The period of apprenticeship was from seven to eleven years. It was intended that apprenticeship should end at 24, and the length of the apprenticeship depended upon the age at which it was begun. At the end of the apprenticeship the indenture required that the master should make the apprentice free of the Company “if he have well and truely served.” As the limit of membership of the Company was only about 25, for a long period only about one-half of the apprentices ever became masters; the rest of them remained permanently in the position of journeymen. As elsewhere in Europe, the apprentice might become heir to the business and the place in the Company by marrying either the daughter or the widow of a master printer. Apparently the business went to the widow rather than to the daughter if the widow survived. Widows even seem to have taken the business in preference to sons. Consequently the widow of a master printer was a very desirable match for an ambitious apprentice in spite of any difference in age, and several instances are recorded where a business changed hands twice by successive re-marriages of the widow. There was a strong tendency, which we shall discuss more at length later, for the bookseller to get control of the situation. Copyrights generally belonged to the booksellers. They purchased them from the authors and held them as against the printers. It must be remembered that an author could not obtain a copyright, as copyright was secured by registration in the Stationers’ Company and this registration could be made only by a bookseller or a printer. Consequently the author was obliged to content himself with what the purchaser of his work was willing to give him. The bookseller naturally got his printing done as cheaply as he could and printers cut prices then just as they do now, and got poor as a result, just as they do now. CHAPTER III JOHN DAY AND THE DARK AGES OF ENGLISH PRINTING