Index to the Court Books of the Stationers' Company, 1679–1717
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INDEX TO THE COURT BOOKS OF THE STATIONERS’ COMPANY, 1679–1717 1 2 INDEX TO THE COURT BOOKS OF THE STATIONERS’ COMPANY, 1679–1717 Alison Shell and Alison Emblow General Editor: Robin Myers BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 2007 3 Copyright Alison Shell and Alison Emblow and The Bibliographical Society, 2007 Published by The Bibliographical Society and Oxford University Press isbn 978 0948170 15 7 A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be photocopied, recorded or otherwise reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any electronic or mechanical means without the prior permission of the copyright holders Designed and typeset by David Chambers Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Cambridge University Press 4 CONTENTS Foreword by Robin Myers 7 Acknowledgements 9 Introduction 11 History of the Project 40 Bibliographical Description of Court Books 41 Arrangement of Entries 45 Select Bibliography 49 Abbreviations 52 Illustrations 53 Index 55 5 6 FOREWORD Court Books E, F and G cover the years when the country was still haunted by the spectres of revolution and civil war and Charles II was attempting to subdue the City livery companies by replacing their charters and interfering in their elections. The end of Court Book F minutes the internal politics surrounding the expiry of the Printing Act in 1695, which spelt the end of the Company’s statutory powers over the book trade as it moved into a period of stability at the start of Court Book G. There are useful but varied indexes to Court Books B to D, 1576 to 1687, too disparate in method ever to be reduced to a single uniform sequence. With the completion of the microfilming of the entire archive (1554 to 1920s), we began to consider further indexing, at least to the end of the seventeenth century, although only intended for in-house use. Alison Shell and Alison Emblow had helped me with preparations for the microfilm in their vacations and were admirably equipped for a job which we supposed could be done comfortably within the year. The Stationers’ Company’s Educational Trust made them a grant and they set to work, Alison Shell leading the way with E and F, Alison Emblow following with G. The task turned out to be inordinately protracted. There were all sorts of snags, not the least being the primitive state of computer technology in 1987. Alison Shell, at my ill-advised suggestion, keyed her chronological lists into an Amstrad; but the software, as we found out too late, had no alphabetizing facility, nor were there any sort of conversion programmes in existence at that time; the printer, using fan-fed paper, could only produce a few pages at a time. So her work stayed locked up on a number of 3½ inch disks – we were offered some advice, but no-one seemed able to do anything for us. In the meantime, Alison Emblow, starting a few months later, took warning and wisely decided to revert to the time-honoured method of 6 by 3½ inch index cards for Court Book G, before keying them into her slightly more up-to-date computer – it was long- winded, but safe. There matters rested until Robin Alston offered to publish the index as a Bibliographical Society Occasional Paper. By this time technology had ad- vanced enough for Elisabeth Leedham-Green to convert the disks laboriously into ASCII which Robin Alston could put into a continuous alphabetical index and print out, codes and all, making it accessible and usable but not yet in a state to publish to the world. Checking and revising ought now to have begun but by this time, both editors were in post, married and living at a distance from Stationers’ Hall. More time passed and the Occasional Papers ceased . But it is an ill wind, as the saying is, and we discovered that the endless delays were a blessing in disguise when the Bibliographical Society agreed to 7 the stationers’ company 1679–1717 publish the index as a monograph with David Chambers, a superb book editor, to oversee its transformation. Other improvements were now thought of – Alison Emblow collated the entire index with the so-called Wast Books or draft minutes and searched for discrepancies which might, in the turbulent 1680s and early ’90s, be significant. With the rapid advance of the internet, Alison Shell was able to identify a great many of the works mentioned in the court books by making web searches in the English Short Title Catalogue on-line. Alison Shell’s introductory account of the inner workings of the Court, set in the context of the Company itself and of the wider political scene, and her far-reaching Biblio- graphy and list of abbreviations make it clear how far the project has advanced from a mere name and subject index. ‘Indexers tell a different story from historians’, as Alison Shell puts it, ‘they stress continuity’, and as such, the Index to the Court Books 1697–1717 will add a new dimension to book trade and other historical studies in addition to being an essential and, surprisingly, readable reference tool. Stationers’ Hall, August 2005 Robin Myers 8 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The division of responsibility between the authors was as follows: Alison Shell wrote the introduction to this volume and indexed Court Books E and F; Alison Emblow indexed Court Book G, collated the whole index with the surviving draft minutes, and brought the whole index into final form. Both editors would like to pay tribute here to the General Editor, Robin Myers, who – among so many other services to book trade history – devised the project’s parameters, and has supervised the work from instigation to completion. Her learned enthusiasm has been a constant delight to the authors. As the Foreword explains, this project first begun in the late 1980s as an in- house index at Stationers’ Hall. Since then it has metamorphosed several times, and its completion has been exceptionally protracted. The Editors would like to thank the various officers of the Bibliographical Society who have been involved with the project – most recently Mirjam Foot – for their patience during the process, as well as for a grant of £200 towards reproduction expenses in the early stages of the project. Funds for reproduction were also granted by Dur- ham University. The Worshipful Company of Stationers generously funded the scholarly work in its initial stages, from its Educational Trust for the Training of Young People and from a bequest made by the late Wilfrid Hodgson. Many individual Company employees deserve our gratitude: the trustees of the Archive and Library Trust, the Hon. Librarian Keith Fletcher, Elisa Civale, and several Past Masters, especially the late George Mandl, the late Charles Rivington, the late Allan Thompson and Christopher Rivington (happily still with us). David Chambers has been an endlessly cheerful and facilitating production editor; David Lee has provided wise guidance on the process of indexing. Early in the project, the index was rescued from some antiquated software by the combined efforts of Robin Alston and Elisabeth Leedham-Green. The late Don McKenzie and the late Michael Treadwell took an inspirational interest in the project; Arnold Hunt and Giles Mandelbrote provided invaluable scholarly advice throughout; Anna Greening and Julian Pooley gave us the benefit of their palaeographical expertise. Don and Marjorie Emblow kindly checked index entries against photocopies; John Arnold, Editor of Stationers’ News, supplied photographs. In the absence of footnores to the Index itself, Bridget Wright of the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, should be credited with throwing light on the career of Samuel Carr. Finally, Paul Nash has done a splendid job with the final revisions to the text. 9 10 INTRODUCTION COURT BOOKS E–G, 1679–1717 This index gives detailed access to the entries in the three Court Books of the Stationers’ Company which cover the period between 1679 and 1717, conven- tionally designated as Court Books E, F and G. The Court was not only the main regulatory body of the Stationers’ Company, but the point of official intersection between the Company and wider political and financial spheres, within and outside London; and its duties were correspondingly diverse. Hence, the Court minutes cover a wide range of material, relevant to many types of historical endeavour. Formal arrangements of the Court1 Typically, courts took place at least once a month, though they met more frequently – sometimes even daily – at times of crisis. Special courts like election courts, at which Company officers were voted into position, or pension courts, at which Company pensioners and other needy individuals received charitable handouts, are designated as such in the minutes, but were also used as a forum for discussing other kinds of Company business. The Court comprised the Master, the Upper and Under Warden, and the Assistants, a body of twelve to fifteen senior and influential members of the Company; the Clerk, a servant of the Court, took minutes. In addition to those mentioned above, attenders at court would have included those who had been summoned by the Beadle – most commonly to be bound, freed or cloathed, or to answer charges brought against them by another member of the Company – and those who wanted to petition the court.2 Functions of the Court The Court was the official channel through which orders from the Lord Mayor 1. For a recent account of livery company administration, see Joseph P. Ward, Metropolitan Communities: Trade Guilds, Identity, and Change in Early Modern London (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), ch.4. 2. On the Beadle’s role, Court etiquette, penalties for non-attendance and misbehaviour, and the quarter-courts (which, unlike the Courts of Assistants, were general assemblies of Company members held for the purpose of collecting quarterage), see The Orders, Rules, and Ordinances, Ordained, Devised, and Made by the Master and Keepers or Wardens and Commonalty of the Mystery or Art of Stationers (1692: facsimile reprint, London: Harrison & Co., n.d.), pp.4–6.