The English provincial printers, stationers and bookbinders to 1557Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
History
The English provincial printers, stationers and bookbinders to 1557
Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
Book industries and trade -- Great Britain; Printing -- Great Britain -- History
What became of Goes is not known, but his name is connected with
another very mysterious lost book. Amongst the numerous manuscript
collections made by John Bagford, with a view to writing a history of
printing, is the following entry, copied apparently from a colophon.
“Donatus cum Remigio impressus Londiniis juxta Charing Cross per me
Hugonem Goes and Henery Watson with the printers device H. G.” Puzzling
as this entry is, I think it must be taken as representing something
which Bagford had seen, for he was hardly clever enough to invent, if
it is a forgery, so tantalisingly ingenious an imprint. He would not
have known, unless he carefully studied prefaces and epilogues, that at
this time W. de Worde had in his employment an assistant named Henry
Watson, nor was his eye correct enough to recognise that the type used
by Goes at York was obtained from W. de Worde, even had he seen a
copy of the York _Directorium_, which is most improbable. Yet here he
combines in one address as partners two men who had both been closely
connected with Wynkyn de Worde.
Whatever may be said against Bagford, there is no doubt that he was
assiduous, if not always very accurate, in transcribing titles and
imprints of scarce books that came in his way, and it is from his
memoranda that much information on missing books has been recovered.
Whether Goes worked in London before or after his sojourn in York, is
impossible to determine until some further information, or the lost
_Donatus_ itself, is forthcoming. The earliest printer, at present
known, who was established near Charing Cross is Robert Wyer, who was
at work as early as 1524. Ames, under H. Goes, gives the vague entry:
“He also printed a Latin Grammar at London in quarto, formerly among
Lord Oxford’s books,” but this may merely be derived from Bagford’s
notes. Lastly Ames quotes a broadside in the possession of Thomas
Martyn, “A wooden cut of a man on horseback with a spear in his right
hand and a shield, with the arms of France, in his left. Emprynted at
Beverlay in the Hye-gate by me Hewe Goes, with his mark or rebus of a
great H and a goose.” Martyn died in 1771, and since his time no trace
of this broadside has been found.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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