University of Virginia Library

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

regulations shed light on contemporary shop organization, workplace customs,
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.
Wolf has taken notice of the "Orders" by reprinting Pollard's "Rough List" in
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

England."[8] Of the seven volumes in the Bagford Collection containing items that
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

conduct and pertinent to all the journeymen of a shop, another set specifically
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

and commonplace practice: "This Benvenue being so constant a Custome is still
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,

and printing the "Orders" would fail to notice the absence of a time-honored
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

rules, two pence figures as a unit in a potentially costlier fine: "He that lays up
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]

First, Every Member of this House forfeits for

• 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.

Secondly, Every Member of the Composing-Room 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.

---

143




• 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.

Thirdly, Every Member of the Press-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.