The books which had been printed specially for York booksellers had consisted entirely of service books, and about 1534 most of these ceased to be printed, being suppressed or falling into disuse. Thus though we afterwards find a continuous succession of stationers at York, no books are known specially printed for them. The enterprising stationers had all been foreigners, and foreigners were not viewed with favour in York or elsewhere at that period. They seem to have absorbed most of the trade to the detriment of the natives, so that we find in 1554 the Company of Bookbinders and Stationers of York passing a bye-law that no stranger or foreigner should sell any book or books within the city, except freemen of the same city. Earlier acts had prohibited the taking of foreign apprentices, so that the acts and this bye-law combined absolutely prohibited any foreigner engaging in the book trade in the city. The later stationers were all natives; and if they had energy they did not show it in the form of commissioning books. When the service books began to be reissued in Mary’s reign, no York stationer’s name is connected with them. Of those that were issued all were printed in London and sold by London booksellers. Then came the Stationers’ Charter of 1557 and with it the extinction of the provincial trade. From the Fabric rolls of York Minster, from the registers of freemen, and from various other sources, we obtain the names of a number of bookbinders who worked at York during the latter half of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries. A Thomas Messingham bound books for the Minster in red leather, probably the bright red deer skin often found at that period. Frederick Freez is called bookbinder, and about 1494 Peter Moreaux, another bookbinder, was made a freeman. John Welles, John Meltynbe and John Gowthwaite took up their freedom as bookbinders before 1557, and others, Thomas Newell and Edward Huby, who were not freemen, are mentioned in accounts as binders. Unfortunately we cannot point to any definite bindings as produced by these men, but it is not improbable that a full and careful examination of the old bindings preserved in the Minster Library might produce some good results, at any rate this source of information still remains to be worked. A late writer on bookbinding, with more daring than discretion, ascribes one or two marks found on bindings to York binders. He writes as follows: “G. W., whose trade-mark occurs on the covers of many books bound in England, exercised his craft between 1489 and 1510. Either he or his son was probably associated later on with another stationer, I. G.; an elegantly designed stamp bearing both cyphers adorns many bindings executed between 1512 and 1535. These may perhaps be the trade-marks of Gerard Freez or Wandsforth, brother of Frederick, bookseller and binder of York, 1507-10, and of John Gachet, stationer and bookseller of Hereford and York, who was still