Studies in bibliography | ||
THE BAGFORD CHAPEL RULES: A SET OF ENGLISH PRINTING
HOUSE
REGULATIONS, CIRCA 1686–1707
by
Alan D. Boehm
It is generally believed that only three sets of English
printing house
regulations—"chapel rules"—have come down to us
from the period be-
fore 1800. One set, the rules of the Bowyer firm, was
written in a ledger book in
the late 1750s by the younger William Bowyer and
one or two of his workmen.
This set appears to be incomplete, for it includes
no rules addressing the work
of pressmen. A second and obviously complete set
of rules survives from Samuel
Richardson's printing house. These are preserved
in a broadsheet bearing a let-
terpress date of August 30, 1734, and the
signatures of 20 journeyman printers
Richardson employed at the time. A third
group of chapel rules appears in Joseph
Moxon's Mechanick
Exercises on the Whole Art of Printing of 1683 and 1684. Unlike
Bowyer's and Richardson's regulations, these rules did not originate in a specific
printing house. Moxon merely offered them as examples of rules "usually and
generally accepted" among late seventeenth-century printers.[1]
These three sets of chapel rules have figured as valuable historical evidence
in bibliographical studies concerned with the late 1600s and the 1700s. Because
they imposed standards of behavior on journeymen and promoted order in the
complicated technical procedures demanded by concurrent production, the
the relationship between the master and his journeymen, and other aspects of
printing.[2] It should interest scholars, then, to learn that a fourth and practically
unknown set of chapel rules from the period is preserved in the British Library's
Department of Printed Books. These are conveyed in a broadsheet bearing the
headline "Orders to be Observed in this Printing-House."[3] The document is
part of the Bagford Title-pages Collection, which was assembled during the late
1600s and early 1700s by John Bagford (1650–1716), a London book dealer and
an antiquarian with a keen interest in bibliography. Bagford formed the Collec-
tion in anticipation of writing, as he announced in a 1707 subscription proposal,
an ambitious but never completed "Historical Treatise, on that most Universally
Famous, as well as Useful Art of Typography."[4] Along with approximately 3,600
title pages of early English printed books, Bagford also collected book plates, type
specimens, paper samples, printers' and booksellers' devices, book and manu-
script auction catalogues, and other materials associated with printing, almost
all of which can be dated to a period from 1528 to 1716.[5] Insofar as the whole
of the Bagford Collection has been surveyed and its contents enumerated, the
"Orders" has not entirely escaped scholarly attention. It has been noted, albeit
not described, in a handful of bibliographic publications. A. W. Pollard listed
the "Orders" in an article, "A Rough List of the Contents of the Bagford Col-
lection," published in the Transactions of the Bibliographical Society for 1902–1904.
Ellic Howe glanced at the "Orders" in a footnote in his 1947 book, The London
Compositor, Documents Relating to Wages, Working Conditions and Customs of the London
Printing Trade, 1785–1900. And in his 1974 Catalogue and Indexes to the Title-pages
of English Printed Books Preserved in the British Library's Bagford Collection, Melvin H.
its entirety.[6]
Unfortunately, the "Orders" is something of a fragment. In its original state,
the document's dimensions apparently exceeded the leaves of the volume into
which it was pasted, and so to make the "Orders" fit Bagford cropped the head,
foot, and side margins, and he also cut away a strip of white space in the middle
of the sheet between the last rule directed to compositors and the sub-headline
over the press room rules (consequently, the "Orders" survives in two pieces
and
each bears a British Museum stamp).[7]
Despite Bagford's pruning, the text of the
"Orders"—headline,
sub-headlines, and a total of 28 rules—appears wholly in-
tact and there
is no obvious indication, material or textual, of any missing text. It
is
certainly possible that in its original state the "Orders" resembled Richardson's
chapel rules and included, like Richardson's, a letterpress date as well as the
sig-
natures of the journeymen who assented to its regulations. Had these been
part
of the original document, and had they later escaped Bagford's scissors,
the "Or-
ders" would include information that could help us identify it with a
particular
printing house doing business at a particular time and place.
We can assume the "Orders" was drawn up and printed in or before 1716,
for this
was the year of Bagford's death and, moreover, no items in the Bagford
Collection can be dated beyond 1716. But the document was more likely printed
in or before 1706 or 1707. The earlier dates are suggested by a letter from
the
scholar and antiquarian Humfrey Wanley to Sir Hans Sloane published in
the
Royal Society's Philosophical Transactions for the years the
1706–1707. There
Wanley briefly describes the contents of the volumes
Bagford had assembled
for his "Historical Treatise." According to Wanley, "In
one Volume there are
Specimens of Letters of all sorts,
as well as those used in Foreign Countries, as in
can be described as "Specimens of Letters," only one—Harley 5915, the volume
that preserves the "Orders"—appears to contain both English and foreign type
sheets as well as examples of English and foreign initials.[9] Among other materials,
this volume includes initials from Basle, Venice, and England; Dutch and English
type specimens; proofs of letters made by Moxon, and a type specimen prepared
by the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English printer Hugh Meere.[10]
It is more difficult, however, to assign a terminus a quo to
the origins of the
"Orders." The document is a species of print ephemera and,
as numerous mate-
rials in the Bagford Collection can attest, Bagford earnestly
acquired ephemera
produced throughout the seventeenth century and much of the
sixteenth century.
Still, the "Orders" likely originated no earlier than 1686,
or perhaps not too long
before 1686. In that year, Bagford became extensively
involved with the book
trade as a commissioned collector who sought out early
printed books for Robert
and Edward Harley, Sir Hans Sloane, Samuel Pepys,
Bishop John Moore of Ely,
and other notable collectors of the time. Bagford
continued these efforts into the
eighteenth century, for an account book he
kept indicates book acquisitions on
behalf of various clients as late as
1708.[11]
No doubt, this activity brought him into
numerous printing houses and
into contact with numerous master printers, one
of whom may have placed the
"Orders" in his hands. The terminus a quo of 1686
or
thereabouts seems somewhat more plausible if we consider the more or less
limited utility of chapel rules in a printing house. As a printing business devel-
oped or as conditions of trade changed, a new set of rules incorporating
revised
or additional regulations could eventually replace an old set. Samuel
Richard-
son's 1734 rules, for example, probably replaced an earlier set dating
from the
1720s, for in their emphasis on haste and efficiency the new rules
seem to reflect
his increasing involvement in periodical printing.[12]
When Richardson and other
masters posted their new regulations, the
sheet of superseded rules undoubtedly
suffered the same fate as other waste and
spoiled paper in a contemporary print-
ing house. Unless someone like Bagford
asked for it, the sheet was put aside and
eventually reused for some other
purpose. We might reasonably suppose, then,
that the "Orders" would have been
lost to posterity had it been printed a good
many years prior to Bagford's
initial collecting activities in 1686.
If the "Orders" cannot be exactly dated, the document and the scope of
its
regulations are clearly of a piece with the other English chapel rules of the
period. Like the Richardson regulations and what we have of the Bowyer regula-
tions, the "Orders" is organized into a group of rules concerned with workplace
addressing the work of compositors, and yet another specifically addressing the
pressmen. The first group includes prohibitions and fines exacted for gaming,
fighting, breaking windows, and leaving burning candles unattended. These rules
present nothing out of the ordinary; in one form or another, they also appear
in the Moxon, Richardson, and Bowyer regulations. Of the rules focused on
compositors and pressmen, the "Orders" also presents nothing extraordinary:
among other tasks, compositors are admonished to take care of type and equip-
ment, distribute sorts in a timely manner, and correct proof soon after it is read
and any errors identified; pressmen are admonished to print proof quickly fol-
lowing delivery of a form, to wash forms at day's end, take care of their balls and
pelts, and the like. Rules to similar effect appear in Moxon's, Richardson's, and
Bowyer's regulations.
Numerous interesting but minor differences distinguish the "Orders" from
the
other chapel rules. For example, here and there Richardson's regulations
give
the impression that printing at Salisbury Court was considerably more
hectic
than printing at the shop where the "Orders" originated. "Proofs to be
made in
a Quarter of an Hour," one of Richardson's rules warned his pressmen
(Richardson's compositors were also given a quarter hour to begin corrections).
Yet the "Orders" suggests a slightly less hurried pace: the pressmen were required
"to make Proof, or Proofs, within an Hour after the Form, or Forms, are brought
in" (similarly, the compositors were also allowed one hour to begin
correction).
Of course, such variations ought to be expected. They ensued from
the shops'
differing technical resources, financial circumstances, and the
number and char-
acter of printing jobs they undertook.
Neither Moxon's, Richardson's, nor Bowyer's regulations include rules spe-
cifically directed towards apprentices, but four such rules appear in the "Orders."
Two of these are concerned with apprentice compositors. One rule addresses
housekeeping: "The youngest Prentice of this Room, every Wednesday and Satur-
day, that he neglects the
sweeping, and carrying the Dirt out of this said Room,
forfeits Two Pence." The
second rule stipulates that "He that's ordered to hang
up the Heaps, and does
not within two Days after they are wrought off, likewise
forfeits Two Pence."
Of the two rules directed towards the press room appren-
tices, one reiterates
the housekeeping rule, charging the youngest apprentice with
the sweeping and
cleaning, and the other rule is a warning to the same appren-
tice: "And that
Morning he stirs not the Lye, Two Pence."
The "Orders" is also distinctive in lacking a rule or a cluster of rules specify-
ing payment of a "bienvenue." This was the traditional entrance fee the jour-
neymen of a shop demanded from any new worker and the money was typically
used to buy drink for all the workmen. Rules requiring payment of the bienvenue
appear in Moxon's, Richardson's, and Bowyer's regulations. Richardson's rules
offer us a succinct example: "Every Freeman's Bienvenue, if the first Time of his
working in the House, 18d. Every one not free, but
having a Right, 2s. 6d. Every
one
having no Right, 5s. An Apprentice, 5s.
The eldest Freeman to pay 1s." The
absence of a similar
rule in the "Orders" is noteworthy because, in the eyes of
journeymen, the
bienvenue was considered a venerable and inviolable printing
house tradition.
In Mechanick Exercises, Moxon described the fee as an ancient
lookt upon by all Workmen as the undoubted Right of the Chappel, and therefore
never disputed" (326). Indeed, rules requiring entrance fees also appear in chapel
regulations originating elsewhere in Europe, where as early as the 1550s the pay-
ment of a bienvenue already figured as a custom of long standing.[13]
What, if any, significance should we ascribe to this omission in the "Orders"?
We might well imagine that the master thought it unnecessary to include a rule or
set of rules addressing the bienvenue and specifying a range of fees, because
the
custom was not only entrenched in contemporary London printing houses, but
also because, across certain lengths of time, the fees were likely fixed and
stan-
dardized throughout the city's shops. Moxon's chapel rules contain only
three
bienvenues and associated fees, but these—the only English
regulations known,
with certainty, to survive from the late 1600s—can be
compared to no other
contemporary record of bienvenues.[14]
However, the Richardson and Bowyer
chapel rules do suggest fixed fees.
Both specify a five-shilling bienvenue for ap-
prentices. They contain rules
requiring a one-shilling, six-pence bienvenue from
the journeyman who had
served a full apprenticeship at London and had become
a freeman of the
Stationers' Company (or, in some instances, had become a free-
man of another
city company). And both the Richardson and Bowyer regulations
demand a
two-shilling, six-pence bienvenue from the journeyman who was, as
the
Richardson rules put it, "not free, but having a Right"—that is, the workman
who had served an apprenticeship outside London and had a right to work, but
who did not hold a London freedom.
Still, even if bienvenues were consistent from one printing house to another
and well known to journeymen, the attention given them in Moxon's, Richard-
son's, and Bowyer' rules would suggest that it was indeed necessary to explicitly
set forth such rules and the associated fees in chapel regulations. If this was
in fact
the case, it seems doubtful that experienced workmen composing,
proofreading,
shop rule. It seems equally doubtful that a master would refuse to comply with
a printing house tradition that was, as Moxon explained, "lookt upon by all
Workmen as the undoubted Right of the Chappel," for the workmen could find a
means of redressing the situation. When the London master printer John Watts
prohibited his men from enforcing a chapel rule that, as they saw it, required
Benjamin Franklin to pay a five-shilling bienvenue after Watts moved him from
presswork to composing, the men ignored Watts and retaliated against Franklin
by mixing his type and breaking up his settings whenever he left the composing
room.[15] But perhaps there was a good reason to omit the rule in the "Orders,"
although explaining the matter would seem to require knowledge of the printing
house in question.
Despite these various differences, the "Orders," on the whole, has much in
common with the other chapel regulations of the period, as most of its rules are
either included or implied in the other regulations. Moreover, with the excep-
tion of Moxon's rules, which do not specify the monetary value of infractions,
the fines recorded in the "Orders" are roughly the same as the fines attached
to
Richardson's and Bowyer's rules.[16]
Although we can only compare fines exacted
from compositors, the
"Orders" and the Richardson and Bowyer rules suggest
that most violations would
cost the journeyman either one or two pence. Thus,
of the nine rules pertinent
to compositors in the "Orders," eight carried a two-
pence fine and one a
four-pence fine. Of the sixteen composing room rules in
Richardson's
regulations, five carried a one-pence fine, ten a two-pence fine,
and one
carried either a two-pence or a six-pence fine. And of the eight rules
for
compositors in the Bowyer regulations, one carried a one-pence fine, four a
two-pence fine, one a three-pence fine, one a four-pence fine, and one a six-pence
fine. (It should be noted that one of the two-pence fines and the four and six-
pence fines represent incremental fines of two pence for every week a
compositor
failed to his clear work after it was wrought off.)
Different commercial circumstances inevitably enveloped different printing
businesses, and the demands and temperaments among the masters surely var-
ied,
but the general parity of fines across these three chapel rules suggests that
masters and journeymen shared an understanding of what constituted a fair and
reasonable fine. And this was an understanding that apparently persisted across
time. If we momentarily assume the "Orders" originated no later than 1706 or
1707—five decades before the Bowyer rules were written down—then we
might
note that for a period of at least 50 years a two-pence fine remained
constant
for the same offense: the compositor who neglected tying up and
papering type
prior to distribution. "Not tying up all Letter (by him us'd)
within one Week after
using; or tying two-lin'd Letters, White Lines. And
Letters of different Bodies, or
Faces, up together, Two Pence," so the "Orders"
demands. In the Richardson
an Act or Job for his own Conveniency, to tie up the Pages and Indorsement im-
mediately, if not done with. If done with, he that compos'd the Job, or fill'd up
the Blanks, to tie them up in Pieces convenient for Papering, in two Days after
Notice given of their being laid up, on Forfeiture for every Day's Neglect for
every Page or Indorsement, of 2d." And the Bowyer rules, as well, impose the
two-pence fine: "He that shall neglect tying up Matter as soon as ye Furniture is
taken from it, or y[e]t shall leave Matter, or a single line, even of Quadrats on
a Board untied 0:0:2."
To be sure, the "Orders" reveals no new and significant information about
late
seventeenth and early eighteenth-century printing houses. But the docu-
ment
does amplify our knowledge of the work that unfolded and the working
conditions
that prevailed in those houses. And, it might be added, what Keith
Maslen has
said of the Bowyer rules seems equally relevant to the "Orders."
"If the Bowyer
Rules," as Maslen observes, "afford no startling new insights,
their general
similarity to the earlier sources is a useful reminder that the an-
cient
practices were continuing to exert a stabilizing influence on a conservative
industry."[17]
APPENDIX
ORDERS
To be Observed in this
PRINTING-HOUSE.[18]
- I. Going out of the House, and leaving his Candle burning, Four Pence.
- II. Breaking the Windows within a Year after they are made, Four Pence.
- III. Fighting in the Printing-House, Six Pence.
- IV. Playing at any Game in the Printing-House, Six Pence.
First, Every Member of this House forfeits for
- I. Mis-matching the Cases either in Frames or elsewhere, Two Pence.
- II. Letting any Case, or part of Case, hang out of the Case-Frame, Two Pence.
- III. Leaving any two-lin'd Letters, Braces, Rules, &c. in any Cases, Windows, Gallies, or
upon Boards, &c. after using, Two Pence. - IV. Leaving any Distribution-Notes, Hebrew, Greek, or any other
Distribution-Matter,
Corrections, or Pye, in either Gallies, Cases, Window, or any other Place, longer
than two Days at furthest, Four Pence. - V. Not tying up all Letter (by him us'd) within one Week after using; or
tying two-lin'd
Letters, White Lines, and Letters of different Bodies, or Faces, up together, Two
Pence. - VI. Not Distributing all Titles, and Title-Pages, within a Weeks time after
they be out
of Chaces, except order to the contrary, Two Pence. - VII. Cumbering either of the Imposing Stones with a Page or Pages, before he
is ready
to Impose, Two Pence. - VIII. Neglecting to correct his Proof, or Proofs, for an Hour after they are
Read, Two
Pence. - IX. Letting fall Letter under his Case, or elsewhere, and not taking up, and
distributing,
the same, Two Pence. - [type fist] The youngest Prentice of this
Room, every Wednesday and Saturday,
that he neglects the sweeping, and carrying out the Dirt of this said Room,
forfeits Two Pence. - He that's ordered to hang up the Heaps, and does not within two
Days after they
are wrought off, likewise forfeits Two Pence.
Secondly, Every Member of the Composing-Room forfeits for
- I. Not setting the Friskets behind his Press, out of the way, Two Pence.
- II. Not putting the Wools in their proper Places, Two Pence.
- III. Not taking off the Balls on Saturday at Night, Two Pence.
- IV. Letting any Lumber and Trash lye on the Bank, or about the Press, Two Pence.
- V. Not washing the Form at Night, on which he has wrought all Day, Two Pence.
- VI. Not taking off to make a Proof, or Proofs, within an Hour after the
Form, or Forms,
are brought in, Two Pence. - VII. Putting his Pelts, Balls, or Caps for Balls, &c. into the Lye-Kettle, or Washing-
Trough, Two Pence. - [type fist] The youngest Prentice of this
Room, every Wednesday and Saturday, that
he neglects the sweeping, and carrying out the Dirt of this said Room,
forfeits Two Pence. - And that Morning he stirs not the Lye, Two Pence.
- All Wagers lay'd in the House, are forfeited to the Workmen.
- All Money given to either Room (except
the Donors stay) to drink, is to be kept in
Bank, and spent Quarterly. - All that are, or hereafter shall be, Members of this House, must be conformable to these
Orders, or liable to the Penalties aforesaid. - If any Contest shall arise in any of these Orders aforementioned, it shall be referr'd to
the Major Part of the Workmen; and, if they do not decide it, then to the
Master.
Thirdly, Every Member of the Press-Room forfeits for
I have maintained the spelling and punctuation as well as the use of capital
and italic
found in the "Orders." Readers can assume the long s
appears in the "Orders" where it should
be expected to occur in a
printed text of the period (at the beginning and middle of a word, but
not at the end of a word). The document employs two type fists (that is,
pointing hands), which
appear in italic text in brackets where they
occur in the original document. Finally, the first
rule of the
"Orders" ("Going out of the House, and leaving his Candle burning, Four
Pence.")
was typeset with a four-line capital G.
Bowyer's rules are preserved in the British Library of Political and Economic
Science,
MS Collection G.1521, folios 23 and 24. They are fully cited and
discussed by Keith Maslen
in An Early London Printing
House at Work: Studies in the Bowyer Ledgers (New York: Bibliographi-
cal Society of America, 1993), 123–126. Maslen has found no
evidence in the firm's surviving
papers that these rules were implemented
and enforced in Bowyer's printing operation. He
also notes the absence of
rules addressing presswork. Richardson's rules survive in the British
Library, Additional Manuscript MS 27799, folio 88. They are reprinted in Ellic
Howe, The
London Compositor: Documents Relating to
Wages, Working Conditions and Customs of the London Print-
ing
Trade (London: Bibliographical Society, 1947), 29–32. Howe did
not identify the rules with
Richardson's shop. That connection was made
by T. D. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel in
"Two Notes on Samuel
Richardson," The Library 5th ser. 23 (1968):
242–247. Moxon's rules
are included in an appendix he prepared for
Mechanick Exercises that records "Ancient Customs
used in a Printing-house." Most of the rules Moxon
described as representative, but a handful
comprised rules of "some
particular Chappels." See Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises on the
Whole Art of Printing,
ed. Herbert Davis and Henry Carter (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1962),
323–325. Subsequent page references are to this edition of Mechanick Exercises and are cited in
parentheses in
my text. Because Bowyer's and Richardson's rules are easily located in Howe's
and Maslen's books, I dispense with providing parenthetical page
references in my text where
I quote specific rules.
For studies of the early regulations, see Frederick C. Avis, "Chapel Rules of
the Early
Printers," Gutenburg Jahrbuch (1969):
98–102; I. C. Cannon, "The Roots of Organization
among Journeyman
Printers," Journal of the Printing Historical Society 4
(1968): 99–107; Léon
Voet, "The Printers' Chapel in the
Plantinian House," The Library, 5th ser. 16 (1961):
1–14;
and Jan Materné, "Chapel Members in the Workplace:
Tension and Teamwork in the Printing
Trades in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries," International Review of Social
History 39
(Supplement 2: Before the Unions: Wage Earners and
Collective Action in Europe 1300–1850)
(1994): 53–83.
Harley 5915, folio 112. The "Orders" is marked item 217 in the volume. I thank
Dr. Peter Lindenbaum for acquiring a copy of the "Orders" for me and for
sharing his notes
on the document.
J[ohn] Bagford, "An Essay, Towards a Historical Treatise, on that Most
Universally
Famous, as well as Useful Art of Typography" (London, [1707]). My quotation in the text is
from
the subscription proposal Bagford circulated in a broadside, but the
proposal also circulated
in a pamphlet with a sample essay on William
Caxton. The Houghton Library at Harvard
University holds a copy of the
broadside, and the British Library holds copies of both the
broadside and
the pamphlet. For an account of the two proposals and additional information
on the intended breadth of the "Treatise," see the article on Bagford's
life and book collecting
by Milton McC. Gatch, "John Bagford, Bookseller
and Antiquary," British Library Journal 12
(1986):
150–171.
Although the British Library's web site notes that the Bagford Collection
consists of
materials originating between 1528 and 1715, at least one
item—an engraving of Bagford
himself—is dated 1716.
A. W. Pollard, "A Rough List of the Contents of the Bagford Collection," Transactions
of the Bibliographical Society 7
(1902–1904): 149–153; Howe 30, note 1 (see note 1 above for the
full Howe citation); and Melvin H. Wolf, Catalogue and
Indexes to the Title-pages of English Printed
Books Preserved in the
British Library's Bagford Collection (London: British Museum for the
British
Library Board, 1974). As far as I have been able to determine,
these are the only three modern
works that mention the "Orders."
Humfrey Wanley implied that Bagford himself did the cutting and pasting as he
went
about organizing the "Orders" and other materials in Harley 5915 and
the other volumes: "His
Collection consists chiefly of Title-Pages and other Fragments put together
into Books, many of
them in some sort of Order and Method, and others
not." See "An Essay on the Invention of
Printing, by Mr. John Bagford; with an Account of his Collections for the
same by Mr. Humfrey
Wanley, F.R.S. Communicated in
Two Letters to Dr. Hans Sloane, R.S. Secr.," Royal
Society,
Philosophical Transactions 25 (1706–1707):
2397–2410.
In its cut-down size, the "Orders" measures 32 cm in height and 17 cm in width
and it is
pasted on a leaf measuring 37.25 cm in height and about 23.8 cm
in width. The sheet's chain-
lines are vertical. When back-lighted, a
watermark is visible. It appears to be the initials AI (or
AJ) if one
looks at folio 112 recto, or IV (or JV) if one looks at folio 112 verso.
Whatever the
initials might be, the mark offers no help in dating the
"Orders," for it could indicate any one
of several dozen late
seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English and Dutch paper mills
represented in Edward Heawood's Watermarks: Mainly of the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
(1950; Hilversum [Holland]: Paper Publications Society, 1969) and in W.
A. Churchill's Water-
marks in Paper in Holland,
England, France, etc. in the XVII and XVIII Centuries and their Interconnec-
tion (Amsterdam: Hertzberger, 1935).
The six other volumes are Harley 5922 (containing French initials); Harley 5929
(type
specimens of Dr. John Fell); Harley 5930 (Dutch type specimens);
Harley 5949 (English type
specimens included among newsletters,
engravings, writing books, woodcuts, emblems, and
other miscellaneous
items); Harley 5960 (a single Dutch type specimen); and Harley 5977
(English type specimens included with woodcuts, samples of black-letter
printing, and frag-
ments of incunabula).
T. C. Duncan Eaves and Ben D. Kimpel, Samuel Richardson: A
Biography (Oxford: Clar-
endon Press, 1971), 58–66.
Because they are limited in number and not worded as clearly as we might wish,
the
three bienvenues recorded by Moxon (326) are difficult to match and
compare to those in-
cluded in the Richardson and Bowyer regulations.
"Every new Workman to pay half a Crown;
which is called his Benvenue," Moxon notes, but his phrase, "new Workman,"
does not specify
the sort of printer who would need to pay the
two-shilling, six-pence fee. As the eighteenth-
century rules indicate, a
London-trained journeyman and freeman of the Stationers' Company
was
charged a lower fee than a journeyman who was trained elsewhere in England and
who was
not free of the Company. We encounter the same problem with
Moxon's bienvenue directed to
a man seeking re-employment at a house
where he had previously worked: "If a Journey-man
Wrought formerly upon
the same Printing House, and comes again to Work on it, [he] pays
but
half a Benvenue." Again, Moxon mentions a single fee,
"half a Benvenue" (one shilling, three
pence). Re-employment is not
addressed in the Richardson regulations, but Bowyer's rules de-
scribe
(using the phrase, "second coming") three re-employment bienvenues: one
shilling for a
"Freeman"; one shilling, six pence for "Every man having a
Right to a Fredom" (sic); and three
shillings, six pence for
"Foreigners." Moxon's final bienvenue addressed the journeyman who
was
discovered doing casual work—in effect, "moonlighting"—at another
shop, a practice
known as "smooting": "If a Journey-man Smout more or less on another Printing House, and
any of the Chappel can prove it, he pays half a Bienvenue." Richardson's rules say nothing about
smooting, but
the Bowyer rules demand six pence from a "Freeman" and one shilling from a
"Foreigner" caught at the practice.
Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography,
ed. J. A. Leo Lemay and P. M.
Zall (New York: Norton, 1986),
36–37.
Studies in bibliography | ||