But there were other very decorative small bindings being produced in considerable numbers about this period. Whether these also owed their existence to Samuel Mearne is still uncertain, but he was, I expect, a moving spirit in the matter of fine bookbindings from the end of the reign of Charles I. to the end of the reign of Charles II. The little books I allude to were made during the latter half of the seventeenth century and are always bound in black morocco. They have inlays of red, yellow, and white leather upon them and some very well designed gold tooling. Many of the designs are in detail similar to those which were certainly used at a later time by Samuel Mearne. John Bagford, in a curious account of book binding written early in the eighteenth century, mentions a workman named Suckerman, who was “one of the best workmen that ever took tool in hand, and commonly worked for Mr. Merne the Binder to King Charles the 2.” It is quite possible that much of the finest English work of this period was done by this man, but I expect he was only a workman, and executed the designs made out for him by a skilled designer--possibly enough Mearne himself. [Illustration: FIG. 115.--English gold tooled “Rectangular” style binding, by Samuel Mearne. Made for Charles II.] Samuel Mearne was appointed royal binder to Charles II., and he was the second great binder in England. Mearne bound the majority of his books in the same beautiful red leather that I have already mentioned as being used for some late bindings belonging to Charles I., and the same coat-of-arms occurs on some of those bound for Charles II. This red leather was probably dyed with cochineal. Before this no red leather was used to any extent in England. Brown, olive, blue, and black were all common, but not red. The ordinary bindings made by Mearne for Charles II. were simply and tastefully ornamented with rectangular lines having the royal initials at the corners, but others are more elaborate. We owe a national design to Mearne’s inventive genius, and it is known as the “Cottage” style. The gold-lined parallelogram is the starting point, and the upper and lower lines are broken outwards into a gable form. From this starting point Mearne developed his further decoration with supreme success, until indeed he succeeded in producing some of the finest bindings for large books that have ever been made. Not only that, Mearne’s style and even the details of his stamps continue until the present time, and the Bible on which King Edward VII. took the coronation oath was bound in the Cottage style. No style has ever lasted so long, not only in England, but in any other country.