Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
The next year, by the charter granted to the Stationers' Company,
printing outside London was forbidden, the prohibition being
subsequently relaxed in favour of the two Universities, although it was
nearly thirty years before they availed themselves of their right. In
the previous eighty years only about a hundred books[57] had been
produced at the provincial presses, and in the year in which the charter
was granted it can hardly be said that any press outside London was in
existence. The new regulation stood in the way of development, but it
was a development for which there seems to have been little demand. We
may see some slight confirmation of this view in the fact that during
Elizabeth's reign there was very little secret printing, though there
had probably been a good deal under Mary. The three Elizabethan secret
presses which have been chronicled were:
(1) A Puritan press which printed various tracts on Church government,
written by Thomas Cartwright. These were printed secretly in 1572 and
1573, first at Wandsworth, afterwards at Hempstead, near Saffron Walden,
in Essex. The press was seized in August, 1573, and the type handed to
Henry Bynneman, who, the next year, used it to reprint Cartwright's
attack, interpolating Whitgift's replies in larger type.
(2) A Jesuit press which printed for Edmund Campion and Robert Parsons
in 1580 and 1581, first at Greenstreet House in East Ham, afterwards at
Stonor Park, near Henley. The press was managed by Stephen Brinckley,
who was ultimately captured and imprisoned for nearly two years.
(3) The Puritan travelling press, from which issued the famous Martin
Marprelate tracts in 1588 and 1589. Some of these were printed in East
Molesey, in Surrey; others in the house of Sir Richard Knightley at
Fawsley, near Daventry, others in that of Roger Wigston of Wolston
Priory, between Coventry and Rugby. The chief printer of them was Robert
Waldegrave, who eventually fled first to La Rochelle, where he may have
printed one of the tracts, and then to Edinburgh, where he became a
printer of some importance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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