student in the Lawes of England (23 sheets, STC 21578), a folio edition of Coke's law digest La Size Part des Reports (46 sheets, STC5509), an octavo edition of William Lambard's Eirenarcha: or the Office of the Iustices of the Peace (44 sheets, STC 15171), and what is likely a lost edition of one or both parts of William Fulbecke's A Parallel or Conference of the Civil Law, the Canon Law, and the Common Law of England (approximately twenty-three sheets for Part 1 and thirty-one sheets for Part 2, STC 11415 and 11415a).[43] The records concerning the last two titles include the size of the edition and the price allowed for paper, from which we can estimate that Islip was paid roughly £29 for the Lambard volume[44] and perhaps £13 or £14 for Fulbecke's Parallel. [45] Ten years later Islip received nearly £300 for the Collection of Sundrie Statutes mentioned above,[46] while in 1622 he and John Haviland were awarded an undetermined sum for printing Richard Montagu's Analecta Ecclesiasticarum Exercitationum (106 sheets, STC 18029).

Of course, the individual books themselves had value, and care was taken to prevent those who had the right to produce them from printing a few extra copies for private sale. In 1627 the Stationers' Court issued an edict calling for strict accounting of the paper supplied for each work so that the Company could check for surreptitious extra copies by comparing the amount of material consumed with the number of books printed. Islip himself testified in 1622 that he paid each workman 4d a title "in liewe of a Copie due to them by the Custome of the Companie,"[47] and was compensated for his expense. Islip was also a member of the ill-fated Irish Stock when it was created in 1618.

During the 1614-1618 period, Islip printed a little over 3750 edition

sheets, or roughly 10% of the total London production. Of these works, two-thirds were legal volumes, 15% were education-related (mainly a couple of French vocational works and John Rider's Latin-English dictionary, STC21034), 10% history (a translation of Pierre d'Avity's The Estates, Empires& Principallities of the World, STC 988), 8% religion (an annotated New Testament), and a smattering of literary publishing. Indeed, with the exception of the five large volumes parenthetically mentioned, almost everything Islip printed during this period derived from the lawbook patent and the English Stock. When compared with the London trade in general, Islip printed half of all material classified under Law and Politics, with the only significant work of law not printed by Islip being As he's Le Primier Volume (printed by John Beale).

The overwhelming emphasis on large lawbooks is reflected in the size and format of Islip's output as well. While the average size of a work printed in London during this time was a little more than twenty-one sheets (see above), over the same period Islip averaged eighty-five sheets per title. He also printed mainly folio volumes, with 71% of his output printed in that format, 19% quarto, 9% octavo, and the remaining 1% contained in a pair of small duodecimos. After the lawbook patent expired, Islip remained an active and important member of the Stationers' Company, serving as warden and master. He died in the fall of 1638.

Beyond the London trade a smaller market for specialized books existed at the two universities. A charter in 1534 gave Cambridge University the right to erect a press for its own use, although it wasn't until 1583 that Thomas Thomas set up a house and began printing books for the local market. The London Stationers attempted to crush what they viewed as an infringement on their prerogative, and although a Star Chamber decree in 1586 recognized the right of the university to maintain one press, disagreements continued well into the seventeenth century. John Legat was well-connected within the Company, apprenticing with Christopher Barker and moving to Cambridge, first as the assistant and then in 1588 the successor to Thomas, who was also his father-in-law. Legat ran the Cambridge office for twenty-two years before moving his enterprise to London around 1610, where he operated until his death in 1620. Both Thomas and Legat were independent businessmen who ran a house licensed by the university but not owned by it. Thus when Legat moved to the larger London market he took all his equipment and materials with him, leaving his successor in rather bad straits.[48] With the exception of Nicholas Okes, Legat is the only master printer listed of the period not to be liveried. The Stationers had been a livery Company since 1560, and this gave them certain rights in city and parliamentary governance. Individual stationers called to livery could vote in Company and city elections as well as stand for office, and it also made one eligible to purchase shares in the English Stock. A stationer who was

called to livery and refused could be fined,[49] although there is no record of Legat being either called or fined.

As one might expect from a stationer associated with the Cambridge University (even after the move to London he continued to call himself "Printer to the University" and to use the Cambridge device),[50] a significant amount of Legat's output was aimed at the academic and intellectual market; roughly 32% of his output was informational, with the bulk of that total resulting from a single reprint of the 233-sheet folio Praxis Medicinae Universalis in 1617 (STC 25865). The remainder of his production was religious (58%), supplemented by a smattering of literature (6%) and history (4%). Almost all of Legat's religious output consisted of large-format volumes of commentary or instruction by divines like William Perkins, with 58% imposed in folio and 29% in quarto. Consequently the average size of his titles is twice that of the trade in general—over forty-one edition sheets per work. He died in 1620 and his son, also named John, took over the business.

Ranking publishers by total output clearly displays the primacy of protected printing. If we view publishing activity according to specific types of works being produced, however, certain other patterns begin to emerge. In some areas a handful of concerns dominated son, also named John, took over the business.

Ranking publishers by total output clearly displays the primacy of protected printing. If we view publishing activity according to specific types of works being produced, however, certain other patterns begin to emerge. In some areas a handful of concerns dominated the trade, for example in Law and Politics where the Stationers' Company (3071 sheets) and Islip (2550 sheets) were responsible for the bulk of the output. Likewise the King's Printing House controlled the printing of Official Documents while the Stationers, with the Almanac patent, determined who printed most extant Ephemera. In other areas the work is much more dispersed. Legat and Islip published a significant amount of works of Information, but eleven others published at least 100 edition sheets from 1614-1618 (see table 6). Even

Table 6. London information publishing by output, 1614-1618

                           

Publisher	Edition sheets
John Legat	683
Thomas Adams	619
Adam Islip	572
Stationers	329
William & Isaac Jaggard	329
Roger Jackson	268
Thomas & Jonas Man	144
John Tapp	136
John Browne	133
Nicholas Okes	124
Richard Field	123
John Marriot	117
Matthew Lownes	114

more diverse is literary publishing, where 17 stationers published at least 100 edition sheets during the period of this study (see table 7). History is dominated by Walter Burre, whose two editions of Walter Ralegh's History of the World in 1614 and 1617 (STC 20637 and 20638, 394 sheets each) place

Table 7. London literary publishing by output, 1614-1618

                                   

Publisher	Edition sheets
Henry Fetherstone	556
Alsop/Creede	385
Stationers	259
Matthew Lownes	255
John Beale	250
Humble & Sudbury	231
Laurence Lisle	230
John Smethwick	188
Nathaniel Butter	185
King's Printing House	151
John Legat	146
Edward Blount	134
George Norton	133
Nicholas Okes	122
Thomas Archer	112
William Barrett	108
Thomas Purfoot	105

him far ahead of Thomas Adams (390 sheets), Adam Islip (314 sheets), Arthur Johnson (210 sheets), Simon Waterson (180 sheets), Matthew Lownes (157 sheets), and George Purslowe (128 sheets). Fewer than forty stationers in all can be identified as working with this subject area.

Finally, the more complex area of religious publication is a mixture of dominance and diversity. The King's Printing House controlled the printing of most Bibles and all Books of Common Prayer (although Islip and Adams did publish some New Testaments), while the Stationers determined Psalm printing; these works constituted about one-quarter of the total religious publishing during this time. A slightly larger group marketed devotional works, where five concerns issued half the output—John Budge (170), Nicholas Bourne (155), Sam & Joyce Macham (139), the Stationers' Company (115), and the joint venture of Ralph Mab, George Edwards and Jacob Bloome (114). Likewise, three-quarters of the controversial works were published by the King's Printing House (740), Officina Nortoniana (656), Matthew Lownes (283), William Barrett (196), Nathaniel Butter (124), and Henry Fetherstone (122). Eleven different establishments contributed to the publication of religious instruction (see table 8), while even more worked with commentary (see table 9).

Sermon publishing is a little more difficult to outline. While two groups of stationers stand out from the rest—Ralph Mab, George Edwards and

Table 8. London religious instruction publishing by output, 1614-1618

                       

Publisher	Edition sheets
John Legat	428
Thomas & Jonas Man	303
Arthur Johnson	212
Mab/Edwards/Bloome	208
William & Isaac Jaggard	143
Thomas Pavier	135
Richard Woodroffe	121
William Barrett	112
Edward Blount	108
John Hodgets	107
Nathaniel Butter	102

Table 9. London religious commentary publishing by output, 1614-1618

                             

Publisher	Edition sheets
John Legat	587
William & Isaac Jaggard	485
Thomas & Jonas Man	464
Nathaniel Butter	458
Henry Fetherstone	395
William Aspley	286
William Bladen	238
King's Printing House	228
Officina Nortoniana	228
Thomas Chard	162
Sam & Joyce Macham	127
Richard Field	116
Mab/Edwards/Bloome	103
Simon Waterson	100

Jacob Bloome (327 sheets), and Thomas and Jonas Man (292 sheets)—roughly half of all stationers that we can identify as being involved in publishing during this period printed at least one sermon. The top five sermon publishers controlled approximately one-third of the output, the next fourteen controlled another third, and the remaining 75+ the final third. Compare this with Commentary (36 publishers), Controversial (35 publishers), Devotional (59 publishers), and Instructional (73 publishers).