A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898Plomer, Henry R. (Henry Robert)
History
A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898
Plomer, Henry R. (Henry Robert)
England -- Imprints; Printing -- England -- History
Juliet_ appeared in 1637. Bernard Alsop and his partner printed the
plays of Beaumont and Fletcher, Decker, Greene, Lodge, and Shirley, the
poems of Brathwait, Breton, and Crashaw, and the writings of Fuller and
More.
But the most notable books of this period were not those enumerated
above, but rather those which brought their authors, printers, and
publishers within the clutches of the law, and the story of the struggle
for freedom of speech is one of the most interesting in the history of
English printing. Three men--Henry Burton, rector of St. Matthews,
Friday Street; William Prynne, barrister of Lincoln's Inn; and John
Bastwick, surgeon, are generally looked upon as the chief of the
opposition to Laud and his party; but there were a number of other
writers on the same subject, whose works brought them into the Court of
High Commission. Thus, on the 15th February 1626, Benjamin Fisher,
bookseller, John Okes, Bernard Alsop, and Thomas Fawcett, printers, were
examined concerning a book which they had caused to be printed and sold,
called _A Short View of the Long Life and reign of Henry the Third_, of
which Sir Robert Cotton was the author. Fisher stated in his evidence
that five sheets of this book were printed by John Okes, and one other
by Alsop and Fawcett, which in itself is an indication of the immense
difficulty that must have attended the discovery of the printers of
forbidden books. The manuscript Fisher declared he had bought from
Alsop, who, in his turn, said that he bought it of one Ferdinando Ely,
'a broker in books,' for the sum of twelvepence, and printed what was
equivalent to a thousand copies of the one sheet delivered to him,
'besides waste.' Nicholas Okes declared that his son John had printed
the book without his knowledge and while he (Nicholas) was a prisoner in
the Compter. Ferdinando Ely was a second-hand bookseller in Little
Britain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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