After Berthelet’s time gold tooling became general in England, but the binders who used it are anonymous. There are some fine calf bindings with inlays of white leather which were made in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, on which appear the initials I. D. P., perhaps “John Day Pegit,” and which are credited to John Day, but it is by no means certain that they were done by that eminent printer. The style of leather bindings of Elizabeth’s reign departed finally from that of Berthelet, and more variety is found than at any other period. The Oriental fashion of double boards was re-introduced, the centre panels being filled with delicate paintings, portraits or coat-of-arms, and the remainder of the boards variously ornamented with inlays of white leather, toolings in gold and silver, and impressions from stamps cut in arabesques. Some of these bindings are coloured, that is to say, the arabesques, curves or flowers are painted by hand with some kind of enamel paint. The main source of such coloured bindings was Lyons, from which centre numbers of them were issued, but the fashion was one which appealed to the English liking for colour, and many fine examples, often heraldic, were made here. In royal bindings at all times heraldry has played an important part, but from the middle of the sixteenth century onwards it plays an equally important part on bindings made for ordinary armigerous people. [Illustration: FIG. 107.--Italian inlaid and gold tooled binding in Oriental style. Made for Queen Elizabeth.] Letterings often appear on the sides of bindings of the Tudor period, mottoes, initials and names. Towards the end of the sixteenth century a few bindings are found on which are semis of triple dots. This is the beginning of the style which reached its ultimate form in the next century. Also small triangular corner stamps occur now and then. These also developed and eventually became one of the most characteristic marks of Jacobean bindings. When James VI. of Scotland came here as our James I. he may have brought with him John Gibson, who was his binder in Scotland. Lists of books bound by this binder still exist, but no book or binding mentioned by him has so far been identified. But there are some remarkable books among those which were certainly bound for James I. which are not like the general type of his bindings, and it is likely enough that these may be Gibson’s work. The style is a very fine one, and the workmanship strong and good, but not, in my opinion, correct enough to have been done by a foreign binder. The same binder did some of the re-binding for Henry Prince of Wales, and one of its characteristics is a dotted fillet of double lines. [Illustration: FIG. 108.--The book stamp of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.] [Illustration: FIG. 109.--The book stamp of Lord Burleigh.]