stationers and the inception of the enlightenment in norwich 1660

STATIONERS AND THE INCEPTION
OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN
NORWICH 1660-1720
KATE TREMAIN B.A.
SCHOOL OF HISTORY: UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA
M.A. IN EARLY MODERN HISTORY
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment
of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
October 2007
CONTENTS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABBREVIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS
THE CONTENTS OF THE APPENDICES
INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………p. 9.
CHAPTER ONE……..…………………………………………….pp.10-30.
This chapter outlines the parameters of the dissertation and how the question of the
emerging Enlightenment will be applied to the study. It identifies the stationers’ role,
compares them to other occupations, and locates them in their socio-economic time,
place and space within post-Restoration Norwich and the broader community.
CHAPTER TWO …..………………………………………………pp.31-49.
This chapter looks at what the Norwich book trader was selling by examining three
book auction catalogues, the form the auctions took, and the nature of what was for
sale. It also reflects on the publishing histories of those involved and the community
and customers who supported an average of 6.7 Norwich stationers in any given
year.
CHAPTER THREE ……………………………………………….pp.50-64.
The Stuart printers and the first Norwich newspapers are the subject of this final
chapter, and what the latter’s content tells us about the former’s contribution to
disseminating ‘enlightenment values’.
CONCLUSION …………..……………………………………….pp.65-67.
ENDNOTES …………..…………………………………………. pp.68-89.
BIBLIOGRAPHY …………………………………………………pp.90-104.
APPENDICES A-Z ………………………………………VOLUME II pp.2-61.
For ease of access to the documents, the appendices have been placed in a separate
volume: vol. ii.
2
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND GRAPHS WITHIN THE TEXT
CHAPTER ONE
Fig 1
Pie-chart graph of the 36 stationers within their parishes
…p. 15.
Fig 2
The parish boundaries of St Peter Mancroft, reproduced
courtesy of Daniel Jones. …p. 17
Fig 3
Numbered Key to the active stationers in date order…p.
18.
Fig 4
A city-centre map showing the estimated locations for
the numbered stationers ….p. 19
Fig 5
A graph showing the number of active stationers in any
given year over the 60 year period…p. 20.
Fig 6
An illustration of the interior of a German bookshop (c
1659) with deep drawers to house manuscripts, ballads;
broadsides and unbound volumes. Taken from
Comenius’ Orbis sensualium pictus…p. 21.
Fig 7
Norwich bookseller and binder, William Pinder’s
advertisement in the back of a 1684 edition of the
Norfolk Fvries…p. 21.
Fig 8
A graph expressing the declining number of those
offering bookbinding services over the period…p.22.
Fig 9
A graph that compares the numbers of all stationers
over the period with those offering bookbinding services.
…p. 23.
Fig 10
A reproduction of a sketch by Dirk de Bray, (active c.
1658-1702), showing the interior of an Amsterdam
bookshop…p. 24.
Fig 11
A Paris shopping emporium: Abraham Bosse’s engraving of the
Galerie du Palais, Paris, c. 1640…p. 25.
CHAPTER TWO
Fig. 12
A contemporary illustration of an open-air bookstall at
Moorfields c. 1700…p. 31.
Figs.13;14;15
Three pie-charts showing the split between divinity and
miscellaneous titles in the book auctions of Norwich –
1689-1693-1700 - respectively…p. 34.
3
Figs. 16;17;18
Three pie-charts showing the variations in book sizes
associated with their content, as revealed in the three
Norwich book auctions: 1689-1693-1700…p. 37.
Fig 19
Image of author Nicholas Culpepper, frontispiece of the
English Physician…p. 40.
Fig 20
Image reproduction of two pages from William Austin’s
Excellency of Women (1639)…p. 42.
CHAPTER THREE
Fig 21
Section of James Campbell’s map (c 1789) with
estimated position of Francis Burges’s ‘Red Well’ print
shop in St Andrews parish…p. 51.
Fig 22
Section of James Campbell’s map (c 1789) with a
marked position of the Bull Inn, Magdalen Street, near
where Samuel Hasbart operated his printing press…p.
52.
Fig 23
Section of James Campbell’s map (c 1789) with guide
positions for the printing presses of Thomas Goddard, in
the market place and Henry Crossgrove on St Giles
Broad Street…p.53.
Fig 24
An illustration from 1687 of a female hawker selling
almanacs and petty-chapbooks…p.57.
Fig. 25
A picture of a female mercury selling newspapers on the
streets in 1687…p.57.
4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
As a grateful recipient of the memorial bursary established in his
name, this dissertation is dedicated to Harry Watson.
Personal thanks must also go to all those who foolishly entered into
the fray and allowed me to bore them with tedious insensitivity.
Amongst them must be noted some of the longest suffering: Angela
Dain, Jane Whetnall, Jayne Cooper, Colin Smith, Jon Tremain, Patrick
Glass, Sarah Lomax, Keith Razey, and Mark Hobbs, without whose
support and encouragement I would have been a basket case. The
assistance of the encyclopaedically knowledgeable Clive Wilkins-Jones,
and his colleagues at the Millennium Heritage Library; the Norfolk
Record Office; tutors and colleagues, too many to mention here, must
also be acknowledged with gratitude.
Vic Morgan’s energy, generosity and diligence as a supervisor, the
combination of unfailing enthusiasm for the subject and his focused
‘sergeant major’ task-master approach, proved utterly invaluable.
Thanks must also go to my neglected and long-suffering family,
especially my children, who will be pleased to know that they will now
get a reprieve from hunting in churches for inscriptions and
monuments to dead stationers.
5
FRONTISPIECE
The Frontispiece shows an illustration of a print workshop by Jan
Amos Komensky (1592-1670) (Comenius), from Orbis sensualium
pictus, translated into English by Charles Hoole (London, octavo,
1659). Reproduction from: W. Turner Berry
&
H. Edmund Poole,
Annals of Printing, London, Blandford Press (1966), p. 133.
STYLE NOTES
Where I have transcribed from the original source I have tried
wherever possible to maintain the integrity of the original script as
seen. I have, however, modernized the f/s early modern typeface for
ease of reading. Some of the originals, such as the newspapers lost in
Norwich Library fire of 1994, have been transcribed by others and are
cited as such: these transcriptions are often slightly modernised in
grammar, punctuation and the use of capitals, and these have been
taken
as
seen.
With
reference
to
the
idiosyncrasy
of
the
Julian/Gregorian dates of this period: unless the ‘New Style’ was
adopted by the source, for any dates before Lady Day, both years (i.e.
1710/11), have been included.
COMMONLY USED ABBREVIATIONS INCLUDE:
British Library = B.L. Calendar of State Papers Domestic= CSPD
Early English Books on Line = EEBO. English Short Title Catalogue =
ESTC. Norfolk Record Office = NRO. Norwich Consistory Court =
NCC. Norwich City Records = NCR. Norfolk Record Society = NRS.
Norwich Post =N.P. Norwich Post Man = N. P-M. Norwich Gazette = N.G.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography = ODNB. Oxford English
Dictionary = OED. University of East Anglia = UEA.
6
Volume II
CONTENTS OF THE APPENDICES
A……… List of Norwich freemen scriveners, active between 1660-1720.
Providing an occupational status comparison with that of Norwich
stationers. pp.2-6
B……… List of named Norwich stationers in their resident parishes. p.7
C………Illustration of the memorial stone in Norwich Cathedral to Thomas
Gournay’s wife, Bridget, in 1662. p.8
D……… Petition to General Monck signed by 47 of the Norfolk Elite. pp.9-10
E……… Includes E.1; E.2, & E.3. Listing the stationer freemen (E.1). Those
that attained civic responsibilities (E.2); those mentioned in the ODNB.
pp.11-13
F………Women stationers and brief biographical account of their careers,
with pillar graph. pp.14-15
G……… Includes G.1; G.2; & G.3. Illustrations of the front page of
Millington’s first auction catalogue for Mrs Oliver, 1689 (G.1). The page
outlining auction imperatives (G.2). Finally, a sample page of the content of
the auction. (G.3). pp.16-18
H……… Includes H.1; H.2; & H.3. Illustrations of the front page of
Millington’s second auction catalogue for Mrs Oliver and Mr Giles, 1693
(H.1). The page outlining auction imperatives (H.2). Finally, a sample page of
the content of the auction. (H.3). pp.19-21
I……… Includes I.1; I.2; & I.3. Illustrations of the front page of Millington’s
third auction catalogue for Samuel Oliver, Edward Giles, Thomas Goddard
and George Rose in 1700 (I.1). The page outlining auction imperatives
written by George Rose (I.2). Finally, a sample page of the content of the
auction (I.3). pp.22-24
J……… A sample of the stock sold by Edward Giles and advertised in the
back of publications. pp.25-29
K……… A sample list of some of the titles published by Norwich stationers
with the dates of publication. pp.30-35
L……… Comparison of stationer numbers active in Norwich in the period
against figures for Bristol, York, Exeter and Preston, using Plomer’s
Directory. p.36
M……… Front page of Reflexions on Monsieur Fagel's letter, (1688). p.37
N……… Extract from Francis Kirkman’s English Rogue, vol. II. pp.38-39
7
O.1; O.2; O.3……… Picture of the Bull Inn Magdalen Street. Plus two
transcripts outlining the business offer from Samuel Hasbart to Elizabeth
Burges, and his response to her refusal. Norwich Gazette, December 1707;
January 1708. pp.40-43
P……… Front cover of the 1714/15 election Poll Book printed by Henry
Crossgrove for the Corporation. p.44
Q……… The front page of John Jeffery’s sermon ‘A Warning Against the Most
Horrid and Unnatural Sin of Self-Murder’. p.45
R……… Extract’s from Henry
correspondence page. pp.46-48
Crossgrove’s
Accurate
Intelligencer
S……… The Norwich Gazette promoting the first edition of a collection of
letters and queries from the paper’s readers, under the heading Accurate
Intelligencer. p.49
T……… Examples of a continuing print row between Chase and Crossgrove
over fabricating gallows confessions. pp.50-52
U……… Mandelbrote’s sources and statistics for bookselling/publisher’s
generational familial ties, versus clerical families in the book trade. p.53
V……… Crossgrove’s Memorial to wife Judith and Chase’s reply to his swift
remarriage. pp.54-55
W……… Includes: W.1; W.2; W.3; W.4. Four generational ‘snap-shot’
Norwich city-centre maps for the years: 1660;1680;1700;1720. These maps
show the stationers in position and give short biographical detail relating,
where appropriate, to their civic roles. pp.56-59
X……… Time-Line Chart: Bookbinders. This is a colour coded unfolding
chart of the 12 stationers who offered (either exclusively or inclusively)
bookbinding services, and were active in Norwich between 1660-1720. The
chart shows the length of their careers, location, and their career overlap.
Inset is a graph exposing their decreasing numbers over the period. p.60
Y……… Time-Line Chart: All Stationers. This is a colour coded unfolding
chart of the central 36 stationers active in Norwich between 1660-1720. The
chart shows the length of their careers in a time-line; their parishes; how
many were operative in the city at any one time and their estimated location.
Inset is a graph exposing their increasing numbers over the period. p.60
Z……… The ‘Yellow Map’. This unfolding map displays the stationers of
Norwich between 1660-1720 in boxes with brief biographical career
background, it also reveals their relationships with each other. (The map
also includes a few other notable city stationers from earlier & later periods
that have a connecting narrative to this study). p.61
8
INTRODUCTION
This dissertation looks at booksellers, bookbinders, publishers, newspaper proprietors and
printers commercially active in Norwich from the Restoration until 1720. [Collectively
those involved in the making of and sale of printed matter are referred to as stationers.]1 It
seeks to place these artisans and traders in their cultural, economic and civic context. It also
attempts to place them within the broader context of national, political and religious
imperatives and social movements which may have coloured or shaped their experience. In
order to establish a ‘profile’ for the group within the local context, a limited number of
comparisons have been made with a ‘control group’ composed of Norwich scriveners. This
group was close to, but distinct from, the stationers. This study seeks to look specifically at
the stationers’ contribution to the dissemination of ‘enlightenment values’ and to compare
this Norwich group’s profile with their contemporaries in other urban centres. It has often
been assumed that stationers were one of the means of disseminating the Enlightenment and
the dissertation attempts to test this assumption.2
Research revealed a total of thirty-six stationers operative in Norwich at different times
throughout the period. These were all freemen and widows (i.e. the daughters of freeborn
men or the wives of master tradesmen). Where found, journeymen and apprentices have
been noted, but have not been ‘counted’ as independent traders unless they went on to
become masters and/or freemen in the city in their own right.3 Some discretion was
exercised over those whose names were found on imprints if no other records could
corroborate them actually trading in the city.4
The dissertation is divided into three parts. The first, attempts to locate the stationers in
their setting within the Norwich trading community; to examine their roles, backgrounds,
status and commercial relationships. The second examines the first three book auctions to
take place in the city and reflects on how and what was being sold, published and
consumed. The final part analyses the impact of the first Stuart printing press in Norwich
and the arrival of local newspapers.
Bookselling, publishing and printing in Norwich has attracted much attention over the
years. Local histories of Norfolk — such as those by Blomefield and Chambers — include
much information on this occupational group.5 The fascination with this trade, the products
of the trade, and the personalities involved in it, endured into the twentieth century, with
papers such as J. B. Williams’s in 1914 on Henry Crossgrove the printer; through to more
modern academic studies such as those of Henry Plomer; G. A. Cranfield; Trevor Fawcett,
and David Stoker, who have unearthed many of the main characters involved and have
written extensively on the trade generally and on the trade in Norwich specifically, and to
whose scholarship this dissertation acknowledges a large debt.6 This dissertation aims to
build on their efforts by locating a study of stationers in Norwich within the wider recent
discussion of the role of the book as a purveyor of the Enlightenment in general and in
England in particular. It also makes use of sources that were not as readily available as they
are now. Wherever possible, however, returning to the primary sources was a priority. Not
least amongst them were the stationers’ publications, auction catalogues, and the early
Norwich newspapers, all of which proved to be rich veins of information. This was also
true of poll books and directories and the invaluable resources of the Norwich Millennium
Library collection, along with those of the Norfolk Record Office. The historical approach
taken and analysis applied to the findings are my own and I hope prove both original and
instructive.
9
CHAPTER ONE
The Gospel-Light appear’d not very clear,
Until the Fourteen-hundred fiftieth Year,
Wherein God pleased to unbosom Night,
The Art of Printing being brought to Light.7
The written word, especially the printed word, is a social institution. It stands apart from
other carriers of cultural value as something that distills the essence of an age, encapsulates
thoughts, ideas, knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, values, and, as such, it is often, if tacitly,
regarded as the highest art in communication. Speech is immediate and, perhaps erroneously,
regarded as ephemeral.8 Reconstructed speech is reliant on anecdote and memory: both of
these are seen as subjective and unreliable. Unlike period music, ritual or art, which might
require a specialist to provide interpretation, we all feel we have access to the written word,
however antiquated. Implied meaning can be teased out of it by the tenacious researcher. In
short, the written word is prized, especially by historians. The written word is forensic proof,
‘fact’, documentary evidence.9 Moreover, it is the medium of their own discourse.
It is no surprise then that academics, as bibliophiles and disciples of ‘the document’, have a
soft spot for those who were the purveyors of the book and, ergo, dispensed and
democratized this ‘high’ art to others. They were the brokers of knowledge and ideas, who
sold fantasy and fact and liberated imaginations. The glittering literati ‘star dust’ seems to
have sprinkled itself liberally on those associated with ‘the prize’. We are also fortunate that
the booksellers, publishers and printers of yesterday have left in their wake a rich textual and
typographical trail, from which much can be deduced and inferred. So, were the book traders,
publishers and printers, different from other early-modern merchants and traders, and, if so,
in what way? Why do we see them as influential, and how did they, could they, exercise that
influence?
Some of the other questions that will be asked of the stationers of Norwich active between
1660 and 1720 are: what was their civic contribution within the Norwich community? Where
did they fit in the social hierarchy? What, if anything, separated the Norwich stationer from
his metropolitan or provincial counterpart? In short, was Norwich in the vanguard, or guard’s
van, of post-Restoration cultural dissemination?
Before attempting to answer these questions, there is a revealing comparison to be made
between the stationers and the control group, the scriveners.10 Of the sixty-four Norwich
stationers that fell into the wider orbit of this study, ten are featured in the Oxford Dictionary
of National Biography, and at least five more are mentioned in other ODNB entries, making
fifteen mentions in all: 23% of the total.11 Some of those cited in the Dictionary, it must be
conceded, found fame, fortune or notoriety after leaving Norwich, or are outside the timeframe for this study. Even restricting ourselves to the thirty-six stationers operating between
1660 and 1720, who are the central focus of this dissertation, three are featured in the
Dictionary through association and three names make an appearance in their own right,
making six entries in all: 17%.
10
For any trade, in any place, at any given time, to achieve for its members between a 17% 23% celebratory inclusion in a nation’s book of biography is noteworthy, not least when this
‘hit rate’ is compared with the Norwich scriveners in the same time-period. Out of forty-one
scriveners who became freemen in Norwich between 1660-1720, not one received a mention
in the ODNB in his own right, and only one did so through tenuous association: as the father
of a son who is often confused with someone ‘famous’ and who shared his son’s name.12
The job of scrivener was chosen for purposes of comparison because it was an occupation,
like that of stationer, which demanded high literacy skills, involved written communication,
required an apprenticeship, had its own gild, and can be seen as comparable (if not actually
socially ‘superior’ — in background and mandatory education levels) to that of book - seller,
binder, printer or publisher. It was anticipated that a substantial number of these future clerks,
notaries and lawyers might have enjoyed careers worthy of mention such that they gained the
notice of ‘posterity’. However it is the stationer, especially the pioneer printer, who attracts
our attention and enduring fascination. We conflate their role with the status we place on
books and its association with the dissemination of cultural values. They are seen as
‘creative’ in a way a bureaucratic pen-pusher is not. In other words, perhaps this straw poll
case-study reflects the values of today more than those of yesterday. With this in mind
contemporary attitudes and perspectives will be drawn on to place the occupations of
bookseller, publisher and printer in the correct setting for the period.
II
In 1773, on a visit to Catherine II, Empress of Russia (1762-1796), Diderot was free with
his advice. The best way to stimulate enlightenment values, Diderot argued, was to populate
the land with artisans.13 Artisans would provide the key — the stimulus — for ‘progress’.
They were the true facilitators of culture and learning. Diderot’s point was that artisans were
not lofty ‘ivory tower’ poets: they were doers as well as thinkers. They were creative, but
also practical. Their creativity was dependent on experiential understanding of the tools and
materials they used to harness, and skilfully employ, in the manufacture of their crafts. Not
only did artisans interface with society at every social level but, to crown it all, the products
of their endeavours were culturally enhancing for society.14 Diderot’s prescription must be set
against William Harrison’s assertion, two centuries earlier, that relegated ‘artificers’ to the
ranks of the ‘fourth sort of people’, who should be ruled and were ‘not to rule other’.15 In the
space of two hundred years a ‘middling sort’ had emerged.16 Many of these middling sort
were not what we identify today as in the ‘professions’ such as clerics and physicians: they
were trades, services and crafts people, who sold more than their raw labour: the products of
hand, eye and mind. And, far from ‘not ruling other’, these ‘artificers’ were consolidating and
securing for themselves an important role in the civic fabric of their communities. Stationers
were just such a group. Be they publisher, bookbinder, or printer, Diderot would have
conceived of them as exemplary artisans.
The divide between Harrison and Diderot signals a crucial, if amorphous and tricky,
development which is to be examined in this study: the emergence of the Enlightenment. The
Enlightenment did not have a manifesto: its tenets were protean and various. As such, it poses
11
a series of problems for historians to quantify its influence. It has variously been viewed as
everything from soulless to radical; absolutist to liberal.17 This led Porter to conclude that
exponents of the Enlightenment were neither rationalists, ‘believing that reason was all’ nor
irrationalists, ‘surrendering their judgement before feeling, faith, intuition and authority’.18
What they were, above all, were – critics. They sought to put human intelligence at the
service of understanding human nature and the natural world: to emancipate mankind,
‘through knowledge, education and science, from the chains of ignorance and error,
superstition, theological dogma, and the dead hand of the clergy’.19 Although that may sound
like a manifesto, its application by various proponents such as Hobbes and Locke, brought
forth very diverse philosophical conclusions of how best to ‘emancipate mankind’. Moreover,
while ‘superstition’ may have been a target, the Enlightenment’s antipathy to religion and the
‘dead hand of the clergy’ was far from universally embraced. Furthermore, the exponents of
the Enlightenment were not politicians or influential authority figures by birth, but ordinary
men – journalists, writers, even, like Benjamin Franklin, printers. Although many see the
Enlightenment as serving elite preoccupations, it was not an exclusively elite movement.
Perhaps one of the Enlightenment’s most striking features, exemplified in England by
diarists such as Josselin, Evelyn and Pepys, was an amplification of a heightened awareness
of the ‘self’.20 This individualism was expressed in a myriad of ways. As well as an
increasingly self-conscious desire for space, privacy and introspection, the ‘self’ was also,
conversely, finding expression in public social arenas and in the extravagant display of
possessions. In addition to looking out for ‘a heightened awareness of the self’, there are four,
further, broad strands in recent scholarship to which this study relates. These are urban
renaissance, politeness, conspicuous consumption and cultural capital.
This dissertation takes the view that the Enlightenment was a ‘tide of opinion’ which
brought with it a new confidence in man’s own critical judgement, and that it osmotically,
subtly, penetrated aspects of everyday cultural life. Some of these cultural shifts — in
perceptions, attitudes and material reality — were profound, many superficial. Allied to
England’s demographic rise, improved communications, and an economic buoyancy
associated with the latter half of the seventeenth century, these ‘influences’ can be all be
witnessed in what Borsay has termed an ‘urban renaissance’.21 While materially an ‘urban
renaissance’ can be taken to mean everything from a greater emphasis on architectural
symmetry, wider streets and paving, open public spaces, street lighting, and improved public
water supplies, sociologically this ‘renaissance’ manifested itself in ‘polite society’: namely
— a greater interest in the arts, theatre, literature, public sociability and assemblies, coffeehouses, and ‘conspicuous consumption’, with its eventual concomitant ‘cultural capital’.22
While the accoutrements of gentrified status could be purchased by the newly rich, there
was much more to upward social mobility than mere appearances. The French sociologist,
Pierre Bourdieu, identified ‘cultural capital’ as a measurement of aesthetic judgments, based
on education and taste, which can be converted into a position in social space.23 In other
words, the most significant element of social status did not manifest itself in half-tester beds,
exquisite jewellery, new draperies or French mirrors: it belonged in the numinous world of
knowledge, ideas, judgement, refinement, elegance; discernment in the theatre and the arts,
and it was here where true membership of polite society was ultimately obtained. A fine
house, good clothes were an essential part of politeness, but without gentility and education
your rise through the ranks would not be a smooth one. Dispensed by bookshops and the
press, the printed word was the conduit that conveyed these genteel qualities and skills; as
such, it might be regarded as the ultimate luxury good. 24
12
The energy that sustained and underpinned all of these burgeoning ‘polite’ cultural
dynamics was the high-octane commercial activity found in the towns. This produced both
the luxury goods for those that could afford them and an increasingly affluent and socially
aspirational trading middling sort with disposable incomes. All of which is succinctly
summed up by Langford in the title of his book which defines the English in this period as, A
Polite and Commercial People.25
The terms ‘polite’ and ‘commercial’ might be viewed as mutually exclusive. Yet, if
‘politeness’ is taken as an euphemism, merely an external display of enlightenment values (a
lubricant that allowed for self-interest in the name of the common good and some higher
ideal), its juxtaposition next to ‘commercial’ somehow neutralises the brutal vulgarity of
‘trade’ and profit-making. It is this tension that may prove the most revealing when applied to
the stationers of Norwich. These stationers were not merely trading in accessories and the
adjuncts of politeness, fans, gloves and periwigs, but in the commodity most loaded with
cultural value, the written word. In short, were the post-Restoration stationers of Norwich the
precursors of Diderot’s cultural facilitators, his passeur ‘artisans’, or were they the ‘victims /
beneficiaries’ of other ‘selfish’ socio-economic and ‘enlightened’ cultural forces that allowed
for, encouraged, upward mobility?
Even at the end of the period under scrutiny in this study, Diderot was fifty years away
from proffering his advice to Catherine the Great. These are early days. It is highly unlikely
to expect Norwich stationers to be taking a sledge-hammer to encrusted orthodoxies.26
However, with these contexts and questions in mind this dissertation goes forward to seek a
greater understanding of the political, economic, commercial and social imperatives that
preyed on the minds and actions of a group of tradespeople at a certain time in a certain
place: Norwich.
III
First, the Norwich book trade needs to be placed in the immediate local and national
context of the Restoration period. An inscription on a memorial stone in Norwich Cathedral
speaks of how life, and death, had been perceived as being dislocated —in a state of
suspension — during the commonwealth years. Ten years after her death, Thomas Gournay
felt, at last, able to commemorate his wife.
To the Restoration of King Charles II, to whose return these
consecrated things are preserved from the violations of fanatics
by the sleep and indeed rest, of not only the living but also the
dead. In memory of Bridget his most beloved wife, who passed
away 26th September the Year of Grace 1652, Thomas Gournay
set this stone in the year 1662.27
13
Despite a reputation for dissent, many in Norwich yearned for the return of the monarchy
and a move away from those whose ideology had, ‘whiplashed the flippant and predicted
doom and disaster’.28 Even before General Monck arrived in London, seven hundred and
ninety-four Norwich citizens presented a signed petition to the Rump Parliament urging for
the recall, ‘of those Members that were secluded in 1648’.29 It would seem that a majority of
citizens and the magistracy supported the king’s return in 1660.30
Norwich was the second city in the realm. It was the ecclesiastical, legal and administrative
capital of a county of some 200,000 souls.31 The Norfolk capital’s demographic rise over the
seventeenth century had been meteoric. 32 Norwich was a centre for cloth manufacture and
also a nucleus for the production of luxury goods.
Culturally, and economically, in 1660, Norwich was at a peak, and this was reflected in the
energy invested in leisure pursuits: by the mid-eighteenth century, for instance, an assembly
house and theatre would be built. Meanwhile, within the corporation in Stuart Norwich, the
old oligarchic structure would make way for a plutocracy in the higher chamber, and the sixty
common councillors would reflect the new ‘unacknowledged republic’ of middling sorts.33
The economic and social changes of the post-Restoration period provided a fertile context
in which provincial publishing and printing could develop. Moreover, the eventual lifting of
censorship would remove a major obstacle to its advancement.
Censorship, control of the presses and publishing monopolies have a history that goes back
in England as far as the introduction of print itself. The proliferation of presses and
uncensored publications that occurred during the Civil War years was an aberration.34 Charles
II swiftly reaffirmed control with the Licensing Act of 1662, which restricted the number of
master printers to twenty in the capital, and limited their location outside London to Oxford,
Cambridge, and York.35 Charles would instigate an official ‘sanitized’ news service,
orchestrated and enthusiastically overseen by Roger L’Estrange.36 While Charles I had
famously meted out ear-removing cruelty to Laud’s typographical critic, the author William
Prynne, Charles II was the first post-Reformation monarch to pronounce the death sentence,
on the grounds of high treason, to a man, John Twyn, for what he had printed.37
Authority’s fear of the power of the ‘Fourth Estate’ appeared intractable even with the
constitutional changes wrought in 1688. Initially the reign of William III and Mary II saw no
changes to the existing restrictions on the press. The monopolies surrounding the publishing
of certain texts and genres, together with the restrictions on printing, had resulted in ‘highly
priced, poorly printed, and inaccurate texts’, argued John Locke. After much lobbying, not
least from Locke, the Licensing Act was finally allowed to lapse in 1695.38 Up until this date,
and for some time afterwards, publishers in Norwich had turned to London for the printing of
their works. This practice would change when Francis Burges opened up a printing workshop
near the Red Well in 1701.
It is with these political, religious, cultural, economic and censorship backdrops in mind
that we now turn to scrutinise the activities of the Norwich book traders. The legal
restrictions on stationers was no doubt in the mind of Jack Plumb when he commented, ‘the
cultural poverty of the late seventeenth century was vast – no newspapers, no public
libraries.’39 Here, however, we need first to consider who these people were. The next section
14
focuses on the stationers who disseminated news, sold, loaned, and published books under the
auspices and limitations of the 1662 Licensing Act, and whose activities may well prove that
Norwich was far from the cultural wasteland of Plumb’s denunciation.
IV
Using the apprentice and freemen registers, indexes for Norwich City Officers, and the
secondary sources available, the first task of this study was to gather together a list of
stationers active in the period.40 The list excludes transient journeymen, and counts surrogate
employees running businesses in loco parentis as ‘one’ stationer acting under their master.41
This ‘head count’ identified thirty-six independent traders over the sixty years under scrutiny.
Thus identified, they were placed in their parishes, and where possible street location, based
on their advertised commercial addresses.
The result showed nineteen, or 53% of stationers, active in the parish of St Peter Mancroft;
ten, 27%, operated within the parish of St Andrew’s; three, 8%, in the contiguous parish of St
John Maddermarket; two, 6%, operated close-by in St Stephen’s parish; and one stationer was
active in each of the parishes of St Clement and St Giles: 3% each.42 These findings are
illustrated by the pie-chart, fig. 1, below.43
FIG. 1
Distribution of Stationers by Parishes
St Peter Mancroft 53%
St Andrew 27%
St John Maddermarket 8%
St Stephen 6%
St Clement 3%
St Giles 3%
This placed the stationers clearly in the nerve centre of the city’s commercial life. The
highest proportion of stationers, 80%, were located in the two wealthiest parishes: St Peter
Mancroft and St Andrew’s; none operated more than a ten-minute walk away from the
market cross. Evidence that these traders were at the hub of commercial activity in the city,
as ‘luxury traders’ servicing, or at least within easy access of, the elite, might be deduced
from Branford’s study which established the extraordinary affluence, and contrasting poverty,
to be found in St Peter Mancroft in this period. The 1694 Poll Tax returns/Census revealed
that of the 805 adults living in the parish, 311 were servants to the remaining 494, a ratio of
1:1.6. 44 This can be contrasted to nearby St Stephen’s parish where there were 55 servants in
15
a population of 486, a ratio of nearly 8:1. The ‘average-sized’ household in St Peter’s was
much larger, there being fewer solitary widows living in the parish, plus thirteen of the
households employed five or more servants.45 Not only did this parish contain some of the
wealthiest and most influential men in Norwich, but their wealth was mercantile.46 These
figures give an indication of the affluence and status of the occupants of this city-centre
parish. Yet they must be treated with an element of caution. Thomas Goddard, then an
apprentice to the prominent bookseller George Rose, and about to set-out on an illustrious
and lengthy career of his own, was listed as a servant in the latter’s household.47
What can be established by mapping the stationers is their proximity not only to other
luxury traders and rich merchants but also to the social nerve-centre for the dissemination of
ideas, namely the coffee-shops that had sprung up around the market place.48 Here, the
consumption of the printed word and the exchange of views were far more important than any
addiction to caffeine.49
The town dispensed, partly through its new bookshops,
libraries and press, partly through its theatre, concerts,
coffee houses and inns, the knowledge and culture that
went with an educated and genteel mind.50
Also noteworthy, is the fact that the first Norwich Assembly was held in 1684 at the Angel
Inn, situated just off the Market Place. Thus influential Norwich ‘polite’ society was centred
on this area of the city.51 Meanwhile theatrical performances were advertised as taking place
at the ‘White Swan, St. Peter’s’.52 Here then, in St Peter Mancroft parish, was a tight matrix
of commercial, social and cultural activity.
Having determined the general location of the stationers, the next objective was to establish
the dates when individuals were commercially active, and to collectively ‘map’ each stationer
‘in situ’. They are named and numbered in date order, from the time they obtained their
freedom or from the commencement of their known (or estimated) independent trading
date.53 The following three pages enumerated A, B, C, display the parish boundaries of St
Peter Mancroft (fig. 2); a numerical colour-coded ‘key’ (fig. 3), which has also been applied
in a time-line chart, and appears in the appendices of this dissertation: Appendix Y. The
numbered key is used to locate each stationer on a city-centre map (fig. 4) in the place where,
from the available information, each stationer traded.
The map (fig. 4) demonstrates the concentration of book traders in a small area of the city,
and identifies the close proximity of competing businesses. This begs the question, did these
booksellers, binders, printers and publishers, co-operate? To clarify the relationships, both
business and familial, and also to establish exactly how many were trading at any given time,
the time-line chart (Appendix Y) was constructed. This chart presents at-a-glance information
that may have been intuitive to the late Stuart Norwich book trader, but can only be
understood by formal reconstructions of this type. It emerges that the city at the time of the
Restoration, and for a generation thereafter, comfortably supported three-to-six book-traders
at any given time, and that when one died or moved on, another would arrive to fill their
shoes. The number of traders steadily rose until 1677; expanding, ten years later, to eight;
then dipping slightly, but steadying off at that number until the end of the century when the
16
number of stationers would increase yet again with the reintroduction of print to the city in
1701.54 The highest number in the period was thirteen in 1710 and 1711.
FIG. 2
The parish boundaries of St Peter Mancroft
Main Idea
M ap created by
Dani el Jones.
The above map of the city centre of Norwich was recreated by Daniel Jones for his PhD thesis, using
the information taken from Kirkpatrick, Clere, Blomefield and The Norwich Survey; and is reproduced
here by his kind permission. This represents the commercial nerve centre of the city, in which the
majority of stationers traded and lived. See: Daniel Thomas Jones, ‘Aspects of the Social Geography of
Early-Modern Norwich: Applications of Computer Techniques’, Vols. I & II, (PhD, UEA, Dec. 2003).
17
18
19
Below, figure 5 displays graphically the steady rise in stationers’ numbers operative
in Norwich during the period 1660-1720.55
FIG. 5
GRAPH SHOWING THE NUMBER OF
ACTIVE STATIONERS, 1660-1720
14
NUMBER OF
STATIONERS
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
To assist in clarifying the relationships between the traders over time, space and place, a
‘quasi’-genealogy box-chart was constructed with brief biographical career information
together with link-line connections between those who were related or who had been
apprenticed, employed or had business connections with other stationers. This ‘yellow map’
of all the stationers can be found at the back of the dissertation in Appendix Z.56 The
intention behind the chart is to help in the understanding of the nature of the late Stuart
‘world of the stationer’ in Norwich, and to act as an aide memoir to any future narrative,
discourse or analysis, having, as it does, such a large cast of characters.
Much that characterised the book trade in this period was determined by the nature of the
commodity itself. The lack of delineation between the roles of book-seller, binder, publisher
and even printer at this time, together with the eclectic nature of the trade, needs
explanation.57 Some bookshops even acted as lending libraries, with books loaned out at
‘reasonable Considerations’.58 Advertisements make it clear that specialisation in any one
field of the book business was an unfamiliar practice to these Stuart stationers. Generally
speaking, new, antiquarian and second-hand books were all on offer in the same premises.
Books often arrived off the presses unbound, and many loose manuscripts and stitched and
carded quires were sold that way with the customer making the choice of the binding they so
desired. Therefore booksellers needed to be in close proximity to bookbinders. This enabled a
bookseller personally to complete the finished product in an aesthetically pleasing way and
attract sales on the ‘superficial’ basis of its look or matching it to a colour-coded library.
Equally, it allowed some flexibility in the cost of the finished article and the price for which it
could be sold. Bibles, for example, came in all shapes, sizes and prices and were a standard
20
fare; much of the variety in price was to be found in the nature of the binding and this
flexibility widened the dealer’s potential market and customer base.59
FIG. 6
Germany: a bookseller’s shop interior c. 1659; taken from Comenius (Jan Amos
Komensky), Orbis sensualium pictus; reproduced in London in 1664. Note the deep
drawers for manuscripts, ballads, prints and unbound books.60
This illustration of the ‘book’ retailer does not represent a bookshop of our modern
imagination.61 As is evidenced from the advertisement of William Pinder (fig. 7) and the
auction catalogues of the late seventeenth century in Norwich, it is unlikely to be, by that
time, representative of bookshops in the provinces, by which date a far higher percentage of
the stock was ready-bound by the publisher. 62
FIG. 7
63
21
The late-seventeenth-century Norwich bookseller William Pinder placed an advertisement
in the back of the 1684 edition of Alexander Neville's famous book (originally published in
1623) on Kett's Rebellion, Norfolke Fvries, (fig. 7): ‘At the Sign of the Crown, near the Star
in the Market-place in Norwich, you may have all sorts of Bibles, Common-prayer Books,
Testaments, &c. As Cheap as any man in Norfolk can sell, and your Books well bound, and
claspt, and Money for old Books’. By William Pinder.'
On a practical economic level, bookbinding required less start-up capital and many traders
may have begun trading this way, going on later to build up a stock of books when finances
permitted.64 The chart, Appendix X, shows twelve (out of the thirty-six stationers) in a timeline, who either additionally or solely offered bookbinding services.65 Throughout the period
33% offered this service. The city sustained steady numbers of between one, two or three
bookbinders at the start of our period, peaking with five in the late 1680s.
It would seem that the business of binding books was stretched to capacity by 1690, and
even the death of William Pinder in 1689 did not improve the situation for one practitioner,
John Wilson, who found himself in debtor’s prison in 1690.66 Specialisation in this trade was
clearly precarious. Further, it might also be reasonably judged that, by the end of the
seventeenth century, more and more books were being bound ‘ready made’ at the London
publishers, and could literally be bought straight off the shelf. Figure 8 shows the declining
trend of Norwich bookbinding as a craft in this period.67
FIG. 8
NUMBERS OF ACTIVE BOOKBINDERS
IN ANY GIVEN YEAR, IN NORWICH
IN THE PERIOD 1660-1720
6
NUMBER OF
BOOKBINDERS
5
4
3
2
1
0
Despite the increase in total numbers of active stationers in the city at the turn of the
eighteenth century, the proportion who were bookbinders is markedly reduced.
22
FIG. 9.
COMPARISON BETWEEN THE NUMBER OF STATIONERS
(MAROON) AND THOSE OFFERING BOOKBINDING
SERVICES (BLUE).
NUMBER IN ANY GIVEN
YEAR
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
1
5
9 13 17 21 25 29 33 37 41 45 49 53 57
60-year period: starting 1660; ending 1720
Figure 9 exposes an extraordinarily revealing comparison between the two trades. It shows an
almost ‘mirror image’ choreography in the patterns up to the end of the seventeenth century,
when numbers for both go up and down in concord and unison. The cut-off point for binding
keeping apace with its allied trade coincides with the arrival of a printing press to the city in
1701. At this point bookbinding plateaus, while the total number of stationers rises.68 The
relative depression of both trades in the late 1680s and 1690s might be explained by the strain
put on the economy by the war with France, and the resultant increase in taxation, together
with the difficulty and expense at that time of acquiring paper.69
On the basis of these figures alone it would be premature to conjecture on book-binding’s
untimely demise as a craft. Mass production techniques for hard covers were a while off yet,
and the demand for bookbinding would, in some respects, actually increase in the eighteenth
century as many more books were retailed in weekly instalments.70 What these figures and
graphs do demonstrate is that, as an independent trade, it was precarious, economically less
rewarding than book retailing, and highly dependent on its sister traders.
23
V
FIG. 10
71
Dirk de Bray, active c.1658-1702. A sketch showing the interior of an Amsterdam bookshop.
Note the pictures on the wall are also for sale, and the books on their sides on the shelves are
most often unbound volumes.
Before investigating further the nature of the stationers’ role and the multifarious services
provided by them, it is worth pausing to consider the book as an artefact. The final product
was the work of many hands, and many minds. A raft of processes and skills were required in
the production of a book. At every stage of its journey from author’s final draft to bookshop
shelf it changed form, style and, if only by default, content. In 1950 Ernst Gombrich declared
that a ‘work of art’ is formed, created, somewhere between the intent of the artist and the
perception of the viewer, and that it is a collaborative relationship. In short, it may not be too
far fetched to view the post-Restoration book as a work of art.72
The final product, the book, involved the paper mill, the print compositor’s page-by-page
layout, possibly the involvement of wood cuts or the engraver’s arts, the stitching of its
pages, and finally its binding. All of these processes involved decisions – what size book –
which font where – what size font – what words should be italicized or capitalized? Then, as
now, all these judgements affected the way a book was enjoyed, consumed, experienced and
valued.73 Putting aside its cultural content, the book itself was a luxury item, imbued with
aesthetic value. Judicious decisions were needed to be exercised at every stage of its
development. Its position as a luxury item can be inferred from the picture below (fig. 11).
Here booksellers vie for the attention of fashionable shoppers in a Paris retail emporium,
where other ‘luxuries’ are on offer such as fans, lace and accessories. Although this is not
Norwich, the extant status of the book, as something imbued with cultural capital, not merely
24
as a medium, a transmitter of ideas and knowledge, but also as something that transcends that
‘fact’ making it a desirable artefact in its own right, is evidenced in this engraving.
FIG. 11
Abraham Bosse’s engraving of the Galerie du Palais, Paris, c. 1640.
74
Books are, and were, rarely hidden away. They impose themselves on private and public
domestic space, and cannot be ignored.75 As Bronson points out, ‘Whether a man reads his
books is for him to choose; but will he nill he, the fact of his library faces him every day as
part of his domestic environment.’76 Books are three dimensional; collectively they can form
a sculpture. It is not too fanciful to imagine that, separate from their content, books had an
aesthetic value and spoke volumes, if you will excuse the pun, to proprietor and house guest
alike. Books then, came attached with not only cultural capital because of their content, nor
even just as an object that represented status through conspicuous consumption, but as an
item which combined cultural capital and conspicuous consumption in the fact that they were
on public display, had an aesthetic value and represented an expression of taste. Here then
was an object loaded with cultural messages implying knowledge, education, wealth, style
and taste, the ultimate enlightenment artefact. And, involved in all the decisions that created
the artefact was the Stuart stationer.
The printer, especially the publisher of a newspaper, was often the author of that which he
printed.77 Today, when identifying the ‘creative process’ we focus largely on the author as
the ‘true’ creator of the book: the integrity of the work is attributed to them, and them alone.
While this dissertation does not wish to undermine that concept as an overarching truth, it
needs to point out that the relationship between publisher and author was a far more
collaborative one in the late Stuart period. Not least because the author did not, until the
Copyright Act of Anne in 1709, have copyright of their own composition. After the final
lapsing of the Licence Act (1695), which had released the stranglehold of publishing
25
monopolies, publishing and printing opened up, and volumes of tried and tested favourites
would be published, along with new works, by those with the commercial faith and cash to
take a work to the presses in the belief that it would turn over a profit. Indeed, as was the case
before the Act expired, many of these works would be edited, condensed or bowdlerised,
depending on your view, by the publisher. Equally, then as now, the temper of the content of
new works would be influenced, controlled even, by the person who was investing money in
the venture, namely the publisher. The latter may have toned down contentious content to
ensure a wide audience. Equally the publisher may have deliberately chosen or encouraged
controversy or sensationalism on the basis that it would sell well.78 Even considering the
author’s integrity and intent to be uncontaminated by the process of collaboration with the
publisher, decisions over lay-out, size and font would rarely be his or hers alone, unless the
author personally financed the whole undertaking. There seem to be no hard and fast rules to
italicisation or capitalisation of texts.79 Yet we acknowledge that these decisions affect the
understanding and meaning of the content; the vigilant historian is schooled not to tamper
with early-modern text and to recreate it in its original form wherever possible.80 Put simply,
the early-modern publisher/bookseller was not a trader in a commodity in whose creation he
had played no part. Plus, in retailing that which had been encouraged, commissioned,
selected, shaped, and published by other stationers, the bookseller was a crucial part of the
dissemination of cultural values, whether those values were contained in the size and layout
of the book, its content, or the binding chosen to adorn it as an artefact.
Having established the bookseller/publisher/binder’s credentials as a creator of the artefact
— an artisan — irrespective of ideological content of the material being sold and whether he
was active in shaping that content, there is an area that competes with this thought: the fact
that few stationers only sold books.
As well as books and standard stationery items such as ink, stamps and paper,
George Rose sold patent medicines: ‘Major Choke's Virtuous Necklaces’ in the 1680s
moving on to favour, at the end of his career, ‘Stoughton's Elixir’. He also retailed a wide
variety of groceries and hosted the third known book auction in Norwich in 1700.81 Rose
was also the Norwich agent for the artist James Meheux.82 William Nowell was another
stationer who sold patent medicines, including Piercy’s Lozenges,83 while the bookseller
Thomas Chapman, who gained his freedom as a grocer, also advertised medicinal
remedies. 84 Before ending up as a bankrupt, Jonathan Gleed ploughed his profits
from the book trade into money lending. Gleed, Thomas Goddard, William Chase,
and many who followed, branched out into auctioneering, and not just books but also
furniture and paintings. 85 Another stationer, who would later dabble in auctioneering,
James Carlos, began his career as a barber and, along with bookselling, combined
the two careers for many years before eventually dropping hair-cutting in favour of
retailing, binding books and organizing the occasional auction. 86
One other occupational ‘side-line’ is worthy of note. William Nowell was employed
by the Mayor's Court to keep its members informed of the news from London, and was
paid £4 a year for this service.87 This tells us not only of the demand for news in
Norwich, but also that the Corporation considered such information necessary for the
good government of the city. It also reveals that the Corporation turned to the
bookseller as the natural disseminator of such intelligence. This ‘news’ was not merely
that which emanated from L’Estrange, and after 1665 the government’s official organ,
the Oxford and London Gazette, but came in the form of personally addressed
newsletters from ‘reporters’ in London who, generally, managed to escape the strictures
26
of press censorship because such correspondence was personally addressed and hand
written.88 In turn, Nowell doubly benefited in his role as corporate disseminator of news by
dispatching reports on events in Norfolk back into the newsletter network for collating and
further broadcasting. The titles ‘journalist’ and ‘broadcaster’ might therefore rightfully be
added to the range of skills expected of some booksellers at this time.
VI
In order to place the Norwich stationer in a socio-economic ‘class’, and to understand how
they were viewed by their contemporaries, we need to look at background, apprenticeships,
familial relationships, relative wealth, and any civic roles they undertook.
To be a freeman obliged the holder to swear an oath of loyalty to the crown, the mayor,
swear to pay taxes and talliages, obey ordinances relating to the craft and accept conferred
offices. Freedom entitled the beneficiary to be a master and trade in the city, take on
apprentices, vote in national and local elections and to stand for council. There were four
ways to attain freedom: through patrimony, apprenticeship, purchase, or by the order of the
Municipal Assembly in recognition of rank or for services rendered to the corporation.89
Of the thirty-six stationers, five were widows and another five attained their freedom in
London; four more attained their freedom under another occupation distinct from those of
stationer, bookbinder or printer, and thus far three have not been traced in the freeman
records.90 Of those nineteen found in Millican’s Norwich register, the split is roughly even:
seven attained freedom through purchase, six through patrimony and six through
apprenticeships. Amongst this number are five bookbinders, four of whom attained their
freedom through patrimony.
Of the thirty-one male stationers, twenty-nine have been linked to a freeman record.91
When cross-referenced with the, albeit incomplete, civic officers registers, it appears that a
total of nine (31%) would play an active role within their communities as members of the
‘unacknowledged republic’. Four would take on the role of constables (13%), while five
would be elected to the council (17%). In addition, one, Rose, was a churchwarden; another,
Goddard, was a parish guardian of the poor; while Crossgrove would play a part in the
chamberlain’s council, and Chase would act as clavor. Discounting Freeman Collins, who
was warden of the Stationers Company and a deputy alderman in London, whose interest was
proprietorial and who personally played no active part in the community,92 no stationer
would attain higher office than common councillor until William Chase’s granddaughter’s
husband, William Stevenson, in 1799, became a sheriff.93
The first ordinances of the Norwich Company of Stationers, when formalised in 1636 into
“The lawe for the Booksellers”, are telling. There is no attempt in them to set out ‘good
practice’ in the trade, indeed they only contained two clauses that were pro-active: one that
prohibits outsiders who had not been apprenticed in the city from trading, the other re-
27
iterating an established practice, that widows of freemen would be allowed to continue
trading after the demise of their husband.94 Although widows continuing in the business after
the death of their husband was already commonplace, ensuring that this practice was
enshrined in the slim ordinances was obviously a priority: clearly the importance and support
of wives in the book trade was vital.95 The exclusion of strangers proved more mercurial (and
possibly was personally motivated).96 This clause would be waived only a few years later,
when purchase of freedom for stationers, even outsiders, became increasingly
commonplace.97 The absence of guidelines for ‘good practice’ may be indicative of the
intimate fraternity of the group, and of their ability within a stationers’ community to police
such matters amicably. Fines for those who had neglected or avoided taking up their freedom
as booksellers reveal the growing status of the trade within a hierarchy of trades. At one end
of the scale, a lowly tinman was fined £3; at the other, a mercer attracted the heftiest charge
of £25; the stationer would be penalised to the princely tune of £20.98
VII
THE PRINTER of this paper being determin’d to take an
Apprentice, any Person who has a Son in-clinable to be a
Printer, and sufficiently Qualified for that Business, may come
to the Printing-Office in St Giles’s for further Information. And
if he is a lusty proper Ladd, he will be accepted on more easie
Terms.99
While the Norwich printer Henry Crossgrove wanted a ‘lusty proper Ladd’ and fails to
specify what constituted ‘being sufficiently Qualified for that Business’, there were other,
more rarefied, imperatives and expectations for some aspiring booksellers and publishers.
Huntingdonshire-born John Dunton was the product of three generations of Anglican
clerics.100 However, his lack of facility for Greek proved a handicap for him entering into the
‘family business’. In choosing an appropriate career for his fifteen-year-old son, the Rev.
John Dunton sought one that was, above all, ‘honourable’. To meet this requirement, his son
recorded years later, the occupation of Bookseller was pitched upon: ‘By this means he
thought to make it my interest to be at least a friend to Learning and the Muses, if I
would not join myself to them by some nearer affinity’. 101
If Dunton’s experience as an apprentice in the book trade in the late seventeenth
century is anything to go by, it was a rewarding one. Immersed ‘in so good a family’,
once finally settled in London he soon learned, ‘to love Books to the same excess that
I had hated them before’. 102 Thomas Gent, who also wrote an account of his life in the
trade, had a less favourable experience as a print apprentice in Dublin.103 He was beaten
‘furiously’ by his cruel master.104 Eventually running away, Gent would be required to pay £5
in compensation to his irate master for failing to complete his indenture. The only first-hand
account we have of a Norwich apprentice is that of printer Luke Hansard in the latter part of
the eighteenth century.105 His workload in the print shop off Magdalen Street was onerous
28
and his accommodation far from salubrious, but his devotion to his master, Stephen White,
was unfaltering and uncritical.106
My Master was but rarely in the office … [but] i increased my
diligence to serve my Master, because i loved him, and i
delighted in my business … [so that] in a short space of time i
became expert; I was proud in being compositor & pressman,
corrector and manager, copperplate printer and shopman, book
keeper and accountant to this chequered business. 107
Examining the often close connection between former apprentices and their masters in
Norwich leads one to believe that these relationships were frequently long-lasting and
rewarding, with trading co-operation and links that extended a lifetime, and not infrequently
in the apprentice marrying his master’s daughter.108 In the fullness of time this might lead to
inheriting the business, in some cases consolidating and spawning a dynasty of influential
stationers, publishers or printers for generations to come. The maiden names of wives are
hard to trace, and unless named in their father’s will, makes confirming connections difficult:
as is the case of Freeman Collins’ possible ‘daughter’ Elizabeth who predeceased him, and
who was the wife of Collins’ erstwhile apprentice Frances Burges. Edward Giles’ apprentice,
Robert Tompson, while he certainly married the former’s daughter does not seem to have
been able to sustain his father-in-law’s success as a book trader after inheriting the business.
All of Thomas Goddard’s apprentices appear to have thrived in the book trade in Norwich
after attaining their freedom, the most notable being William Chase, with whom he
maintained a life-long close business relationship, even to the extent of collaborating to
squeeze out ‘outside’ competition in the auction business in Norwich.109
It appears clear from the attitude of Dunton’s father that the book trade was almost
considered a ‘profession’ with ‘honour’ attached to it, conferring suitable status for a cleric’s
son. However, despite this, the fact that the book was also just a ‘commodity’ with all the
trapping of tawdry commercialism is also apparent from another passage in Dunton’s
autobiography:
Were I to begin the Trade of Bookselling once again, I’d never
give myself the Trouble to keep open Shop. Unless a Man can
haggle half an Hour for a Farthing, be Dishonest, and tell Lies,
he may starve behind his Shop-Board, for want of
Subsistence….110
Dunton’s particular personal circumstances and frustrations no doubt heavily jaundiced his
view of his trade at this time, but he does not paint a picture of the ‘ivory tower’ ‘transmitter
of culture’, where traders apply merely gentle persuasion to eager willing consumers. London
was heavily saturated with booksellers. Mandelbrote estimates between 150 and 250 or so in
the capital,111 whereas London stationer and author, Richard Atkyns, claimed in excess of
600 in 1664.112 So it is unlikely that Dunton’s comments, rendering our pro-active haggling
bookseller a Billingsgate fish trader, would necessarily, even if accurate, be applicable to
Norwich.
So, was Norwich recruiting ‘lusty proper Ladd[s]’ into the trade – or the sons of clerics?
29
A national study of publishers from the 1660s to 1700 whose names appear in the imprints
of books reveals the increasing importance of family links in the business as the seventeenth
century closes.113 Mandelbrote looked for publishers whose family background was in the
book trade and compared the figures with stationers who had published but who were the
children of clergy, ‘the other main occupational group that supplied apprentices who became
publishing booksellers.’114 He concluded that the number of ‘clergy related’ apprentices
dropped slightly, by half a percent to 9% over the period, while the sons of book traders
entering the business more than doubled from 9.5% to 21% in the same forty-year timeframe.115 These national figures indicate the gradual strengthening of stationers’ dynastic ties
in the business and increased prosperity within the trade in order to be self-perpetuating.
It should also be noted that publisher/stationers, the source of Mandelbrote’s data, were
likely to be the area where the greatest levels of education, erudition and social status might
be expected to be found. The social backgrounds of the Norwich apprentices, and the book
traders who purchased their freedom, would require further research. However, from the
knowledge available, far from competing with the sons of the clergy for apprenticeships, it
would be the sons of successful Norwich stationers who would become clergy. This was
certainly the case for two of William Oliver’s sons, while the progeny of an East Dereham
hosier, William Chase, would also raise a cleric. 116
It would appear that upward mobility in the trade in post-Restoration Norwich was both
evident, and, in some regards, swift. They traded in the economic, social and cultural nerve
centre of the city. While they may not have made it to the heady ranks of the aldermanry till
the end of the eighteenth-century, Norwich stationers were consolidating the trade for future
generations, contributing to the civic apparatus and strengthening their social position in
society. Many died ‘wealthy men’.117 Franklin was a sufficiently ‘substantial’ city figure to
be a signatory to the address to General Monck.118 Nowell and Oliver were both called upon
to be emissaries on behalf of the city authorities and entertain visiting preaching clerics.119
However, to discover whether or not they were truly the transmitters of ‘enlightenment
values’ and ‘friends to Learning and the Muses’; whether there were ideological imperatives
behind their publications – or whether they were merely ‘wheeler-dealer’ merchants, ciphers
and opportunists feeding off the talents of others, we need to examine what they were selling
and publishing. This may also give an indication of any other broader trends in the literary
taste and fashions of the Norfolk and Norwich reading public of the late Stuart era.
30
CHAPTER TWO
Who but a Sot or a Blockhead would have money in his pocket, and starve his
brains?120
FIG. 12
121
An open-air bookstall at Moorfields c. 1700.
This was one of many such rhetorical quips attributed to the colourful London
auctioneer Edward Millington. He had been invited to Norwich to conduct the first
Norwich book auction, held in December 1689 at the house of Elizabeth Oliver
shortly after the demise of her husband, William. Auctions, of any sort, were still a
relative novelty in England at this time, and it must have been an audacious move on
the part of Mrs Oliver to hold such an event.122 Lacking a local paper to publicize the
auction, Elizabeth Oliver placed an advertisement in the London Gazette.123 Although
she may have anticipated attendance from London, even further afield, the use of the
London Gazette affirms the fact that London papers were readily available in the
coffee shops of Norwich; that they were being used in a sophisticated manner, and
that advertising in newspapers was already an important part of provincial commerce.
31
Dunton refers to the London-based auctioneer as: ‘The famous Mr. Edward
Millington’ and asserts that he will never be forgotten, ‘while his name is Ned’,
claiming he was a man of: ‘remarkable Elocution, Wit, Sense, and Modesty –
characters so eminently his, that he would be known by them among a thousand’;
adding: ‘there was usually as much Comedy in his Once, Twice, Thrice, as can be met
with a modern Play’.124
Millington’s mastery of flattery and his understanding of ‘polite commercial’
psychology can be found in the introductory page of Mrs Oliver’s catalogue. He begins
by extolling the content of the auction while at the same time congratulating the
potential audience for being discerning enough not to need this to be pointed out: ‘I
might both largely and justifiably commend the Catalogue for many considerable as
well as scarce Books contained in all its parts; but where I am afore-hand sensible that
the Persons to whom I am to sell them are such competent Judges for themselves, it
prevents any further Enlargement’. He goes on to remind the audience that the purpose
of the auction was for the ‘improvement of Learning and advancement of
Knowledg[e]’. This master of ceremonies could hardly fail to draw all those who
wished to create for themselves a positive ‘enlightened’ public persona.125 Mindful, this
event itself also created a new form of ‘sociability’ in a ‘public’ venue, with all the
hallmarks characteristic of polite society.
Whether or not the first auction was intended to clear dead stock or was for other
reasons, can only be speculated upon. However, it was clearly a success as it spawned
two other large auctions of books in the city within an eleven-year period: one in 1693
and another in 1700. Sufficient revenue must have been generated to cover the cost of
Millington’s, probably not immodest, fee; not forgetting the costs of national
advertising, posters, and of printing the catalogues. It might therefore be fair to
assume a tidy profit was achieved, higher perhaps than the normal retail price of the
stock, to cover costs and to have encouraged future replication.
Mrs Oliver’s sale was to commence at nine o’clock in the morning and was destined
to end at eight o’clock in the evening, with a three-hour break at midday. Millington
declared it would, ‘continuing daily the same hours till all the Books are sold’. It
would seem such events went on for days, or at least had the potential to do so. The
modern auctioneer, going like the clappers, estimates 100 lots per hour: one lot every
thirty-six seconds. Given Millington’s reputation for loquacity, and charm, it seems
most unlikely he could have achieved this target. However, employing the figure of
100 lots an hour, the first auction, with 1,245 lots alone, would require nearly thirteen
hours of continuous auctioneering. The second auction, with 1,454 lots, would take
nearly fifteen hours; and for this event the length of the working day had been cut to
seven hours. The third auction was an evening-only event, running from four until
eight o’clock. With 2,508 itemized books for sale it would need, as a minimum,
twenty-five hours without a break in the proceedings.
It is almost impossible that any of the three Norwich book auctions was concluded
in one day, and the third auction possibly lasted every evening for a week. Taking
place in the evening in December, the latter auction would also have demanded
considerable quantities of expensive candle wax. These, then, were major high-profile
social, as well as commercial, events. The Norwich elite, many aspiring socialites;
32
‘middling sorts’ and literate artisans, would, no doubt, have turned out in force. If
everyone who attended purchased three books each it would mean that 416 people
were present at some stage of the first auction in Mrs Oliver’s house, just under 500 at
the second in the same venue, and 836 at the third in Mr Rose’s house. Most likely
these numbers would have been much larger, as many would have come purely out of
curiosity, or to offer moral support to a ‘bidder’. Such numbers, even if staggered over
time, give an indication of the size of the venue and — the status of its owner.126
II
These three events have left us the rich legacy of their catalogues, enumerating the
books to be sold, the content and forms of which are examined below.
The books were listed under two all-encompassing headings: ‘Divinity’ and
‘Miscellaneous’. They were sold in various physical forms and sizes including folio,
quarto, octavo and duodecimo. The pie-charts (figs. 13, 14, 15, below) depict the spilt
between the divine and religious texts — and everything else. The ‘Miscellaneous’
category appears to comprise everything from books on history and philosophy, to
French cooking, ‘how to’ manuals, drama and romances.
The quantity of ‘Divinity’ titles on offer relative to ‘Miscellaneous’ might suggest
‘old order’ views, not enlightenment values, persisted in the literature on offer. Yet
this was a period of transition, and tastes in religious reading matter were fractured
and mirrored national political imperatives as well as individual tastes. Identifying the
nature of the divinity texts therefore, and analysing the various formats relating to
each category, may prove revealing.
33
FIG. 13
Mrs Elizabeth Oliver
Norwich Auction of Books
16th December 1689
Total titles on sale:1,248
Misc. titles 34%
Divinity titles 66%
127
FIG. 14
Mrs Elizabeth Oliver and Mr Edward Giles
Norwich Auction of Books
10th July 1693
Total titles on sale:1,454
Misc. titles 31%
Divinity titles 69%
FIG. 15
George Rose, Edward Giles, Samuel Oliver and
Thomas Goddard
Norwich Auction of Books
2nd December 1700
Total titles on sale: 2,508
Misc. titles 41%
Divinity titles 59%
In a comparably short time, eleven years, there had been a quite dramatic increase in
the ‘miscellaneous’ titles on offer: from 34% to 41% of the total stock being sold
between the first and last auctions. At face value this might appear to indicate that
secular recreational and informative reading matter had greatly increased in popularity
34
over the period.128 However, there are many variables to be factored into the equation
before jumping to hasty conclusions, not least of which is the fact that different
combinations of contributors were involved in all three auctions. Their stock may
reflect their own tastes, or the particular niche they had carved for themselves within
the Norwich book-buying market. Two of William and Elizabeth Oliver’s progeny
would enter the Anglican Church, and most of the material the former had personally
published was of a religious, pro-Royalist nature. This in itself must be a factor to be
allowed for in future stock collaborations. A comparison between the first two
auctions, therefore, might be useful because it involved solely Mrs Oliver in the first
instance, recently widowed with her husband’s stock to dispose of, compared to her
stock four years later combined with that of Mr Edward Giles.
In the four years between 1689 and 1693 divinity titles increased by 3% of the total
stock being sold at auction. This of course could be explained purely on the basis that
Mrs Oliver’s collaborator in this second auction, Edward Giles, was a prolific
publisher of non-conformist sermons and the stock he brought to the auction table
may have skewed the statistics.129 On the other hand, the rise in divinity works for
sale could indicate another trend entirely: not an increased predilection on the part of
publisher/bookseller or buying public for sermons, prayer books and contemplative
religious works, but the opposite. This second auction may well have been set up to
clear unwanted, unsold stock. In short, it could indicate that the public had been
buying less divine literature and that the stationers were keen to shift it ‘at any price’
in an auction. A further, contradictory factor, and recent political initiative, may also
have contributed to the higher numbers of non–conformist divine literature released
openly onto the market in this fashion. In 1689 William III had encouraged the
passage of the Act of Toleration which guaranteed religious toleration to certain
Protestant non-conformists. As a result the genre may have been enjoying a
resurgence. The fact that the staunch Anglican Tory and the Presbyterian nonconformist Whig commercially collaborated in 1693 is worthy of note.130
The central – unanswerable – question surrounds the motivation for the auction(s).
We have no way of knowing which titles sold well and at what prices.131 These facts
would be invaluable in ascertaining what material was popular and in demand towards
the close of the seventeenth century. Are these catalogue titles the flotsam and jetsam
of the booksellers shelves? Walton’s The Compleat Angler; Foxe’s Book of Martrys,
along with Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, are all titles that are regularly re-printed
during the period, and on that basis, assumptions have been made about their enduring
popularity. Yet these volumes are available in large numbers at these auctions. This
apparent contradiction implies that these public bidding sales may well have been
about either swift cash-flow injections, or publicity and, what we call today — public
relations; or, most likely, all these things. Another consideration may have been an
actually shortage of books at this time. The plague devastated the printing community
in London, and this was compounded the following year by the conflagration of
numerous substantial warehouses of books in the Great Fire of London (1666).132 It is
known that there had been a publishing and printing hiatus as stocks, personnel and
equipment, caught up with demand. Likewise, after 1692, the war with France was
beginning to have an economic bite and knock-on effects in terms of higher taxation
and on a shortage of imported paper for printing. One of two conflicting factors may
have influenced Mrs Oliver – and later Mr Giles – to auction their stock: either
disposable income amongst those liable for tax might have been in short supply and
35
the market for luxuries, such as books, may have dipped, ergo — times were hard.
Alternatively, new printed material was scarce and to exact the best price for existing
stock in an inflationary market an auction appeared a shrewd option — after all, as
John Locke noted in 1692 : ‘The price of any Commodity rises or falls, by the
proportion of the number of buyers and sellers’.133
What these catalogues also reveal is that when it came to books – size mattered. Not
only were the books listed under two distinct subject headings but under each heading
they sub-divided the volumes in size order, starting with folio. ‘The question of size in
books has psychological implications not to be instantly resolved, which interplay
with obvious practical considerations’.134 Reconstructing the choices that went into
the decision on the physical size of the publication is difficult. Tradition no doubt
would have played a part, but getting to the root of that ‘tradition’ is hard; and then
understanding the reasons behind breaks in tradition is even more fraught. As Bronson
remarked, ‘[i]t seems clear that the eighteenth century had a notion of correct relations
between subject matter and physical size’.135 Size appears to have gone hand-in-hand
with substance: gravitas. The larger the format the more substantial – literally and
figuratively – the volume’s content. The decision behind the size of a volume, in
itself, may have affected sales.136 The presentation of a folio edition of the works of
Shakespeare, for instance, would appeal to a different clientele than a serialisation of
his works in individual chapbooks. Indeed in different reprints, books would
sometimes change form, making it more awkward to establish the decisions behind
the changes. The pie-charts that follow, figs. 16, 17, 18, illustrate the breakdown of
the material on offer at the three Norwich auctions in the formats in which they were
being sold.
If we compare the first two auctions, held in 1689 and 1693, we see that while the
largest portion of the ‘cake’ has shifted in favour of divinity per se, this is at a cost to
folio works across the board. In the larger folio format, both ‘miscellaneous’ works
and those defined in the ‘divine’ categories have had their slice of the cake reduced in
favour of an increase, both in quarto and octavo, and even smaller works, dedicated to
religious devotional content. Does this indicate a popularist demand for accessible
(cheaper?) uplifting religious material? A part of the changes might be based on the
fact that, as the reading public swelled in numbers, to increasingly embrace those
lower down the social scale with less disposable income, cheaper, smaller, editions
were being demanded. Is this a sign that book buyers were seeking less prestigious
‘status’ artefacts in favour of greater (higher levels of) consumption, and/or more
novelty? Could it indicate that greater literacy and the percolation of resources to the
new, and ever-burgeoning, ‘middling sorts’ meant a triumph of content over style? In
other words, is this a sign of economic downturn, increased literacy levels, or
conspicuous consumption of less ‘conspicuous’ goods? Is the elite nature of
expensive editions becoming outmoded; making way for a greater transmission of
ideas? Definitive answers are hard to find.
36
FIG. 16
1689 Book Auction : Book forms
Divinity in Folio: 10%
Divinity in Quarto: 27%
Divinity in Octavo & 12o
et al: 29%
Misc. in Folio: 8%
Misc. in Quarto: 11%
Misc. in Octavo & 12o et
al: 15%
FIG. 17
1693 Book Auction: Book forms
Divinity in Folio: 4.5%
Divinity in Quarto: 30.5%
Divinity in Octavo & 12o
et al: 34.5%
Misc. in Folio: 5.5%
Misc. in Quarto: 9%
Misc. in Octavo &12o et
al: 16%
FIG. 18
1700 Book Auction: Book forms
Divinity in Folio: 6.5%
Divinity in Quarto:
18.25%
Divinity in Octavo and
Twelves et al: 34.5%
Misc. in Folio: 7.5%
Misc. in Quarto: 6.25%
Misc. in Octavo & 12o et
al: 27%
37
The problems posed are amplified in our third pie-chart (fig. 18) of the auction held
in 1700. Folio editions in both categories increased slightly, though not returning to
their 1689 ‘high’. Meanwhile religious quarto works, and to a lesser extent quarto
miscellaneous publications too, by 1700, had been reduced. The greatest beneficiaries
of this trend were the smallest formats: octavo, twelves et al. ‘Small’, one might
assume, was becoming increasingly attractive to the late Stuart reading public.137
‘Small’ may also have been associated with trivial literature, especially fiction, and
the need for the latter to be unobtrusive and inconspicuous.138 Although penned by
Sheridan later in the eighteenth century, this perception may be deduced from the
urgency in an appeal made by Lydia Languish:
Here, my dear Lucy, hide these books. Quick,
quick!— Fling Peregrine Pickle under the toilet—
throw Roderick Random into the closet—put The
Innocent Adultery into The Whole Duty of Man—
thrust Lord Aimworth under the sofa—cram Ovid
behind the bolster—there—put The Man of Feeling
into your pocket—so, so—now lay Mrs. Chapone in
sight, and leave Fordyce’s Sermons open on the
table.139
The shift away from religious works at the seventeenth century’s close may also
indicate an increased thirst for secular knowledge, information and recreational
ephemeral material.
The rise in octavos and duodecimos as the century progressed, at a cost to folios and
quartos, might seem to relate directly to the changing socio-economic profile of the
consumer.140 Yet the personal choice of artisans involved in the publishing process
still had their influence, and do not always follow a discernable pattern. Bronson
points out that the works of Goldsmith were rarely in a size above duodecimo, even
though separate poems consistently maintained publication in the largest format until
well after 1750.141
Yet again these figures, or any deductions made surrounding them, cannot be
separated from the stationers whose stock had contributed to the sales. As noted
earlier the family of William Oliver were upstanding Anglicans. Oliver had been
called upon by the Corporation to entertain visiting clergy on their behalf and he had
died a wealthy man. It might be inferred therefore that an elite clientele with deep
pockets were regulars at his shop and their, and his, orthodox tastes may have been
reflected – not just in the devout subject matter of the books for sale – but in the
number of more substantial folio editions that suited an elite pocket. In contrast,
Edward Giles’ clientele were dissenters of every socio-economic ‘class’. The
Presbyterian Divine John Collinges, and late pastor of St Stephen’s until his
resignation after the Act of Uniformity in 1662, was a close friend of Giles.142 Giles
would publish many of Collinges’s sermons and works directed at, amongst others,
the weaving community.143 Collinges had articulated a desire to have his words reach
all levels of society, at one time stating that he had reduced his Discourse, ‘into a few
sheets that it may be a Burden not too heavy for an ordinary Purse’.144 These more
polemical discourses, in small format, were high-turnover stock with a specific
readership in mind, and clearly served Giles well as he, too, appears to have been
materially successful.145
38
The third auction exposes more eclectic subject matter and formats, again reflecting
the political, religious, ideological and commercial preferences of those who pooled
resources to hold the event. Comparing the 1693 auction catalogue with that of 1700
shows that miscellaneous titles went up 10%, commensurate with a 10% drop in
divinity titles.146 Samuel Oliver’s publishing tastes seem not to have deviated from his
father’s. Likewise, Giles continued to advertise stock that reflected his non-conformist
views until the end of his career.147 Thomas Goddard and George Rose, the other two
contributors to this last auction, add further complexity to the textural mix.
Goddard had been the apprentice of George Rose. The former’s publishing history
reveals a far greater penchant for the sensational, popularist market. Unlike in these
first three auctions, Goddard would advertise ‘romances’ as a separate genre for sale
in his auction of 1705.148 Equally, both men were Whigs.149 Goddard would go on to
found the Whig-biased Norwich Post Man newspaper in 1706.150 Evidence that Rose,
perhaps a non-conformist himself, supported the Glorious Revolution might be
inferred from a scrape he had had with the authorities for possessing a seditious
pamphlet Reflections on Monsieur Fagel’s Letter.151 Rose found himself questioned
and cautioned by the authorities.152 Unlike his fellow non-conformist bookseller,
Giles, also in hot water for possessing the very same seditious pamphlet, Rose was
possibly of a less earnest religious conviction and was prepared to conform for the
sake of expedience: he had been accepted as a constable in St Peter Mancroft parish in
1680 and became a churchwarden in 1686.153 Perhaps because of his radical religious
bent, Giles does not seem to have been embraced in any, however minor, civic
capacity/role within the community. For Giles there might be assumed a strong
sympathy for the content of Monsr. Fagel’s Letter. For Rose however, whether
ownership of the ‘seditious’ pamphlet was ideological or commercially
motivated cannot be known for sure. Twice-married, Rose is not easy to
pigeonhole. While he was a constable and the official stationer to the Mayor’s
court on the one hand, on the other he was often hauled up by the authorities to
keep the peace and even prosecuted, successfully, for fathering a bastard child.154
The textural mixture of Anglican, Royalist ‘divine right’ literature emanating
from the house of Oliver; the Presbyterian sermons published by Giles; along
with the commercial leanings of the two Whig stationers, Goddard and Rose, is
echoed in what was on offer at the third auction. A quick look at the breakdown
of some titles in each auction reveals the ‘broad church’ tastes of the stationers
collectively and, one might assume, the Norwich reading public.
III
Elizabeth Oliver’s 1689 surviving auction catalogue is a clean non-annotated
copy. As with its companion catalogues it starts with divinity titles, sometimes
noting the author in italics on the left-hand side and in the far right-hand column
it lists the date and place of publication (if outside London).155 No volume on
sale has a publication date that pre-dates the English Reformation, the oldest
39
being an Edwardian Bible translated by Tindall and dated 1549.156 Notable titles
include a fourth folio edition (1685) of ‘Shakespears Works (viz.) Plays,
Histories, &c.’; ‘Hobbs Leviathan’ (1651); along with Grotius ‘of the Right of
War and Peace, English’d by Evats’(1682).157 The apogee of Renaissance
humanism, ‘Ship of Fools’ is included,158 as is Culpeppers ‘Idea of Practical
Physick’.159 Up-to-the-minute ‘enlightened’ philosophy jostled for position alongside
‘natural’ herbal remedies, an innovative ‘modern’ discourse on international law; and
Renaissance drama. These weighty tomes are all in folio, and, to borrow from
Millington, ‘you’ll find Learning enough within [them] to puzzle both
Universities’.160 Those Norvicians, yearning for classical and up-to-the-minute
erudition and culture, with ‘money in their pockets’, would have no need to ‘starve
their brains’. As anticipated, the divine and literary spread is conservative. Perhaps the
most ideologically revealing tract is a copy of ‘Eikon Basilike’.161
FIG .19
162
Before looking at the contents of the second and third Norwich book auctions, it is
worth reflecting on the significance of another offering in Mrs Oliver’s collection.
The highest bidder for lot 95 in the miscellaneous quarto section had the
opportunity to secure a copy of Newton’s ‘Mathematic, Elements, and use of the
Globes’ (1660).163 Described later by Voltaire as a ‘veritable thinking
machine’,164 in 1689 a young alderman’s son, Samuel Clarke, would have been in
his last year at the Norwich Free Grammar School.165 Clarke would, however, go on
to be one of the leading national figures in disseminating Newton to a wider audience.
But whether Clarke’s scientifically-minded father,166or his future influential
patron, the bibliophile Bishop Moore, might have purchased such a volume can
40
only be open to conjecture.167 Clarke, along with his ex-Cambridge tutor,
Richard Laughton, and his friend William Whiston,168 would prove leading lights
in the movement that shifted thought from Cartesian natural philosophy to
Newtonianism. In turn all would become members of the Norwich Library. 169 And
yet, perhaps theirs and Bishop Moore’s dependence on Norwich booksellers for
natural philosophical material is exposed in the fact that the Library never
possessed a copy of Principia.170 That such leading English intellectuals and the
wider ‘scientific’ community in Norwich with a thirst for innovation and news
were dependent on the city’s stationers is also confirmed in a letter by Sir
Thomas Browne to his son.171 In 1680, Browne’s son had written to his father
with a fulsome account of a comet spotted while he was in London. So grateful
for this exciting news, more expansive than anything found in the official organs
on the matter, and in the earnest desire that others might share it, Browne
replied that, ‘Mr Oliver the bookeseller would need write it out that hee might
gratifie his friends and customers with your account thereof.’ 172 Oliver, like Nowell
before him, was seen as the first port of call for propagating valuable manuscript
newsletters.
There was a large intellectual community in Norwich in this period, many of whom
were of national importance. Further, these individuals were heavily reliant on local
stationers for their reading material as well as the latter’s contacts, in order to access
intellectual movements, the latest theories, and news of events. In other words,
demand would have influenced supply and we should not overplay the personal tastes
of the stationers in determining their stocks.
IV
The second auction catalogue of 1693 combined Giles’ stock with that of Mrs
Oliver’s. In many regards, it followed similar lines to the first catalogue in terms of
the broad divisions in subject matter. However, the content within those categories is
much more diverse. The same royalist vein can be detected in the opportunity to
purchase, ‘King James for Right of Kings’ (1619).173 In octavo, the conservative
overview to be found in ‘Edward Chamberlains present State of England’ (1669),
awaited a buyer.174 Meanwhile, more religiously ‘radical’, the oldest volume on offer,
dating from 1572, was from the pen of the Zurich Calvinist: ‘Gualther’s Homilies on
the Acts’,175 and was, possibly, one of Giles’s contributions to the sale. ‘Leviathan’ is
there, as is a recent translation of L’Blanc’s travels, plus a raft of books on
‘Chyrurgery’, including Thomas Bonham’s 1630 publication the ‘Chyrurgeons
Closet’.176 The medical titles, though relatively recent publications, are a curious mix
of old ideas and methods, and innovation. This contrast can be seen in the offerings of
a 1637 edition of Jakob Rüff’s book the ‘Expert Midwife’, first published in the
previous century,177 on the one hand, and the groundbreaking: ‘The Deaf and Dumb
Man’s Feiend’ [sic], published in 1648, on the other.178 Rüff had been dead 135 years
and there were some slightly more modern offerings on the subject of midwifery.179 In
contrast, the medical practitioner John Bulwer, the author of the pioneering tract, ‘The
Deaf and Dumb Mans Friend’, had identified for the first time that, ‘gestural language
41
was universal and primary, with spoken language being but a gloss on gestural
communication’.180
A final selection from this auction is a salutary reminder not to take twenty-first
century eyes to seventeenth-century sensibilities. The volume in question has the
felicitous title: ‘Excellency of Woman’.181 Despite its author, William Austin, being
heralded today as an early champion of feminism, the content, its heavily laden
numinous religious overtones, and its imagery, comes across as medieval.182 [See fig.
20 below, showing pages 78-79 of the 189-page work]. Less skilled, in every sense,
than Leonardo da Vinci, Austin is still attempting to make sense of ‘the chaos’ of
human existence by applying the theories of mathematic symmetry to his subject. A
significant novelty factor was to put ‘woman’ at the centre, as the focus, of such
theories. The text expounds a combination of religion and astrology, and to both are
applied ‘new age’ empiricist methods of enquiry: a hybrid of Renaissance and
Enlightenment thought, exposing a liminal moment in the transition between the two.
FIG.20:
In the third auction catalogue of 1700, Millington’s flamboyant sales pitch on the
first page has been substituted for one in a similar but more restrained vein, signed by
the host, George Rose. The chance to acquire ‘Light and Knowledge’ is touched upon,
but greater emphasis is made of the ‘whole entertainment’ to be found in the ‘great
Variety of all sorts of good Books’. Rose is also not shy to point out that the design
and purpose of the event is for his ‘honest Gain’.183 The style, while still ‘polite’, is
more forthright. While perhaps acknowledging the need for the talents of the
42
professional auctioneer, George Rose was not going to be upstaged by Millington.
Rose wanted his moment in the sun.
This catalogue differs from its predecessors in other ways too. After the first folio
sections in each category, no publication dates are given for the books on sale.
Volumes that contain wood or engraved ‘cuts’ are highlighted —for example,
‘Ogilby’s Homer with Cuts’ (1669)— indicating they are considered particularly
desirable for so having.184 This sale, taking place after the lapse of the Licensing Act,
may explain the presence of a book published and printed in ‘Amsterd’.185 The
earliest edition on offer (1563) was a very early English translation of Wolfgang
Musculus’ 1560 treatise, Loci Communes Sacrae Theologiae – known in English as
the ‘Common Places’.186 This catalogue had also been annotated by a customer, and
contains inky blobs and scrawl to the side of some lots. It is clear that whoever owned
the catalogue was not much interested in the divinity sections, which contain few
blobs, whereas the miscellaneous sections are more heavily marked up, if, sadly,
fairly illegibly. The client seems to have followed with keen interest the progress of
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Four folio editions were for sale, each copy being
separated by other lots.
Page 18, note lot 1.
The first copy, a 1652 edition, appears to have sold for 12s. and 1d.
Page 18, lots: 32 and 38.
The second copy, published in 1624, looks like it may have reached 24s. 2d. The
bidding on the third copy, a 1639 publication, must have been frenzied if my reading
of the price is accurate: 39s. 3d.
Page 20, lot 111.
The fourth and final chance to purchase Burton seems to have dropped back down to
24s 5d for the 1624 edition. What was it about the 1639 publication that made it so
special and a full fifteen shillings more valuable that its two 1624 counterparts, or
twenty-seven shillings more expensive that the 1652 edition? Robert Burton (1577–
1640) apparently modified and enlarged each subsequent edition.187 The first, in 1621,
contained 353,369 words, and his sixth edition of 1651 (published posthumously with
his new notes) contained 516,384 words. In terms of getting the author’s latest and
fullest thoughts on his subject one might have expected that the 1652 edition would
43
have been the most sought after. The quality and quantity of the content does not
seem to have been a deciding factor, yet without seeing the book’s condition and
binding it is impossible to gauge the thought processes, mindful too that auctions are
mercurial events to which logic cannot always be applied. However, Burton’s
Anatomy was a Renaissance monograph. It is not an ‘easy’ text to follow, peppered as
is it with Latin and Greek quotations. These bidders were either highly erudite, or
Burton had become a ‘must have’ in any worthy ‘polite’ private library. Had Anatomy
come to be a status artefact? After all, assuming these editions were not all brought
together especially for the auction and were normally readily available in the
bookshops of those contributing to the auction, why should not a customer have come
into a Norwich bookshop any day of the week and purchased Burton straight off the
shelf at a sober agreed price? Following that train of thought leads one to conclude
this was about show and display and being seen to buy and own: very ‘conspicuous’
consumption. Were the stationers merely tapping into a zeitgeist for ‘public display’
with these auctions, in search of higher profits? The prices are really rather high.188
Gattuso’s study of Norwich Probate inventories in this period led her to estimate an
average book price of under one shilling for ‘unnamed’ books in ‘parcels’, and
between one shilling and £2 for those ‘named’.189 Of course those assessing the
property of the deceased were not experts and are likely to have erred on the side of
caution and perhaps under-valued the goods’ actual market price. But if £2 was
considered a top price, it gives an indication of why these events were popular with
booksellers and, why they were to become increasingly so with future generations of
stationers.190
A diverse range of political tastes were catered for in the 1700 auction, reflecting,
yet again, the four disparate traders, their individual affiliations, and the niche markets
they normally catered for. Whig and Tory-Royalist have no argument, sitting cheek
by jowl in the catalogue:
Page 24, note lots: 41; 45; 48.
David Jenkins (1582-1663) was a prominent Royalist judge during the Civil War.
His obituary was apparently the first of its kind in the English-speaking world,
published by Roger L’Estrange in The Newes: ‘He dyed, as he lived, preaching
…Loyalty to his Majesty, and Obedience to the Lawes of the Land.’191 Jenkins might
have found it curious to have his life’s ‘Works’ for sale three lots down from ‘A
pleasant Novel on the late Duke of Monmouth’ and only six lots separating him from
a biography on Shaftsbury.
44
Locke’s Ecclesiastes was among the items on offer, and in the ‘Age of Dryden’ it is
no surprise to find the poet, playwright, critic and translator’s Juvenal and Perseus in
folio, lot number 188.192 ‘Boyl’s New Experim. with Cuts’ in quarto, turns up twice,
fetching 3s. on the first occasion, yet only 2s. the second.193 It would seem that Rose’s
opening paragraph promising a variety ‘of all sorts’ of books does not disappoint.
Natural philosophy, ‘science’, geography, history, poetry, romances and tales of
derring-do are all in evidence in this sale catalogue. Where it differs in ‘variety’ from
its sister catalogues is in the addition of, amongst others, a racy publication called:
‘The Female Gallant or, The Wife’s the Cuckold. A Novel’.194 Its author, Alexander
Oldys, opens the piece with a caution to its dedicatee, Mr Cardell Goodman, which
signposts its content:
I fear Sir, you'll find your Entertainment but Rude, and
Homely; But I hope, not Ill-natur'd, nor Uncivil. You have
your Bill of Fare in the Title Page, and if I have dress'd any
one Dish to your Palate, I wish you may make a Hearty, but
not a Nauseous meal of it; and then I'm sure I shall be the
most satisfy'd…195
Unlike Sheridan’s rhetorical sentimental titles, hastily to be removed from the
chance of discovery by the fictional Lydia Languish, this book was no doubt aimed at
a male readership. None the less, this picaresque tale was tiny enough to discretely
disappear into any deep pocket.196
V
Overall, it is clear that in these catalogues religious books outnumber all other
genres. If an index of ‘enlightenment values’ is to perceive and detect a significant
move towards the secular (or, away from religious) reading matter, it might appear,
on the basis of auction stock alone, that the post-Restoration Norwich reading public
were in an ‘enlightenment’ backwater. Yet, in a Cathedral city with a bishop, dean
and chapter, and sufficient ministers to service over fifty churches, not forgetting the
newly-built nonconformist chapels, the emphasis on religious material becomes less
surprising. The trend towards greater numbers of ‘miscellaneous’ titles in the elevenyear period is evident, as is a move towards the smaller formats, with an implication
that these formats were more likely to be of a ‘lighter’ recreational material. Although
all, or any, of these trends can be explained away purely on the basis of the
idiosyncrasies of the individual retail contributors to the auctions, someone was
buying this material in all its forms, or the market could not have maintained these
disparate traders. While ‘demand and supply’ is a ‘chicken and egg’ conundrum, an
exploration of who was driving ‘demand’ or were the recipients of ‘supply’ needs to
be explored.
45
Much has been made so far about the ‘elite’ consumer of the book, be they clerics
or intellectuals such as Sir Thomas Browne and Samuel Clarke, or even wealthy
auction punters with 39s. 3d. to lay out on Burton’s Anatomy. However, in order to
establish how far any ‘enlightenment values’ might have penetrated Norwich society,
from the middling sort down, we need briefly to touch on literacy levels and book
ownership in ordinary households. We know, in a very crude sense, that books were
bought because the trade sustained a yearly average of 6.7 stationers in the city over
the period, but what and how many books were purchased, and by whom, is harder to
recover. Was reading and the ownership of books purely an elite, ‘polite’
preoccupation?
After his death in 1673 the books of the minister of St George’s Colegate, George
Cock, were sold for £338.6s.5d.197 This sum as a share of his total estate tells us that
14% of the deceased’s worldly wealth had been tied up in his library.198 As high a
ratio as this appears, Gattuso points out that, ‘[t]here are many instances where the
value of books made up a large proportion of the wealth of a poorer man’.199 Her
research examined a cross-section of Norfolk inventories over a long period
embracing the whole of the sixteenth century through until 1710. Guttuso’s findings,
unsurprisingly, place the professional class at the top, with 80% of them owning
books; the gentry, in tandem with retailers, came next with 37%, followed by yeomen
and craftsmen in unison at 14%, women at 9%, husbandmen at 4%, with no
labourer’s inventory revealing book ownership.200 These figures when married into
the assumed literacy levels might appear to confirm the view of those historians that
believe the ‘print revolution’ almost overnight created a bi-polar cultural split in early
modern society, based on literacy.201 However, although Cressy’s figures for the
period (suggesting a general 70% illiteracy) look depressingly like there was little
change in overall reading levels until the mid-to-late eighteenth century,202 the basis
for gauging literacy —the ability to sign one’s name— is commonly acknowledged as
being inadequate and unreliable.203 Spufford found evidence of persons who had
signed their wills with an ‘x’ yet had previously hand-written their names on other
documents.204 Schofield suggests an additional 50% should be added to the number
who could sign their names as an indication of those who could read but could not
205
sign.
The fact that by 1706 Norwich could support three rival newspapers might appear
evidence enough that literacy levels in the city were very high, and the importance of
the transmission of ideas and news through the typographical word penetrated all
levels of Norwich society. Mindful that cultural transmission does not begin and end
with the individual reader of the printed subject matter, and that — the ‘boundaries of
print were fluid’— what was written down overlapped with the oral tradition, both
feeding off and into each other.206 In other words, to some extent these ‘literacy’
figures, even if accurately recoverable, while they might tell us the number of
potential book-buying ‘customers’, would not really give us a picture of how far the
ideas born on the printed page penetrated into the fabric of Norwich life – bottom up
– top down – middle each way. Nor, indeed, would they tell us how much the ‘fabric
of Norwich life’ yearned for the ideas born on the printed page.
So, if, as established, Norwich was able to sustain an average of 6.7 booksellers in
any given year, perhaps it might be helpful to ask whether or not this was
46
exceptional? As so much of the trade in the Shropshire town of Shrewsbury was
committed to luxury goods, McInnes puts forward a compelling case for it being, by
1695, an exemplary ‘leisure town’. Branford exposed a rise in the incidence of
Norwich freemen in this period being associated with luxury occupations, but headto-head how do the frequency of stationers in the two ‘county capitals’ compare?207
Norwich might, at first glance, be measured favourably with McInnes’ study of
Shrewsbury, with its ‘one bookbinder’, ‘two booksellers’ and ‘a stationer’, uncovered
by the Marriage Duty Act of 1695: collectively numbering four generic stationers in
the Shrewsbury book trade compared to Norwich’s six in that year.208 But then the
population of Shrewsbury was just over 7,000.209 When compared to Norwich’s
approximate 29,000 for that date, Shrewsbury was less than a quarter of the size. If
you multiply Norwich’s book traders x 4 to compensate and be on a par with
Shrewsbury then, head-for-head, the Norfolk capital should have sustained sixteen
booksellers. But then, maybe it did. As the people enumerated in this study do not
include petty chapmen and travelling itinerant small-book traders, it is hard to be sure
if we are comparing like for like.210 Also significant is the fact that 85% of
Norfolkians, and indeed the entire population of East Anglia, needed only to travel a
maximum of ten miles to reach their nearest market town, whereas only 50% of
Midlanders could do the same.211 In the last quarter of the seventeenth century East
Anglia was replete with part-time book sellers in many of its market towns. These
active itinerant and part-time traders may well have reduced the number of people
who would otherwise have come into Norwich to purchase reading material.212A
similar comparison with Bristol, using Plomer’s Directory, puts Norwich on an equal
footing with the west-coast port.213 Both compare favourably with York, despite it
having a printing press since 1662, yet at the same time Exeter had 33% more
stationers in the period than either town – possibly because of its distance from
London. And yet, Preston, further from London, or Oxford, is almost completely
bereft of bookshops. In order to do a worthwhile analysis of the true significance of
comparisons in the book trade — town-by-town; region-by-region — much more
work needs to be undertaken before meaningful conclusions can be drawn.
VI
The deductions in this chapter concerning the political and religious affiliations of
the Olivers, Giles, Goddard and Rose, have been drawn, in part, on the basis of their
publishing histories.214 Publishing was a precarious business for the book trader. It
involved risk. It involved capital. It also offered the possibility of higher profits for
the publisher/retailer. Only the more affluent traders would contemplate publishing,
and few would do so without being assured of a ready market for their product. 215
Dunton, reflecting on the publishing career of Edward Giles opined:
He has met with very good success in his way; but
the Booksellers in the Country cannot, in a settled
way, either ruin or enrich themselves so soon as
47
those in London; in regard they have not the
temptation, nor indeed the opportunity, to print
much. But this is no more applicable to Mr. Gyles
than to any other so far out of Town. He is an
honest man; I know him to be so. 216
Honest he may have been, but by anyone’s standards, Giles was a fertile
publisher of pamphlets and sermons which attracted a very handsome profit. 217
In short, ideology or ideals alone cannot have been the sole driving factor for the
content of the works they printed. Because, collectively, the Norwich stationers
published such disparate material, one might conclude there was a disparate market to
purchase it. Religious pamphlets and sermons were, on the whole, short, and therefore
cheap to print. The profit margins on them being high it is not surprising that these
appear to dominate the early catalogues.
VII
Scarce any Age did make equal pretence to Reason with Ours. 218
What we see in these auctions is the crisscrossing of different rhythms:
tradition and innovation. Holding an auction in the first place was an
innovation, as was using advertising in newspapers as the medium to reach a
large national and local audience. These were commercial enterprises that had
identified the value of public relations as integral to the success of the event
and capitalized on the requirement for public display and conspicuous
consumption in ‘polite society’. Concepts previously associated with, maybe
even the sole preserve of, political high office and court diplomacy were now
being applied to the world of commerce. The complex matrix of tradition and
innovation is also evident in what was being sold: tried and tested old
favourites next to new genres; new insights, and new subject matter.
The content of what was on sale, and the content of the stationer’s publications,
reflect the transitions and the extant disparate approaches —to philosophy, enquiry
and learning, religion, and recreation— available in the written word. They also show
that ‘the age of reason’ did not mean being ‘reasonable’. The pamphlet polemics sold
by Giles, although tempered to pass the censor, appealed for toleration, yet did not
extend that toleration to Quakers or Catholics, any more than the sermons of Anglican
John Winter, published by the Olivers, forgave the non-conformists for the Civil War,
regicide, Popish Plot, or later the Exclusion Crisis.219 Print mystifies, and it demystifies. It encourages critical enquiry and at the same time produces polemics and
propaganda. It can open the mind and it can clamp it down tight shut around new
certainties. It creates a constituency; it constructs ‘otherness’ and ‘opposition’. It
48
fractures communities to make bigger communities within a larger orbit, based on its
tenets; while, paradoxically, it also consolidates a sense of local and national identity
by disseminating histories, creating ‘traditions’, and affiliating loyalties and a sense of
community around them. At the same time print systematizes, standardizes and
rationalizes: books on architecture, for example, would radically change, and even
supplant, vernacular idiosyncrasies and traditions, creating a universal aesthetic.220
Print also creates celebrity, from the attribution of ‘author’ on its inside pages;
the new obituaries extolling the exemplary life, down to the associated
commercial fringes of the media and the ostentation of the public figure of an
Edward Millington. The era of the ‘self’ was coming out of the introspection
closet of individual diarists, and placing itself centre stage. And, that celebrity
could be created, shaped, amplified, further disseminated and even destroyed
by the printed word.
What is most notable in these auctions is the ability of these stationers to cast
aside ideological differences, at a time when these things were very marked,
raw and volatile in Norwich, and to co-operate commercially in their mutually
beneficial interest. 221 Truly a ‘polite and commercial people’.
Fraternal entrepreneurial cooperation appears to be a mantra of the booksellers and
publishers in the city. Meanwhile, serious rivalry would prove the preserve of the
printing side of the business, where fighting for valuable clientele along with the
tussles of individual egos were tightly interwoven with political animosity, and all
would be reflected in editorial back-biting in the pages of Norwich newspapers.
49
CHAPTER THREE
No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.222
The removal of restrictions after the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695 allowed
London printers, especially amongst the swelling numbers of journeymen, to seek
fresh pastures and to set up ‘shop’ as their own masters in the provincial towns. Such
was the case for twenty-five-year old Francis Burges, who arrived in Norwich
probably sometime in late spring or summer of 1701.223 His choice of Norwich was
based in part on the large population, the quantity of stationers’ publications that
hitherto had been printed in London, and a vibrant Corporation with stationery
needs.224 Crucially, the presence of a recently established paper mill in close
proximity to the city circumvented the need to import paper from London or
Cambridge and made the prospects of setting up a press in the city commercially
viable.225
The first thing that came off Francis Burges’s press ‘near to the Red Well’ in
September 1701 was a composition by his own hand: Some Observations on the Use
and Original of the Noble Art and Mystery of Printing.226 As noted by Stoker, whose
scholarship has painstakingly reconstructed the ‘lost’ complete text, this was a
‘remarkable production for a twenty-five-year old with no formal education beyond
his apprenticeship in a London printing office’.227 The pamphlet was sold for 2d. by
Thomas Goddard. In it Burges eulogizes about the commercial and cultural value of
the ‘art’ of printing, reminding his reader that printing, ‘greatly promoted Trade’;
adding: ‘It is a certain Method to do Good to several other Trades; because, under the
Printer, the Bookseller, Bookbinder, Joiner, Smith, &c. may hope to reap
Advantage.’228
Not only was it also a ‘great Means to promote Piety’, printing spread knowledge. It
also brought the past to life: ‘It is Printing that does immortalise the Memory of
ancient and modern Heroes, and transmits their worthy Deeds and Actions to the End
of Time’. Indeed printing also confers, ‘Immortality even to Learning itself’.229
Moreover, the art, ‘gives Men such an Advantage of Communicating their Thoughts
to each other, in so plain and easy Manner, as the Ages, before this Invention, were
ignorant of’.230
Burges peppered the tract with quotations from a raft of Renaissance scholars as
well as the contemporary religious poet and Presbyterian minister, Nicholas
Billingsley (1633-1709).231 From this one might conclude that he was appealing to the
learned and pious amongst his new literary congregation and wanted to be seen as, by
association, a worthy transmitter of worthwhile knowledge. There is no doubt Burges
was fully cognisant of the power of the medium at his finger tips and how to use it to
best advantage to promote himself in a stunning and apposite publicity exercise that
witnessed a collision of ‘enlightenment’ and ‘polite / commercial’ values.
However genuinely felt the high blown rhetoric of the enthusiastic young printer,
50
commercial reality required bread on the table. Burges quickly assessed that he could
not be sustained solely by the bureaucratic requirements of the Corporation, nor rely
on the precarious publishing predilections of local stationers alone. The only way he
could be sure of a regular and steady income was to edit and print a local newspaper,
with local news, local advertisements, and hopefully, a sizeable local readership. His
ambitions rested on the appetite for news, palpable in post-Restoration Norwich, to
underpin the venture.232 It is estimated that sometime in November 1701 Burges
would print the first English provincial, weekly, newspaper, the Norwich Post.233 It
was two sheets in length and was priced at 1d.
FIG. 21
19: Francis Burges'
Print Shop
established 1701
19
234
That Burges was successful in his endeavours is reported in a letter from Dr.
Thomas Tanner, who wrote: ‘the Norwich papers are the principal support of our poor
printer here, by which, with advertisements, he clears nearly 50s. every week, selling
vast numbers to the country people’.235 Further corroboration of Burges’ success lies
in the fact that within weeks of his untimely death in 1706, two rival printers had set
up shop in the city. Incredibly, by the end of 1706 there were six provincial weekly
newspapers in England, and three of them were in Norwich.
Stoker opines that Burges’ death, ‘gave two of the shrewdest businessmen in
Norwich, simultaneously, the idea of stepping into the shoes of the dead man.’236
These ‘shrewd’ businessmen were Samuel Hasbart and the aforementioned auction
contributor Thomas Goddard. The former, a distiller, operated his press in Magdalen
Street; the latter, a bookseller, worked ‘near the Guildhall’ in the market place. 237
Whether both, genuinely, did not anticipate Burges’ widow continuing in the business
51
cannot be known, nor can it be known whether either of these ‘shrewd businessmen’
were aware of the intentions of the other. If they did believe Burges’ demise would
result in the ‘Red Well’ dying with him, they were both wrong. However, from a
position of growing monopolistic strength in 1706, Elizabeth Burges’s press in St
Andrew’s found itself vying for commissions with two rivals. Worse still, from
Elizabeth’s perspective, the Norwich Post, the mainstay of the business, would also
have competition from Hasbart’s Norwich Gazette and Goddard’s Norwich Post Man.
If Hasbart and Goddard had been genuinely seduced by the lure of 50s takings a
week, once the reality of the situation revealed itself, ‘shrewd businessmen’, one
might assume, would back away from splitting the potential proceeds three ways.
Both men were successful in their own known trades and had no need to gamble
capital and reputations with such a risky venture. In short, their motives, even if
mercenary to begin with, could not have been driven by money alone. All three
newspaper proprietors tenaciously refused to relinquish their role in the face of stern
competition. For Burges, no doubt her press was her livelihood, for Hasbart and
Goddard — there was pride and status at stake.
With Norwich still lacking ‘home grown’ printing talent, Hasbart and Goddard both
imported journeymen from London to run their new enterprises, namely Henry
Crossgrove and Sherard Sheffield respectively, the latter being assisted by Goddard’s
new fourteen-year-old Norfolk apprentice, William Chase.
FIG.22.
The Bull Inn
24
24: Samuel Hasbart's print shop, located 'ne ar the
Bull Inn' on Magdalen Street; where He nry
Crossgrove worked, issuing the Norwich Gazette
until 1718.
238
52
FIG. 23
28
16
16: The es timated location
for Thomas Goddard's
bookshop and printing
press, and 28: is a guide to
Crossgrove 's print shop
after 1718.
Norwich, a pioneer in the provincial newspapers business, would also have the
accolade of being perhaps the first to host a very public ‘baronial’ press war. With
that in mind, if one wants to ask the question, at what point was the ‘character’ of the
press formed? The answer is easy: at its very inception. The Norwich newspapers of
1706 may have been expounding on the unhappy and unexpected death of a now
little-known king of Portugal (Pedro II, 1683–1706)239 on their front pages, yet the
tenor and texture of their content is modern. The advertisements on the back pages,
the barely sub-textual censorious editorial tone, the prurient sensationalism, the
reverential court story, are reminiscent of familiar broadsheets and tabloids on the
newsstands today. Before being seduced by their apparent familiarity, J. B. Stern
reminds us, ‘Every story, poem and play was written in time, belongs to time and
shows its time’: 240
….James Gadner, (who was condemn’d for Felony and
Burglary, in breaking open the House of the Worshipful Sir
John Parsons, Knt. and Alderman of this City, and taking
[…*] a great Quantity of Plate) dy’d mighty harden’d and
impenitent, he vindicated to the last the Crime for which he
was hang’d, affirming he believe it to be no Sin; for said he,
My Condition was very sharp and pressing, and the
circumstances of those I us’d to take from were always large
and plentiful, and therefore I think I followed only the
Dictates of Nature and Reason.241
While Enlightenment sentiments were evidently having their influence on the logic
of this defiant felon, following the ‘Dictates of Nature and Reason’ clearly impinged
53
on the dictates of ‘reason’ within the Stuart law and the eighteenth-century ‘nature’ of
the sacrosanct importance of property. Gadner (apparently mistakenly), ‘thought that
the Fact for which he was condemn’d did not require Blood to expiate the Guilt’.
Despite the disapproving attitude of Crossgrove’s editorial stance, human interest,
and the thinly disguised celebrity of criminals and their crimes — especially the
repentant’s ‘last words’ on the gallows — would prove a staple for these weekly
publications.242 In terms of the dissemination of ‘enlightenment’ mores, ‘polite’
society, or propagating an ‘urban renaissance’, the contribution made by these papers
puts a whole new complexion on the role of the stationer as a disseminator of cultural
values.243 Here the editor was king of his own domain, his voice ruled. Although in
many respects beholden to the elite and middling sort for patronage, in order to
sustain a broad support, the local press needed also to be ‘popular’. One might even
argue, that the antagonistic vituperation that pervaded their pages, each attacking the
integrity of the other, was ‘good for business’ and may have attracted a ‘soap opera’
readership along partisan lines of its own. The party politics was divided too.
Crossgrove, whose father had been killed in the Glorious Revolution, was an
outspoken Jacobite and the Norwich Gazette’s proprietor, Hasbart is known to have
voted Tory.244 The Norwich Post Man was a supporter of the Whig cause, as was the
original weekly Norwich Post.
Before over-exaggerating the differences between these newspapers, it should be
pointed out that all three were dependent on the same London papers for their news
content, which was pirated verbatim. ‘News’ was on the front pages and was printed
up as soon as it could be transcribed from the latest editions from the capital. 245 This
was due to the fact the paper took so long to be printed and therefore the process had
to begin early in the week, each fresh news page being typeset as soon as the stories
could be ‘lifted’ from the London papers when they arrived by the post. As a result
quite often very small type had to be used to accommodate an unexpected late
story.246 The newsletters, once the preserve of Nowell and Oliver, were as yet far from
redundant. ‘Freelance’ journalists’ accounts were used to augment or spice up the
newspaper version, and were also reproduced faithfully. Provincial papers continued
to subscribe to private London contributors, such as Ichabod Dawks, until at least the
1740s.247
II
The early competitive years of Norwich newsprint tells us much about the tenacity
of these early printers, their business tactics, and what was at stake. However much
‘prestige’ was associated with being a newspaper proprietor, no-one wanted to make a
loss or be ‘upstaged’, least of all Samuel Hasbart. To be competitive Burges had
doubled the quantity of news pages in her Post, but had maintained the same price,
1d. Hasbart was incensed. In late 1707 he made an approach to Burges in the hope of
taking over her press, or at the very least, merging their interests. Although she had
clearly already turned him down; presumably to show the world he was a reasonable
man (and she, an unreasonable woman) Hasbart addressed his offer to her in an
apparent ‘open letter’ in his own newspaper, to which was added the knowing caveat:
‘But as your Husband first set up the Trade here, and left you in Possession of it, you
54
may possibly have taken a too great a Liking to the Business to accept [of]* this
Offer’.248 In the same paper he avenged her refusal by offering free advertising so
long as the person so doing remained exclusively loyal to the Gazette.249 Her reply,
most likely published in the Post, has not survived. By now, however, the gloves were
off.
Two weeks later, Hasbart accused the Post of being an ‘obsolete Newspaper with
the Effluvia of a Dunghil, which stinks when stirred,’ and reminded Mrs Burges that
unlike himself, she, and her husband before her, were ‘Strangers’ in town. Hasbart
concluded the piece with a bitter, menacing, allegorical forewarning:
There were Two neighbouring Frogs; one of them lived in
a Pond, the other in the High-way hard-by: The Pond Frog
finding the Water begin to fall upon the Road, invited the
other Frog to live with her in the Pooll, where she might
have been safe; but she was wonted to the Place, she said,
and would not remove. And what was the End of it? Why a
little while after the Wheel of a Cart drove over her, and
crush’d her to Pieces.
Yours &c. 250
The inky cudgel of the type setters’ plates would prove the weapon of choice and
was employed enthusiastically to bludgeon the opposition with abusive prose for the
best part of thirty-eight years. Elizabeth Burges followed her husband to an early
grave in 1708. Although we do not know if a cartwheel was involved in her death her
removal from the crowded equation did not ease the situation, as the Red Well presses
were kept in motion by her executors, Freeman and Susanna Collins, until sold in
1717.251
There is not room to chart all the topographical cavilling, or the price-cutting feuds.
Incredibly, all three newspapers remained afloat until 1712: a testament to their
entrepreneurial spirit, creative marketing strategies, colourful editorials and, the
Norwich public’s appetite for news and cheap reading material. The greatest
challenge they faced did not come from each other but from the introduction of the
Stamp Act in 1712. This would devastate fragile profit margins by adding a tax of one
half-penny duty on each and every copy of the newspaper. In most cases this meant
doubling the price. Now, with the young William Chase at the editorial ‘helm’,
Goddard’s Norwich Post Man was an early casualty.252 Within a year or two it reinvented itself as a quarto news pamphlet, thereby avoiding the most onerous
elements of Stamp Duty.253 With its new compact format came a new name:
Transactions of the Universe or Weekly Mercury.254 Likewise, under the management
of Susanna Collins, and after a short hiatus, the Post became the Norwich Courant.
The year 1717/18 was one of personnel change in the weeklies. Collins sold the
Courant to Ben Lyon. Chase had taken over the proprietorship of the Mercury and
seems to have parted company amicably from his ex-master, while Crossgrove would
fall out with Hasbart. Sometime after the initial fracas with Elizabeth Burges, Hasbart
appears to have distanced himself from the everyday running of the paper and handed
it over to Crossgrove. But Hasbart, seeing the healthy profits being made, upped the
rental on the Magdalen Street premises to £30 a year.255 Crossgrove balked at this
55
and moved premises, bought a new press, and set up at the top of St Giles’s Broad
Street, from where he continued to issue the Gazette.256
The rivalry between Chase and Crossgrove would remain until their deaths, within
six months of each other, in 1744.257 It is curious to observe that while the newspaper
bickering was at times intense and sometimes deeply personal and libellous, it appears
to have been taken, if not in good spirit yet, without recourse to personal litigation.258
How much they really ‘hated’ each other, how much of it was based on commercial,
or political, rivalry, and how much was actually ‘selling copy’, cannot be known. Yet,
when a stranger in town, the new proprietor of the Courant, Ben Lyon, entered into
the familial fray and picked up the gauntlet of the paper’s old owners by editorially
attacking his competitors, after a court case for printing a seditious pamphlet and a
hefty fine, he left town.259
III
Amongst these early Norwich printers it might appear ‘polite’ had turned ‘red in
tooth and claw’. Were any of the enlightened and educative promises of Burges’
eloquent first pamphlet being realised by these publishers? If they were not
‘immortalizing’ learning and knowledge, in what way did their newsprint reflect the
values of the times?
Limitations of personnel and dependence on London journals resulted in the
weekly’s news content being anodyne. Mindful the London papers were still freely
available in coffee shops and for sale in Norwich, the stale plagiarized version can
hardly have held a competitive edge.260 Which leads us to conclude that the area
where these papers did have a ‘competitive edge’ was to be found in their
advertisements: these gave them a distinctive local identity. If Hasbart and
Crossgrove managed to give advertisements away for nothing it is indicative of two
things. First they recognised their importance in order to attain high circulation;
second, that circulation must have been sufficiently high for the income from
advertising to be minimal, even immaterial.
There has been much debate amongst historians of early-modern print as to the
circulation figures of newspapers: one sufficient to provide a worthwhile profit for the
publisher. In 1711, Defoe claimed there were, ‘above two Hundred Thousand single
Papers publish’d every Week in this Nation’, and Dunton articulated an admiration for
the ‘ever cheerful’ editor of the London Post-Boy, wryly commenting that earning
600l a year from, ‘a Penny Paper would make any man so’.261 While many papers
went bust in this period, there were large profits to be made by others.262 Cranfield
estimates that only two men could work a press at any one time, and together, flat out,
could only produce 250 one-sided printed sheets an hour.263 Keeping in mind that the
printer probably required a clear day between the arrival of the latest London
newspaper this would sorely restrict the numbers of provincial papers printed. With
this in mind, Cranfield concluded, ‘evidence suggests that, during the first two
decades of the [eighteenth] century, the provincial newspapers had a circulation of
only one or two hundred copies a week’.264 These low figures resulted in Cranfield
56
deducing that advertising must have provided the real revenue. Sutherland however
argues advertising income was minimal, and circulation was all.265
Evidence in Norwich suggests Sutherland to be right. The very survival of the
Gazette with its free advertising and cut-down ½ d. price must go some way to
substantiate Hasbart’s boast that he sold: ‘at least Nine times as many [newspapers] as
any other Person’.266 Circulation figures therefore may have been surprisingly high,
supporting Tanner’s anecdotal report of Burges’ selling ‘vast numbers to country
people’ and, exceeding Cranfield’s suggested two-hundred copies an edition.267
Putting direct income from advertisements to one side, where advertising had the
edge for the publisher was two-fold. First it gave the paper a local identity and
information, colour, implicit gossip, and wide appeal. Second, advertising may also
have been something that ‘greatly promoted Trade’ not just in the wider community
but for the printer himself. Mindful that each edition carried a great deal of ‘free’
advertising for the merchandise sold by the publisher at his premises, be they the
latest patent medicine, weighty tomes of erudition, or chapbooks and lighter reading
matter:
At the Request of divers People, on Saturday
February the 8th 1707, at the Printing-Office in
Magdalen street in Norwich, as also soon after at
London, will be Publishet the most Accurate and
Diverting Book now extant of that Kind, Intitled,
The Private Amours of FINEO and FIAMMA, a
Novel. Written by Sir H.R. ----d, Kt. Price 6d. 12o.
Booksellers, County Chapman, or Hawkers, if they
take any considerable Number, shall have them on
very Advantageous Terms.268
FIG. 24 and FIG. 25
Fig. 24, left, is an illustration of a female hawker selling almanacs and
petty-chapbooks. Fig. 25, right, represents a female mercury selling
newspapers on the streets. Both images date from 1687. 269
57
Criers, or mercury women as they were sometimes called, were employed in the city
streets to sell the paper. Dispensing Tanner’s ‘vast numbers’ of newspapers to the
‘country people’ were the hawkers, carriers, postmen and itinerant chapmen. They were
an essential part of the distribution network for newspapers, and published ephemera,
beyond the town. How these people earned their money remains obscure. Were they
paid a regular wage, commission, or a bit of both? Was it a case of sale-or-return on the
newspapers not sold, or was the risk solely theirs or that of the proprietor who hired
them? 270 Some carriers may have made extra by bringing in orders for medicines or
advertisements, and those that penetrated the countryside as delivery-people certainly
had opportunities to make money on sideline deliveries: such as those carriers that
passed letters to the Norfolk sisters who corresponded regularly through the Norwich
Mercury’s delivery man.271
The advertisements in these Norwich papers are a rich source for the social historian,
and merit a dissertation in their own right, especially the free ads in the Gazette, where
people who would not otherwise have afforded to avail themselves of the luxury of
advertising were doing so. Grand houses were up for sale, cellars for rent, plays and
assemblies called for patrons; all were promoted next to a washer woman who
laundered gloves, ‘to the Perfection that they were oft times taken for New’.272
Another advertisement tells of the robbery of ‘Tulips, Auricalas or Bear Ears and
Enimonys’ from a garden in Thorpe, pointing out they were, ‘different from any sort
that are in these Parts of England’. It offered a three-guinea reward for knowledge
about their illegal removal, and even a ‘pardon’ to any thief who might come forward to
inform on accomplices: reminding us of the high value placed on rare ‘status’ plants,
especially tulips, at this time, and how much ‘polite’ Norwich society cherished their
exclusive gardens.273 These adverts also frequently informed the reader of the
impending arrival in the city of a famous occultist, and rarely an edition was issued
without an advert to promote some particularly efficacious tonic: health, was big
business.274
Advertising, for ‘the polite’, obviously went against the grain: it was brash, crude
and altogether somewhat distasteful. This was not a view shared by the seventeenthcentury bookseller, who very early on had understood the importance and impact that
print could make in the discourse of commercial communication. They kept
customers informed of new publications at every opportunity and without apology.275
However, these ‘polite and commercial’ people had to make a difficult choice
between the obvious benefits of advertising, put against the expediency of not
damaging a reputation by being seen to be vulgar or blatant. A compromise was thus
arrived at that involved a strange marriage of information: while it was commercial in
content, it was veiled in language that denounced a false rumour. 276
Whether the rumours that suggested someone had retired, premises had ‘moved’ or a
specific service offered or product sold had ceased, were true, is unlikely. Yet this
discourse of dispelling erroneous gossip, whether it be real or invented, became an
editorial style feature of the papers too.
WHereas some ill-designing People for sinister Ends,
have industriously spread a false and scandalous
Report, in saying, That the Printer of this News-paper
58
(intitled the Norwich Gazette) intends to leave off
Printing the same; This is therefore to satisfie all
Persons that have heard, or may hear that Story, that
‘tis a forg’d Falshood….. Hen. Cross-grove.277
In the case of the Norwich newspapers’ constant and vitriolic attacks on each other
there appears good circumstantial evidence to suggest the need for them to dispel
‘rumours’ was very real.278
Much is made of the political wranglings revealed in the early press. Historians
have trawled their pages for news content to see how public affairs and political
events were portrayed or interpreted within their own time. Those that have examined
advertising and the local content have emphasised a sense of cohesion and
community created by identifying with local events being broadcast in their pages.279
What is often overlooked is the novelty of the discourse itself: a discourse contained
within this ephemeral, incidental content, and, how that discourse may have
completely altered perceptions of the ‘self’, as well as perceptions of the ‘self’s’
environment, neighbours or, even, adjusted a personal ‘world view’. The advertisements, however couched, were a touch-stone of normality. They were not a sermon, a
political or philosophical tract, an almanac nor a romance novel. They told of the
quotidian of everyday life, the preoccupations, hopes and aspirations of a wide crosssection of Norwich society: those with a product or service to promote.
Hitherto advertising had been limited to fly-posters, hand bills, shop signs and word
of mouth. Although these were still extensively used, they could never have competed
with the reach of a weekly journal that penetrated the neighbourhood, countryside,
and were on offer ‘free’ in coffee shops to be pored over by their customers. Indeed,
newspapers were probably the most widely read genre of popular literature. Although
the newspaper advertisements very likely met Burges’ promise to ‘greatly promote
Trade’ in the city, they also did something else. The ‘ordinary’ person had a platform,
a public platform, and ergo a public profile. The ‘ordinary’ person could read about
another ordinary person’s life, sometimes the life of a neighbour, but often a stranger,
a stranger of no importance, who hitherto would not have impinged on their
consciousness, unless they had done something, achieved something, or written
something (someone else) had considered exceptional.
It would be exaggerating to call this ‘unmediated’ mass communication, because
not only were the advertisements designed to do a specific job, but they were phrased
and crafted for that purpose, and fitted a convention. Nevertheless, further work
which looks at the language of this discourse and the cultural, social and
psychological impact within these new forms of communication between people, and
whether social horizons were altered, would be fruitful. We are so inured to
advertising today that reconstructing how, in a local context, the first ‘mass media’
for the masses, changed modes of communication and perceptions about day-to-day
outlooks would be fascinating.280
To take an example from outside advertising which illustrates this point and where
the press may have adjusted thought processes, was over the issue of attitudes to
suicide. Until the ‘enlightenment’ self-murder had been deemed a diabolical crime
and attracted punishment. The goods of the deceased were confiscated by the crown
59
and Christian burial rites denied. The self-murderer would be buried on the public
highway, or at a crossroads, and so threatening to society was deemed their satanic
crime - a stake would be passed through the coffin. After hearing all the evidence
from the family and friends, the only way to avoid this post-mortem draconian
sentence was for the jury in the coroner’s court to pass a judgement of non compos
mentis upon the actions of the deceased. This verdict exonerated the self-murderer
from responsibility for their ‘crime’. Before 1660 only two percent of juries passed
such a verdict: ninety eight percent of suicides were deemed the work of the devil.
These percentages would ‘improve’ only marginally by 1700. Yet, by 1720, the
figures for being of unsound mind had risen dramatically, to forty percent.281
There are two ways in which the press may have influenced public feelings towards
suicide. First, the papers meticulously listed deaths and the means by which people
came by their deaths. These lists appear as a forensic, sterile, almost routine,
inventory. In them, suicides were placed alongside natural causes and accidents,
thereby removing judgement from the act itself.282 The second, seemingly
contradictory, way in which suicides were reported was with the full spotlight of
human interest: as much detail as could be gathered, speculation on circumstances
that led to the deed, and, hopefully, a suicide note – an explanation. Human interest
stories demanded of the reader empathy, and empathy required identifying with the
tragic circumstances that drove the suicide into such depths of despair. Empathy is
devoid of ideology, it is a universal emotion. Employing empathy assists in rendering
the act secular, and will naturally flow if the reportage is free from judgement or
interpretation.
Yet again, similar to the ‘discourse of advertisements’, ordinary people were called
upon to enter the lives of ordinary people in the communal act of identifying with
desolation. Even if fictionalised and embroidered, these stories would result in
inciting, if not compassion, at the very least a greater understanding of the act.
Importantly, newspaper editors were not parsons or magistrates. They could not easily
make divine moral judgements, condemn people to hell-fire, without appearing to
overstep the mark. These ‘stories’ were written ‘factually’ by peers. Editors had
authority, but it was a new kind of authority: the authority of a peer ‘talking’ to a peer
about the actions of a peer. It was simultaneously a discourse of vicarious ‘otherness’
while at the same time being a discourse of ‘common ground’.
As one wag once noted, the press promptly identified that there were ‘lies, damned
lies, and first hand accounts’, and where possible, from its very inception, the press
made good use of them all.283 Stuart newspaper journalists also intuitively recognised
the appeal of ‘blood and sex’, which, as noted earlier with the ‘gallows confessions’,
made good copy. If the two topics could be combined it was better still. Henry
Crossgrove was a master of the human interest story. Within a few months of
arriving in Norwich he had printed off a short pamphlet entitled: ‘Age in Distress; or
a full and true account of one Elizabeth Wasteoat who hanged herself [for] love of a
young Smith’.
The only surviving copy that recounted the sorry tale of poor Miss Wasteoat
unfortunately perished in the Norwich Library fire of 1994.284 Thus we can only
speculate on the approach Crossgrove took towards this suicide brought about by
60
unrequited love. However, the title lends itself to trust it would have fitted a secular,
compassionate, religiously neutral, ‘objective’ model.285
Asserting that the press may have led the way in changing attitudes ignores the
‘mirroring’ aspects of the media. Was Crossgrove merely picking up on a trend extant
in society? Of course journalists and publishers cannot be separated from the times in
which they lived or the views prevalent in the society which they served. Yet the
matter-of-factness about reportage must have had an impact, especially when
contrasted with the hellfire emanating from the Norwich pulpits. In 1702, the
Reverend John Jeffery, vicar of St. Peter Mancroft, published a sermon: ‘Felo de Se:
Or, A Warning Against the Most Horrid and Unnatural Sin of Self-Murder.286
Although the first English use of term ‘suicide’ has been attributed to Sir Thomas
Browne, possibly as early as 1636,287 Jeffery refers to it as Self-Murder and his views
are unequivocal: ‘nothing can be more unnatural, nothing can be so unnatural as this,
nothing worse than this’.288 He takes little time in reminding the congregation that
‘fire and brimstone’ await those who are tempted to dispose of themselves by this
method.289 The sermon is not completely bereft of sympathy. However, there is a
‘Catch 22’ no-win-situation attached to the non compos mentis verdict. Following
Jeffery’s logic, being non compos mentis involved giving in to the sins of pride and
vanity, therefore being ‘mad’ is no ‘excuse’ — it is still a ‘crime’ because it is the
victim’s fault for succumbing to those heinous sins that caused their own madness. 290
In a different sermon Jeffery confidently observed, “Scarce any Age did make equal
pretence to Reason with ours”.291 Yet the ‘reason’ of which he had cause to celebrate
was increasingly ‘deaf’ to the messages expressed from (the likes of) his pulpit, and
increasingly appears to have been ‘listening’ to the sub-text of ephemeral pamphlets
and newspapers, and the editorial voice of ‘a Crossgrove’. By the end of the
eighteenth century the verdict of non compos mentis was arrived at in 97% of suicide
cases.292
IV
If Locke is credited as being a prime instigator in identifying, isolating and giving
validity to the self, then the greatest and swiftest disseminators and proponents of that
view were not the enigmatic covert diarists – but the newspapers. ‘Human interest’
for Crossgrove extended to his readers. The Gazette was, what we would call today,
interactive. It invited queries from its readers, their comments, it encouraged them to
send in their literary contributions, and Crossgrove even dealt personally and
somewhat uniquely, often in the form of riddles, with his constituents’ domestic
problems. He offered advice to a ‘Maid’ torn between a choice of four
unprepossessing suitors, he tendered his own view on why Ethiopians have black
skin, and postulated on the genealogy of Cain’s wife and her blood-relationship to
Adam.293 Not surprisingly the reader, as selected or even invented by Crossgrove,
61
responded with gratitude, awe and flattery towards his erudition and wisdom. ‘I find
you to be skilled in answering intricate, and dark, and deep Questions, to the
Satisfaction of intelligent Persons’, stated a ‘Mr. E. B.’.294 Crossgrove’s personal
page went under the heading Accurate Intelligencer and proved so popular that he
published two small volumes made up of a collection of selected curious or
previously unseen letters.295
‘Human interest’ for Crossgrove also extended to himself. We learn not only about
his radical political beliefs but he also shared his birthday with his readers, his
predilection for brown ale; his distaste for the new beverage tea.296 He even ‘holds the
front page’ for the death of his first wife, Judith.297 It is tempting, and possibly not
altogether wrong, to identify Crossgrove as ‘eccentric’ and ‘colourful’ - or just plain
egomaniacal. Although commercial and social benefits may have flowed from it,
perhaps this solipsism was something more than creating celebrity for himself and his
family: it was also about widening a sense of community, of belonging, of sharing, of
celebrating life, of celebrating ordinary values with others who may wish to join his
‘community’.
Under the umbrella of human interest stories, interactive personal columns and
advertisements, an almost accidental discourse was propagated by the press: one
which both celebrated the ‘self’ and, at the same time, sought to identify ‘like selves’
by measuring oneself up against ‘the other’. This ‘process’ may have cemented a
collective identity: generating a litmus test of who and where one was in society.
V
There are general observations about the press at this time that are worth noting.
A comparison between the English newspapers in the eighteenth century with that
of the French, allowed for some interesting conclusions. Marked differences were
found. While the French papers were deeply reverential to the aristocracy in their
domestic coverage, English papers were not. The latter frequently drew
disapproving attention to the elite’s ostentation, disregard for the law and
immorality, and these aspects of their behaviour were much reported upon,
especially if directed towards those of inferior rank, such as when a group of
arrogant ‘London blades’ were discovered as having thrown ‘Apples and Oranges
from the Gallery into the Pit’ at Covent Garden. ‘If not vicious, the idle rich were
prone to be useless and therefore objects of ridicule’, whereas in contrast, and unlike
in France, much coverage was extended to the activities of the ‘pillars of the
community’ such as mayors, aldermen and civic dignitaries.298
These urban dignitaries were role models, the aspirational targets of admiration.
Municipal responsibility was proof positive of moral character, skill, and most likely
mercantile success. Moreover, unlike birth-status aristocrats, the civic dignitary’s
station within society was potentially an attainable one. Here then, in the press, was
an eighteenth-century medium of the middling sorts, operated by them and for them.
Commercial interests instinctively demanded of their editors that they extend content
62
to encompass a plural readership, but the values that they sub-texturally purported and
upheld were those of the middling sort.
The English press also contained a much higher percentage of obituaries for ‘people
of no apparent consequence’, such as shopkeepers and artisans, and often such entries
would be longer and more complimentary than those for deceased luminaries.299
‘People of no apparent consequence’ were suddenly indeed of consequence: it is all
relative, and the goal posts had shifted. In short, the mirror the English press held up
to the world reflected back its own imperatives. Giving a cohesion to an identity,
through the process of measuring and defining itself against ‘the other’, be it criminal,
plebeian or an aristocratic ‘other’, must also surely have helped shape it. This
movement would have been most marked in the provinces, where journeymen
printers had scattered after 1695 to set up autonomous businesses; where their status
was not yet as established as those of their predecessors in London. Of course Burges,
Crossgrove and Chase needed to meet expectations, but expectations were not yet set
in stone. In other words, provincial newsprint did not have to conform to
establishment norms, plus they, the printers, were not in the thrall of being a part of
‘the establishment’.300 These artisan printers were not dependent on patrons – but on
markets. This then, was a decisive moment in the history of the press where it might
be viewed as being in a state of social and cultural tabula rasa and, in a subtle but
very significant way when it could, and did, re-invent itself. 301
Whether conservative in outlook, traditionalist or innovative, liberal or absolutist,
Tory or Whig, did not inhibit the fashioning of a cohesive ‘class’ character. Nor were
these attitudes and beliefs mutually exclusive, except in their most obvious partisan
sense of ‘club’ loyalties. Crossgrove may well have wanted a Stuart king called James
to sit on the throne and believed in his Divine Right to be there, yet Crossgrove was
no traditionalist when it came to marketing or technology, and promoted the very
latest thing in shoe polish.302 Chase may have celebrated constitutional monarchy and
abhorred absolutism, accused his print-rival of hypocrisy and relished the latter’s
scrapes with the authorities over his outrageous ‘seditious’ political convictions, but
could not make claim to any moral ‘high ground’ when he plagiarised a local mapmaker’s designs or falsely imprinted his books claiming they were published in
London.303 The middling sort was a broad church, and what united them, in the urban
setting, were commercial interests. The political rivalry between these two men may
have been very real, but their goals were the same. Both men, like their ‘founding
father’, the parish constable, Francis Burges, would seek positions within the civic
hierarchy. They wanted public recognition, approbation and approval, and the status
and authority that went with it.304 That, was the reward of commercial success. It was
also the mark of it.
So how were these printers viewed by their contemporaries? Were their ‘middling’
credentials unequivocal? For historians looking at this period of transition trying to
define the ‘middling sort’ is elusive. According to Sweet, a member of the middling
sort earned between £150 and £200 annually, and in an urban environment they were,
for the most part, tradespeople, merchants, buyers and sellers, and those who provided
services. Sweet categorises the middling sort as, quite simply and literally, the
‘middle-men’.305 The brokers of news, knowledge and information might appear to
be quintessentially fitting for Sweet’s category. Earle, on the other hand, characterizes
63
the middling sort as people of massively different income and capital, yet the common
link was they, ‘worked but ideally did not get their hands dirty’.306
There is a paradox about the arrival of print into the city. With it came a more
‘middle class’ educated person, such as Burges, the son of a London clergyman. Yet,
certainly in the early days of print, these people definitely got their ‘hands dirty’. The
confusion of where to position them in the social hierarchy, as grubby artisans, like
the tinmen, or valued ‘professional’ transmitters of culture, is evident from the fact
that they did not fall under the Norwich ordinances for the Stationers, and
Crossgrove’s freedom, when it came in 1710, could be bought for as little as £3. 4s.
6d.307 Yet we also know that Burges’ death created a scramble between ‘shrewd’
businessmen to fill his shoes. This is indicative that the real status of the job was
extra-mural. The authority of the press and its implicit power to influence, and be seen
as influential in the community, was not lost on contemporaries.
Crossgrove’s will articulated a desire to have half-a-dozen ‘honest Torys’ as his pall
bearers.308 A generation later, the son and heir of William Chase would express the
ambition to be carried to his grave by six ‘Journeymen Printers’, indicating that, by
then, the Chase family press alone probably engaged at least that many employees to
meet his post-mortem needs.309 If there had ever been any ambivalence about the civic
status of printers in Norwich their status would grow commensurately with the
century and produce its first alderman by the century’s close. The influence of printers
in shaping a new discourse, perpetuating rational secular enlightenment values,
changing attitudes and perceptions of the self, forging an identity for a ‘middle class’,
were not self-conscious ambitions, and would require the passage of time to be
identified.
64
CONCLUSION
To the romantic, the rare bookseller is an ascetic
dwelling in a crenellated tower, his parchmentlike fingers clutching a Coptic gospel or a
fourteenth-century manuscript. To the less
romantic he is a hard-driving businessman
whose only interest in a book is its price. 310
This quote articulates twentieth-century attitudes towards modern stationers, but the
inherent tension it expresses is just as appropriate if applied to those operating in
Norwich between 1660 and 1720. Separating out the seller of a commodity from their
role as retailer – and the commodity itself – makes for mutually exclusive perceptions:
one that genuflects to the artefact, the other that damns the seller for wanting to make
a profit. Yet capitalism from its inception was founded on profit not philanthropy. The
truth, then as now, falls somewhere in between, and is a combination of both. What
you sell undoubtedly colours who you are and how you are regarded by others. This
‘cultural capital’ psychology is historically witnessed by the fact that the late Stuart
chapbook hawker rarely attained their freedom of the city, while the seller of leatherbound folio volumes did.311
This examination of Norwich stationers has revealed that in contemporary terms the
artefact, the book and the printed word, did indeed reflect ‘glory’ on its retailer. The
book was a status item loaded with cultural messages that made it highly desirable to
the scholar, the upwardly mobile, the cleric, those engaged in the ‘polite’ discourse,
and even the growing numbers of literate amongst society’s lower echelons. For a
myriad of reasons – society prized it. And, Norwich prized it; and prized the vendor of
it sufficiently to employ them to entertain visiting dignitaries, call on them to
disseminate uncensored newsletters, and charge them a hefty £20 for failing to
purchase their freedom. Newsprint, too, had an extra-commercial status: a fact that is
evidenced by Goddard’s and Hasbart’s determination to ‘own’ a newspaper in the
face of stiff competition and doubtful profits.
It is clear from this study that post-Restoration stationers were commercially
innovative and creative in their approach to retail. They were fully aware of the value
of publicity through advertising as well as in providing social events, such as auctions,
in which to maximize profits and raise their profile. Norwich stationers understood the
cultural worth and status of their primary product, yet felt no contradiction or stigma
in also selling medicines and shoe polish. Some sought and attained civic
responsibilities, many died wealthy, and some even founded dynasties that would
flourish for generations.312 Collectively their social ‘progress’ over the period
characteristically symbolizes the movement that saw the rise of the middling sort.
These stationers were not cut off from the cultural, political, economic and social
movements of their day. The current competing tensions coloured their activities and
motivations. Unpicking this complexity in order to evaluate their contribution to
propagating enlightenment values – deliberate or accidental – and, in identifying how
far ‘the message’ should be associated with ‘the messenger’ is difficult. With this in
65
mind, an attempt to answer the questions posed at the beginning of this dissertation is
fitting. Were these stationers Diderot’s artisan passeurs, or were they just riding high
on the crest of a neo-capitalist wave that naturally benefited the urban, trading,
middling sort? Or, are these apparently separate dynamics one and the same?
From the evidence, Diderot was, in part, right. Artisans were the transmitters of —
explicit and implicit – cultural values, and on their shoulders rested the ‘progress’ of
the Enlightenment. But that process itself depended on, legitimated and encouraged,
the development of capitalism. And, capitalism thrived best in a polite society, intent
on an urban renaissance and conspicuous consumption; all of which were in turn
dependent on commercial success and disposable incomes created by mercantile
profit. Nor can you separate the rise of the middling sort from increased literacy
levels, and the importance of literacy in the new mercantile climate and the rise of the
middling sort. Equally, one cannot divide the expansion of print from being at the
forefront in ‘modernizing’ commerce by producing and disseminating standardized
copies of texts, which in turn systemized and standardized knowledge.313
Standardized knowledge and an empirical approach to information-gathering would
promote the removal of superstition.
In other words you cannot separate – burgeoning capitalist forces from the
transmission of the enlightenment – the conspicuous, from polite society – the
leisured, from an urban renaissance – or the rise of the middling sort from the
increased demand for printed material. They all fed into and off one another.
Stationers were at the hub of these dynamics as prime movers, and at the same time
satellites of them, as collective beneficiaries.
At a time when political and religious differences divided English society, one
group, the booksellers and publishers, could put them aside for their mutual
commercial benefit. Yet another group, the printers and newspaper editors, played on
their ideological differences, although, perversely, this too would prove to their
mutual commercial advantage. Ideological beliefs may have been the unwitting
midwife that unleashed new commercial forces, but in Norwich, at least amongst our
booksellers and printers, such convictions would become the handmaiden of
mercantile imperatives.
This study has illustrated how these stationers, especially the printers, were pioneers
in creating a discourse that shaped the way in which people thought about and
constructed the world around them. The very nature of the format and content of the
provincial newspapers lent itself, if only by default, to the triumph of the secular over
religious values. The evidence has demonstrated how editors’ ‘middling’
preoccupations with ‘like selves’ crept onto the pages of the newsprint and
consolidated a ‘class’. It has also shown how promotion of ‘the self’ was part of the
very essence of a public commercial culture that extended from the ostentation of an
Edward Millington through to the engaging, bullish arrogance of a Henry Crossgrove.
This research suggests the new provincial print discourse obliquely challenged
traditional views of hierarchy and undermined the discourse of establishment
‘authority’.
Here then we have commercial people driven by commercial interests and the status
that wealth and position might reap in an increasingly plutocratic city environment.
66
Yet at no time can any of these Norwich stationers be disentangled from the creative
process involved in the ‘value laden’ product that they dispensed and helped create.
Francis Burges was remarkably insightful in his observations about the ‘information
technology’ revolution brought about by the invention of moveable type, and what the
arrival of print would mean to the city. He recognized that it would promote trade
and simultaneously, without any conflict, bestow: ‘Immortality even to learning
itself’. The prose that has the greatest resonance from Burges’s tract of 1701 however,
is contained in his compelling reminder that the printed word, gave: ‘Men such an
Advantage of Communicating their Thoughts to each other, in so plain and easy
Manner, as the Ages, before this Invention, were ignorant of.’314
Potent and prescient though his words are, for all Burges’s insights he could never
have foreseen that so much more was happening, and so much more would result
from the Noble Art and Mystery of Printing. He could not have predicted the role that
booksellers, binders, publishers and printers were to play in democratising
‘enlightenment values’ while at the same time accelerating the march of capitalism.
Burges could not have envisaged that promoting trade would result in an urban
renaissance, polite society, and conspicuous consumption. That his ‘noble art’ would
consolidate a bourgeoisie and encourage individualism; nor that in standardizing
knowledge and disseminating the vogue for empirical enquiry would begin a process
that might, for many, bring ‘light, clarity, order and reason to regions where
formerly… there had been mystery, superstition, blind authority and darkness’.315
The process we call the Enlightenment may be identified as having had its
beginnings in this period, and there can be little doubt of the significant part played
by stationers in its dissemination. The process of the Enlightenment, its development,
transmission and comprehension, is a theme which would colour intellectual history
for the next three hundred years; and the Enlightenment’s impact on society can be
more clearly understood by examining the minutiae of the lives of Norwich book
traders, publishers and printers – and what they sold, published and printed – at its
very inception.
67
ENDNOTES
1
The London Company of Stationers, encompassing these trades, was founded in 1403; it received a
Royal Charter in 1557. Although bookselling and bookbinding can be traced back to the middle ages in
Norwich, a company of stationers, a gild, was only officially formed in 1622; yet it did not have its
ordinances firmly ratified until 1636. For details of the latter see, Norwich Assembly Book 6 (16131642) f. 321. David Stoker, ‘A History of the Norwich Book Trades 1560-1760’, (FLA thesis, 1975), p.
96.
2
There is not room here to rehearse all the historiographical arguments on the influence of literature as
being the central vehicle for transmitting the Enlightenment, and of the importance placed on
booksellers, journalist and printers in that process. One such debate however surrounds the work of
Robert Darnton, begun some 36 years ago, in connection with French literature and its influence on
their Revolution. This opened up a discussion about the existence of a ‘high’ and ‘low’ Enlightenment,
in the context of the literature being produced, and another discussion about presumptions that
surround anticipating the reception of such literature, and of how it was consumed. See for examples:
R. Darnton, `The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France',
Past and Present, no. 51 (May 1971); Roger Chartier, The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution,
trans. Lydia G. Cochrane, (Durham, NC, 1991).
3
For instance, the journeyman printer, Robert Raikes, who was only employed a few weeks by Samuel
Hasbart has not been included.
4
Nicholas Lemon’s name is found on the imprint of The History of the City of Norwich printed by
Benjamin Lyon in 1718, since no other trace can be found of him being a Norwich-based bookseller he
was not included among those active in the period.
5
Francis Blomefield, History of Norfolk, vol. 5 (Norwich, 1775); John Chambers, A General History of
the County of Norfolk, Intended to Convey all the Information of a Norfolk Tour, 3 vols (Norwich,
1829).
6
J. B. Williams, ‘Henry Cross-grove, Jacobite, Journalist and Printer’, Library, 3rd series, vol. 5.
(1914). pp. 206-219; H. R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers who were at work in
England, Scotland and Ireland from 1668-1725, The Bibliographical Society, [1922] (1968); H. R.
Plomer, A Short History of English Printing 1476-1900, (London, [1900], 1927); G. A. Cranfield, The
Development of the Provincial Newspaper 1700-1760, (Oxford, 1962); T. Fawcett, ‘Early Norwich
Newspapers’, Notes and Queries (1972), vol. 19, no. 10, pp. 363-65; T. Fawcett, ‘Eighteenth-Century
Norfolk Booksellers: A Survey and Register’, Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 6 (1972-1976), pp.
1-18; D. Stoker, ‘A History of the Norwich Book Trades 1560-1760’, (Fellowship of the Library
Association Thesis, 1975). Subsequent publications by Stoker are listed in the bibliography.
7
Francis Burges (1675/6–1706) was the first Stuart printer in Norwich. This is a quotation from the very
first tract he printed in the city: Observations on Printing… (Norwich, Sept. 1701), quoting from: Nicholas
Billingsley, A Breviary of All the Greatest Persecutions (London, 1657), p. 164, section v. D. Stoker,
'Francis Burges's "Observations on printing" 1701: a reconstruction of the text', The Library: Transactions
of the Bibliographical Society, 7th series, vi (2005), p. 171. Stoker points out that these lines must have
been quoted from memory as they are misquoted, and unlike Billingsley’s (who attributes the arrival of
printing to 1518), Burges’s supplanted date of 1450 is closer to the accurate date for the invention.
8
Our anomalous attitude to the typographical word, one that perhaps disproportionately inflates its cultural
import, is well argued by McKenzie. He points out how often academic papers use sweeping expressions
such as –‘The impact of print’ – which imply a complete displacement of writing as a form of record and, at
the same time, diminish the importance of speech. He goes on to say that we did not stop speaking when
we learned to write, nor writing when we learned to print, nor reading, writing or printing when we entered
‘the electronic age’. (D. F. McKenzie (ed. P. D. Mc Donald & M. F. Suarez), Making Meaning: ‘Printers of
the Mind’ and Other Essays (Boston, 2002), p. 238). For the alternative standpoint see: Elizabeth
Eisenstein, ‘Some Conjectures about the Impact of Printing on Western Society and Thought: A
Preliminary Report’, The Journal of Modern History, 40, no. 1 (1968), pp. 1-56.
9
The irony of this standpoint is yet again pointed out by McKenzie: ‘The paradox of writing – that what
seems exact when first written can be torn a thousand ways by critical reading – led Francis Bacon to resist
the reduction of common law to statute form as he said in 1616, ‘there are more doubts that rise upon our
statutes, which are a text law, than upon the common law, which is no text law’.’(McKenzie, op cit, p. 243,
citing The Works of Francis Bacon, ed., J. Spedding, 14 vols. 1857 -74 : xiii (The Letters and Life, vi. 67);
cited by J. H. Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History (2nd Edition, London,1979), p. 189.
10
The OED defines scrivener as: 1). A professional penman; a scribe, copyist; a clerk, secretary,
amanuensis. Also: d. ‘A writing-master’; c) author Obs; 2). A notary. Like the bookseller, whose title
68
concealed a multifarious role, Patten identifies how the seventeenth-century 'scrivener' had developed into
something far more sophisticated from his largely clerical forebears. They frequently acted as legal and
financial intermediaries, drew up bonds and arranged mortgages, were estate agents, as well as accountants.
J. Patten, ‘Urban Occupations in Pre-Industrial England’, Transactions of the Institute of British
Geographers, New Series, vol. 2, no. 3, Change in the Town (1977), p. 303; citing D. C. Coleman, ‘London
Scriveners and the estate market in the later seventeenth century’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser. 4
(1951), pp. 221-30.
11
The sixty-four Norwich stationers mentioned here, many of whom fall outside the immediate time-frame
for this study, are those featured on the ‘Yellow Map’ in Appendix Z. The ten named in the ODNB are:
Richard Beatniffe; Francis Blomefield; Francis Burges; Edward Cave; William Chase I, Henry Crossgrove;
John Crouse; Luke Hansard; Robert Raikes; Seth William Stevenson. Those mentioned through association,
include: Freeman Collins (in entries for: Burges; Cave, and the Farley family); Jonathan Gleed (in an entry
for Richard Beatniffe); Thomas Goddard (in the entry for Chase); Samuel Hasbart (in entries for:
Crossgrove and R. Raikes); Steven White (in the entry for L. Hansard). The book auctioneer, Edward
Millington, although attracting an entry in ODNB, was not based in Norfolk and therefore has not been
counted in this straw poll. Equally, stationer widows who, though sometimes active in their own right and
mentioned in passing in their husband’s entries, have not been counted. The seven underlined were those
active between 1660-1720, although Raikes who only passed though the city, has not been included in the
percentages. See Appendix E.3.
12
The scrivener’s name in question is one John Perry (Norwich freeman: 26 June 1702. f. 116b) who
possibly fathered ‘a’ Charles Perry. See ODNB entry for Charles Perry (d. 1780), the Norwich born
‘traveller and medical writer’. The relevant extract can be found in Appendix A, along with the list of these
forty-one scrivener freemen. (Stationers can be found in Appendix E).
13
OED definition for artisan: 1. One who practises or cultivates an art; an artist. 2. One who is employed
in any of the industrial arts; a mechanic, handicraftsman, artificer.
14
Hope Mason summarizes Denis Diderot’s Mémoires pour Catherine II, in which the author expands on
his time in Russia with the Russian Empress: ‘The Mémoires is a wide ranging series of reflections about
France and suggestions for change in Russia…. [Diderot’s] …concern was the need to form a ‘third estate’
(chapter VII), to people the towns (XXXVII), develop trade (XXIV), encourage industry and manufacture
(LVI, LVII).’ This stance is consolidated in the fact that: ‘In a contribution to the Correspondance littéraire
in 1772, Diderot had maintained that the first step in bringing civilization to a backward country like Russia
was not to start at the top, by bringing in illustrious men, but … ‘by invigorating the mechanical arts and
lower occupations. Learn how to cultivate the land, to treat skins, manufacture wool, make shoes, and in
time…people will then be painting pictures and making statues.’ J. Hope Mason, The Irresistible Diderot
(London, 1982), p. 333, citing: R Lewinter (ed.), Oeuvres Comptetes (Paris, 1971), x, p. 103.
15
Artificer is indistinguishable from the term artisan. The OED definition for artificer: 1. One who makes
by art or skill; esp. one who follows an industrial handicraft, a craftsman. Harrison stated: ‘The fourth and
last sort of people in England are….all artificers, [such] as tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, brickmakers,
masons, etc.’ William Harrison (1534-1593) collaborated with Raphael Holinshed, and wrote Descriptions
of Britain and England (1577). Quote taken from Book III, Chapter 4: web page in Bibliography. Harrison
was not alone in placing these people low on the social ladder. A raft of early modern commentators, from
Sir Thomas Elyot (c.1490–1546) through to Edward Chamberlayne (1616-1703), tried to define their social
position. Their stratifications were all within a hierarchical model; none had totally abandoned the ‘chain of
being’ mentality. (See D. Cressy. ‘Describing The Social Order of Elizabethan and Stuart England.’
Literature and History, vol. 3 (1976). pp. 32-36).
16
The word ‘sort’, meaning, ‘of a certain kind’, and the verb ‘to sort’, can be found in a variety of English
vernacular works from at least the fourteenth century. (K. Wrightson, ‘Sorts of People in Tudor and Stuart
England’, in The Middling Sort of People. Culture, Society and Politics in England 1550-1800.
(Basingstoke, 1994), eds J. Barry and C. Brooks, p. 31).
17
Porter states that it was no accident that ‘reason’ so often went hand-in-glove with ‘absolutism’. For
reason and science, far from promoting liberty, encourage an absolutist cast of mind, by assuming an
‘absolute’ distinction between true and false, right and wrong, rather than a pluralist diversity of values. (R.
Porter, The Enlightenment (Basingstoke, 2001), p. 8).
18
Porter, The Enlightenment, pp. 2-3.
19
Porter, The Enlightenment, p. 5.
20
Modern historians of intellectual history, Taylor and Seigel, have both argued that Locke’s Essay
Concerning Human Understanding (1690) marks the beginning of the modern conception of the self. J.
Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century.
69
(Cambridge, 2005); C. Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. (Cambridge, Mass.
1989). The Rev. Ralph Josselin (1616-1683) is worthy of mention because, as the grandson of a yeoman
farmer, he is an example of social mobility within the period. See, The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683
(Oxford, 1991), ed. A. Macfarlane.
21
See P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660-1770.
(Oxford, 2002); P. Borsay, ‘The English Urban Renaissance: The Development of Provincial Urban Culture
c.1680- c.1760.’ Social History, 5 (1977), pp. 581-603; P. Borsay, ‘Debate: The Emergence of a Leisure
Town or an Urban Renaissance?’ Past And Present, no. 126 (Feb., 1990), pp.189-96. However, Borsay’s
interpretation has been questioned, see: A. McInnes, ‘The Emergence of a Leisure Town: Shrewsbury
1660-1760’, Past and Present, no. 120, (1988), pp. 53-87.
22
Between 1670-1700 schemes and bills for improvement to the water supply were made in at least eight
provincial towns, including York, Bristol, Norwich and Newcastle. P. Borsay, ‘The English Urban
Renaissance: the development of provincial urban culture, 1680-1760’, in Borsay (ed), The EighteenthCentury Town, 1688-1820 (1990), p. 169. ‘The rise of ‘politeness’ involved the expansion of the term from
the kernel meaning (concerning social efficiency) to a widely flung semantic net. ‘Politeness’ was in all
cases an elite identification. In its career it came to rule not only over ‘polite society’ and its ‘polite’
personnel, but also over a range of cultural areas into which it imported ideals of sociability and
gentlemanliness.’ L. E. Klein, ‘The Rise of Politeness in England, 1660-1715 (John Hopkins University,
PhD, 1984), p. ii. Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) was a Norwegian-American sociologist most famous for
his book The Theory of the Leisure Class: an economic study of institutions (1899), in which he identified
‘conspicuous consumption’: a factor of which is - the higher the price of an item the more it is sought after
and desired and, the more it accrues and attaches status to those that purchase it. In the same work Veblen
also identified, along the same socio-status lines, ‘conspicuous leisure’ (esp. chapters 3 and 4). See also, M.
Berg, Luxury and Pleasure in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Oxford, 2005).
23
Pierre Bourdieu (and Jean-Claude Passeron) first used the term ‘cultural capital’ (le capital culturel) in
Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction [1973]. The book was later translated by Richard Nice as
Reproduction in education, society and culture (London, 1977). For Bourdieu, capital acts as a social
relation within a system of exchange, and the term is extended, ‘to all the goods material and symbolic,
without distinction, that present themselves as rare and worthy of being sought after in a particular social
formation…. Cultural capital acts as a social relation within a system of exchange that includes the
accumulated cultural knowledge that confers power and status.’ Quote taken from Wikiepedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital.
24
Borsay argues that the towns’ advantage over the country was that the town offered ‘intellectual space’,
central to which was the fact that, ‘it published and sold books’. Borsay, ‘The English Urban Renaissance’,
p. 597.
25
Paul Langford took this quotation from a lecture given by Sir. William Blackstone and recorded in his
Commentaries on the Laws of England (London, 1765-69). Book 3, ch. 22, p. 326. P. Langford, A Polite
and Commercial People: England 1727-1783 (Oxford University Press, 1992).
26
These are also early days in a national context, that had until recently always been assumed to be on the
margins of the Enlightenment.
27
An illustration of the memorial stone, with its Latin inscription, can be found in the Appendix C. Image
and translated text courtesy of Richard Deswarte.
28
L. Rostenberg, Literary, political, scientific, religious & legal publishing, printing & bookselling in
England, 1551-1700 : twelve studies , with a preface by Donald G. Wing (New York , 1965), p. 8.
29
Forty-five members of Norfolk’s elite signed a petition to General Monck to urge him on in his mission,
and amongst those who signed this address to the General, in 1660, was the bookseller, William Franklin.
H. Le Strange and W. Rye, An Address from the Gentry of Norfolk and Norwich to General Monck 1660
(Norwich, 1913). See also Appendix D.
30
P. S. Bearman, G. Deane, ‘The Structure of Opportunity: Middle-Class Mobility in England, 1548-1689’.
The American Journal of Sociology, 98 (1992), p. 58; J. T. Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich…, p. 225.
31
P. Corfield, ‘A Provincial Capital in the late Seventeenth-century: The Case of Norwich’, in, Crisis &
Order in English Towns 1500-1700, edited by P. Clark and P. Slack (London, 1972), p. 273.
32
Starting from a base of 12,000 people, and rising to some 30,000 and possibly increasing to 50,000 by
mid-eighteenth century, Norwich would remain the country’s second city until Bristol’s fortunes would rise
with its participation in the slave trade. See: Penelope Corfield, ‘A Provincial Capital in the late
Seventeenth-century: The Case of Norwich’, in, Crisis & Order in English Towns 1500-1700 (London,
1972), eds Peter Clark and Paul Slack, p. 263.
70
33
See, Mark Goldie, ‘The Unacknowledged Republic: Officeholding in Early Modern England’, in, The
Politics of the Excluded, c 1500-1850 (Basingstoke, 2001), edited by Tim Harris, ch. 6. For the importance
of the unacknowledged republic and the unusual democratic nature of Norwich Corporation, see J. T.
Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich… (Oxford, 1979).
34
Parliament abolished the Star Chamber in July 1641, which led to the de facto cessation of censorship.
Subsequently, during the civil war years, the numbers of printers were ‘three times larger’ than the decree
of 1637: namely, there were approximately 60 printers in London. The Long Parliament had not, according
to Plomer, ‘removed the gag’ of the earlier edict, however they had their hands full ‘with other and
weightier matters’, and were also only to pleased to avail themselves of printer’s services in order to reply
to the attacks of the Royalist press. See: Henry R. Plomer, A Short History of English Printing 1476-1900
(London [1900] 1927), pp. 156 -156.
35
In effect this returned the Licensing laws to those enacted by Elizabeth I in 1586; as reiterated by James I
in 1615. The London Stationers Company was decimated by plague in 1624/25, yet during the reign of
Charles I, censorship of the press was exercised with severity: a time when, ‘publishers, and booksellers of
London were subjected to a persecution hitherto unknown’. See: Henry R. Plomer, A Short History of
English Printing … (London, 1927), pp. 86, 132, 139.
36
In 1661/62 L’Estrange was granted a charter to search for and seize unlicensed presses and seditious
books, which he did with vigour. One of L’Estrange’s targets was a raft of seditious Farewell Sermons
printed since the Act of Uniformity; he claimed the Company of Stationers had connived in its abuse. See
H. R. Plomer, A Short History of English Printing …, London (1927), pp. 169-171.
37
Prynne opposed Archbishop Laud. He would lose his ears, and be branded with a S.L. for scurrilous
libeller, in 1637. (See: H. R. Plomer, A Short History of English Printing …, (London, 1927), pp. 140-143).
In 1663 L’Estrange entered Twyn’s premises where he discovered printed sheets which asserted the godly
duty of the people to oust the ‘Bloody and Oppressing’ house of Stuart. Twyn protested his innocence of
the works content and claimed he took the job because he needed the money. However, he was found guilty
by a jury that included the printers Richard Royston and Thomas Roycroft and was sentenced to be hanged,
disembowelled, and quartered. Twyn was executed at Tyburn on 24 February [1664/5]. See ODNB entry
for John Twyn (bap. 1619, d. 1664), printer.
38
For a full account of the complex political agencies, and accidents, that resulted in the Act’s finally being
allowed to lapse, see, Raymond Astbury, ‘The Renewal of the Licensing Act in 1693 and its Lapse in
1695’, The Library. 5th series: 33 (1978), p. 308.
39
J. H. Plumb, ‘The Public Literature and the Arts’, in, The Triumph of Culture: Eighteenth Century
Perspectives, edited by P Fritz and D. Williams (Toronto, 1972), p. 31.
40
See the bibliography for the reference works and especially the indexes of Millican and Hawes, along
with those sources already cited in the introduction.
41
This refers to the several printers dispatched, first by Freeman Collins and then his widow Susanna, to
run the Red Well press on their behalf; after the death of Elizabeth Burges (1708): numbering possibly 5 in
all. Only the current proprietor of the press has been counted in the numbers.
42
These two ‘outsiders’ from the core group, were the print proprietor Samuel Hasbart (St Clement, 17061718) and his one-time journeyman Henry Crossgrove (freedom attained in 1710). Once free of his
master/landlord (Hasbart), the final destination of Henry Crossgrove (1718) was St Giles Broad Street (next
to the Church). Both might be considered late arrivals to the stationer community and it should be noted
that Hasbart, a distiller by trade, utilized his premises in Magdalen Street for the purposes of setting up a
print-shop. As soon as the opportunity arose to move, Crossgrove found premises closer to the Market
Place.
43
As many of these stationers moved premises during their careers, only their last known location was
considered for inclusion. A full list of their names and parishes can be found in the Appendix B.
44
C. W. Branford, ‘Powers of Association…’ (PhD, 1993), p. 32, citing: NRO, NCR, Case 13a/55, 1694;
Case 7, Shelf (k), 1694.
45
Branford cites the case of John Mann, a merchant, who had nine servants, 3 males and 6 female. C. W.
Branford, ‘Powers of Association…’ (PhD, 1993), p. 34, citing: NRO, NCR, Case 13a/55, 1694; Case 7,
Shelf (k), 1694. D. Jones’s research also revealed that nearly half the households in St Peter Mancroft had
no servants at all in 1694, see: D. T. Jones, ‘Aspects of the Social Geography of Early-Modern Norwich:
Applications of Computer Techniques’, 2 vols (PhD, 2003), pp. 212-213. See also: P. Griffiths, J. Landers,
M. Pelling and R. Tyson, ‘Population and disease, estrangement and belonging 1540-1700’ in, The
Cambridge Urban History of Britain, II (Cambridge, 2000), edited by P. Clark, p. 223.
46
Of the thirteen households with over 5 servants in St Peter Mancroft parish in 1694: eight were headed by
merchant/mercers; one was a tailor; two were vintners; one was a widow, and one was a milliner. A
71
barrister, Edmund Themelthorpe, was the only professional in St Stephen’s parish, to have over five
servants. See, C. W. Branford, ‘Powers of Association…’ (PhD ,1993), pp. 34- 35, citing: NRO, NCR, Case
13a/55, 1694.
47
See NRO Parish Record Collection: Poll Tax Assessment 1694 NRO, NCR. Ba (2); Overseers Accounts
1694, NRO. NCR. MF/X/267/14.
48
Germaine Greer speculates on the connection between the coffee house intellectual society and the
bookshop of Sam Briscoe in London. His bookshop was in Covent Garden opposite William Urwin’s coffee
house, reputedly ‘the merriest place in the world’. It was frequented by Dryden, Congreve and Blount and a
host of other significant literary figures. Greer considers that this happy juxtaposition of book shop and
coffee house may have produced a symbiotically rewarding relationship for both authors, publishers and
sellers of books. (Germaine Greer, ‘Honest Sam. Briscoe’, in A Genius For Letters: Booksellers and
Bookselling from the 16th to the 20th Century (Delaware, 1994), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris, pp. 3334.
49
For the importance of coffee houses, after 1650, as places for cultural dissemination in the provinces, see:
R. Sweet, The English Town 1680-1840: Government, Society and Culture (Harlow, 1999), pp. 245-246.
Evidence that bookshops themselves were popular venues for congregating with friends, and were a draw even to the young, can be found in the diaries of John Loveday (1711-1789). John Hooker’s shop in
Reading being particularly popular because, as well as books, it sold, ‘prints, medals, coins and anything
the young collectors went in for’ and, as a result, it became a ‘popular meeting place’. Sarah Markham
(ed.), John Loveday of Caversham 1711-1789: The Life and Tours of an Eighteenth-Century Onlooker
(Salisbury, 1984), p. 68.
50
P. Borsay, ‘The English Urban Renaissance…’ Social History (1977), p. 594.
51
A. Dain, ‘Assemblies and Politeness 1660-1840’ (PhD, 2000), p. 37; citing NRO WKC 7/9, 404 x1: A
letter from Mary or Martha Chamberlayne of Bramerton, in which this first event is mentioned. Dain also
points out that the Angel Inn turned into the Royal Hotel, which became the Royal Arcade.
52
Until the construction of the Theatre Royal (1758), plays, found in advertisements in the Norwich
Gazette, took place, just off the market place at the Royal Hotel (see footnote above) and also at the ‘White
Swan in St Peter’s’ (see N.G.: 7th January 1727).
53
Where exact dates for the start or end of a career are unknown, a conservative three-year trading period
has been allowed for. The career of Michael Crotch is the exception. For caution’s sake, I have assumed
that Crotch’s sons, Adam and John, were 16 and 18 at the time of gaining their freedom in 1677, and have
allowed enough of a gap for Michael Crotch to have sired his children before dying or ceasing to trade.
Therefore I have kept him active in business only until 1662.
54
The first printer in Norwich was one Anthony de Solemne or Solempne; a Dutch refugee escaping
from the persecution of the Duke of Alva. He arrived in Norwich in c.1567; and by 1572 appears
to have given up printing. See W. Turner Berry & H. Edmund Poole, Annals of Printing, (London,
1966), p. 98; Stoker, ‘The Norwich Book of Trades before 1800’ (1981), pp. 119-120.
55
Fig. 5 is also inset in the time-line chart in Appendix Y.
56
In order to determine occupational connections and legacies, this research extended both before and
beyond the period under scrutiny. However, apart from the focal period, 1660-1720, this unfolding ‘yellow
map’- Appendix Z, does not reflect a comprehensive chart of stationers extending into the Georgian period
in Norwich. Not all wives and children are included unless they inherited the business, and siblings are not
necessarily placed in birth order.
57
Patten examined the Freemen registers of Norwich and compared the occupations for which the freeman
was registered against his occupation as stated in his will: noting that between the years 1650 and 1699 the
number of the various occupations given in Freemen's registers amounted to 114, while occupations, as
mentioned in wills, was 121. This gives us a slight insight into the multifaceted nature of some trades
and the fluidity between trades, and discrepancies between the official, perhaps misleading,
overarching occupational categories. (See: J. Patten, ‘Urban Occupations in Pre-Industrial England’,
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series, vol. 2, Change in the Town (1977), p.
301.)
58
Francis Kirkman’s bookshop in Temple Bar in London advertised in 1669, that: ‘you may be furnished
with all the Plays that were ever yet Printed, and all sorts of Histories and Romances, which you may buy or
have lent to you to read on reasonable Considerations’. G. Mandelbrote, ‘From the warehouse to the
counting-house…’, in A Genius For Letters... (Delaware, 1995), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris. p. 63,
citing Kirkman’s advert in Psittacorum regio (1669).
59
Gattuso found that bibles were always itemized, unlike the titles of individual books, in post-mortem
probate inventories. Bibles were most likely to be found in households where there was no other evidence
72
of book ownership. (See S. Gattuso, ‘Did they own Books? Book-ownership revealed in Norwich Probate
Inventories’, Norfolk Archaeology, xlv, part I (2006), pp. 74-85). For an illustration of the importance of
‘Testaments, Psalters, Grammars, [and] Accidences’ to the book traders stock see Francis Kirkman
quotation in Appendix N.
60
Fig. 6: This portrayal of manuscripts housed in deep drawers would have required a great deal of
paperwork and filing to locate manuscripts. This same image was reproduced in the English translation by
Charles Hoole, over many years (surviving editions include 1659, 1672, 1685, 1689, 1700, 1705, 1728,
1729, 1777, and 1791), but by 1777, ‘for the first time, the shop is furnished with shelves containing bound
volumes’ and the bookseller is referred to in the text as a publisher as well as a retailer. See: G.
Mandelbrote, ‘From the warehouse to the counting-house…’, in A Genius For Letters… (Delaware,
1995), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris. p. 59 ff. 31.
61
The physical form of bookshops is hard to recreate, and looking at other examples, they must have varied
extensively, not only in size and stock on offer but in layout and architecture: from simple stalls that
retracted into the building at the close of day, to huge warehouses or handsome shops. See also figs.10 &11.
62
In 1930, Michael Sadleir’s, The Evolution of Publishers' Binding Styles declared that up until the 1770s
books remained unbound. However, Stuart Bennett, provides evidence that well before this date books were
increasingly and predominantly sold, ready-bound, in sheep, calf, and goat as well as boards and wrappers.
See: Stuart Bennett, Trade Bookbinding in the British Isles, 1660-1800, Oak Knoll Press & the British
Library (London, 2004). Discussion and analysis of the content of the Norwich book auctions in this period
can be found in the next chapter of this dissertation.
63
For original, see: Colman Collection, Norfolk Heritage Library. [The photocopy above reproduced by
kind permission].
64
Being a bookseller was not a cheap business. In order to start trading you required capital. Stoker cites the
case of Samuel Selfe who set up in Norwich with £200 of his own money matched by the same amount of
credit in stock from London booksellers. D. Stoker, ‘‘To all Booksellers, Country Chapmen, Hawkers and
Others’: how the population of East Anglia obtained its printed materials.’ Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant
Book Trade (Oak Knoll Press & the British Library, 2007), edited by R. Myers, M. Harris and G.
Mandelbrote, p. 111.
65
Those that offered only bookbinding services are marked by an asterisk next to their number in the chart.
See Appendix X.
66
The only ‘John Wilson’ noted in the freeman’s registers was a cordwainer. If one-and-the-same man, it
exposes the flexibility between these trades. However, switching to bookbinding at this time did not prove
beneficial for him. Citing the Norwich Quarter Sessions Minutes, Stoker states that he was, ‘imprisoned
for debts to various people in Norwich, Bury St Edmunds, and London around 1690 but was
released two years later as a result of an act of parliament for the release of poor debtors.’ D.
Stoker, ‘The Norwich Book of Trades before 1800’. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical
Society, viii (1981), p. 123. Wilson was back in his parish by 1693/4 where he paid his Poll Tax. A
John Wilson cordwainer of St Stephen’s is also noted in the Poll Book as voting in the 1714/15
General Election: one of only three, out of the named 36 stationers, who bothered to vote in that
election.
67
Fig 8 and fig. 9 can also be found inset within the time-line chart Appendix X.
68
Mindful that much of what was initially printed in Norwich were pamphlets, official forms and
newspapers, which did not require binding, it is less surprising that the ratio of bookbinders to stationers
diminishes at this point.
69
The Poll Tax of 1694 was put in place to raise funds for financing of the Anglo-Dutch war against
France. A tax of 4 shillings per head was raised, together with a charge of £2 or £4 for real estate and
personal estate . (See D. T. Jones, ‘Aspects of the Social Geography of Early-Modern Norwich:
Applications of Computer Techniques’, 2 vols (PhD, 2003), pp. 212-213). Mandelbrote notes that there
were a rash of bankruptcies in the English book trade in the 1690s. G. Mandelbrote, ‘From the warehouse to
the counting-house…’, in A Genius For Letters… (Delaware, 1995), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris. p.
76. ff. 97.
70
Often referred to as ‘numbers’, books could be bought by subscription, piecemeal, in weekly or monthly
parts. This was a trend begun in the seventeenth century but, according to Wiles, did not really ‘take off’
until 1730. After all the ‘blue paper’ covered parts were purchased, the finished article would have needed
binding. This trend may have rejuvenated the book binding business. Roy McKeen Wiles, ‘Reading in
Provincial England’, in Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book (Massachusetts, 1996), edited
by D. D. Hall, p. 98.
73
71
Reproduced from Dirk de Bray, A short instruction in the binding of books (Amsterdam, 1977), taken
from G. Mandelbrote’s article: ‘From the warehouse to the counting-house…’, in A Genius For Letter…
(Delaware, 1994), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris, p. 58.
72
At the beginning of The Story of Art, Gombrich writes: ‘There really is no such thing as Art. There are
only artists.’ E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (London, 1950; reprinted 1995), p. 15.
73
Keith Thomas points out, ‘Black-letter literacy was a more basic skill than roman-type literacy; and it did
not follow that the reader fluent in one was equally at home in the other’. The choice of font therefore was
crucial in determining the market for the printed text. K. Thomas, ‘Literacy in Early Modern England’ in
The Written Word (1986), G. Baumann (ed.), p. 99.
74
Abraham Bosse’s engraving of the Galerie du Palais in Paris was taken from a reproduction in G.
Mandelbrote’s article: ‘From the warehouse to the counting-house…’, in A Genius For Letters… ,
(Delaware, 1994), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris, p. 60.
75
From her study of Norfolk inventories from the 16th through to the early 18th centuries, Gattuso noted
that, the main locations for books were the hall, the parlour, the chamber and, increasingly, especially for
the clergy by the late 17th century, the study. The word ‘Library’ being first recorded as location for the
housing of books in 1674 with a William Hyde: (Inv. 53b/23). (Gattuso, ‘Did they own Books?...’, Norfolk
Archaeology, xlv, part I (2006), pp. 78-79).
76
B. Harris Bronson, Facets of the Enlightenment (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), p. 329. [For a
merciless ridicule of one ‘Sir Gregory Bookworm’ who buys books by the yard for purposes of ornament,
see the Lay-Monk, no.8, Dec. 2, 1713].
77
Mandelbrote points out that ‘publishing’, as a word applied in the seventeenth century, meant simply to
‘make public’, and a ‘publisher’, in so far as the word was beginning to have occupational or commercial
connotations, was usually concerned principally with distribution. (G. Mandelbrote, ‘From the warehouse to
the counting-house…’, in A Genius For Letters… (Delaware, 1994), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris, p.
49, ff. 1).
78
See M. Knights, Representation and Misrepresentation in Later Stuart Britain, (Oxford, 2005), p.
224.
79
Bronson comments on the subjective vagaries of print forms: ‘Pope capitalizes judiciously and
subjectively – but not according to any clear rule: and his practise is not respected after his death. Gay
avoids capitals in 1720 and in his Fables, 1728; but in The Beggar’s Opera, of the latter year, as a rule
capitalises nouns’. B. Harris Bronson: Facets of the Enlightenment (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), p.
338.
80
See, P. Campbell for the importance of the typography of Hobbes’s Leviathan to the flavour of its
rhetoric and understanding the meaning of the text. The Cambridge History of The Book in Britain, vol. iv,
1557-1695 (Cambridge, 2002), edited by J. Barnard and D. F. McKenzie, pp. 645-647.
81
D. Stoker, ‘The Norwich Book of Trades…’. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, viii
(1981). pp. 79 – 125, p. 11; citing: J. Alden, `Pills and publishing', The Library 1952. N.G. 3rd of May
1707, and R. Gough, British topography, 1780, vol. 2, p. 11
82
These words are recorded by a Mr Gough as being under a Mezzotinto plate depicting Norwich Castle and
the Shire house: ‘This castle was built by J. Caesar, and the crack is supposed to have happened at the
crucifixion of our Saviour Christ. Made by James Meheux, Limner. Any persons that deseir [sic] to have
any pictures done by Mr. James Meheux, may privately leave a note with Mr. Rose, bookseller in Norwich;
and when there are as many to be done as is worth coming from London he will come and do them at the
usual rate, which is 40s. a picture.’ (John Britton’s, The Beauties of England and Wales, Or, Delineations,
Topographical, Historical, and Descriptive (1810), p. 376. Full title and web page for book in
bibliography).
83
D. Stoker, ‘The Norwich Book of Trades…’. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, viii
(1981), p. 551.
84
Plomer lists Chapman from an advertisement in the N. P. 26-28th Feb. 1702/3. H. R. Plomer, A
Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers who were at work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 16681725, The Bibliographical Society (1968), p. 68.
85
D. Stoker, ‘Prosperity and success in the eighteenth century provincial book trade…’, Publishing History,
30 (1991), pp. 1-58.
86
D. Stoker, ‘The Norwich Book of Trades…’. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, viii
(1981), pp. 88, 91-92, 103-104.
87
A newsletter addressed to Nowell and dated 29 Sept. 1666 is preserved in the P.R.O. (See CSPD for
this date). Stoker, ‘The Norwich Book of Trades before 1800’. Transactions of the Cambridge
Bibliographical Society, viii (1981), pp. 111-112, citing: Chamberlain ' s accounts and Mayor's Court
74
Book: 13 Oct. 1666. This was a role that Nowell would surrender to William Oliver in 1669: (See also:
Mayor's Court Book 20th Oct. 1669).
88
In 1665 the court had retired to Oxford to avoid the plague. It was here that the first edition, dated 7th
Nov. 1665 of the Oxford Gazette (later the London Gazette) was published, and available only through
subscription. The London Gazette (labeled no. 24) was first published on Feb.1666. (See Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Gazette#History). Commercial manuscripts fell outside any rigid
controls and were dispatched to individual subscribers as well as major booksellers, inns and coffee-houses
in the larger towns. The fact that these newsletters were comparatively expensive, and their clients were
anticipated to be amongst the elite, may have contributed to the fact that the government did not police their
content with vigilance. D. Stoker, ‘The Establishment of Printing in Norwich: Causes and Effects 16601760’. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vii (1977), p. 95.
89
See P. Millican, The Register of The Freemen of Norwich, 1548-1713, Norwich (1934), pp. xiv-xv.
90
See Appendices E.1; E.2; and E.3 for details of the stationer’s dates of freedom, means attained, and civic
roles. For clarity, in order to visualize generational activity in the city, a cross-section of ‘snap shot’ profiles
show the stationers approximate locations and activity in twenty year intervals: 1660; 1680; 1700; 1720.
These ‘maps’ are to be found in Appendices: W.1; W.2; W.3; W.4; where civic responsibilities and
achievements are also recorded.
91
Not all took up their freedom, many avoided doing so. Equally, according to Stoker, there was an
unwritten agreement that allowed a stranger to practise in the city for year, perhaps longer, without being
obliged to purchase his freedom. D. Stoker (F.L.A. Thesis, 1975), pp. 77- 83.
92
Freeman Collins had a commercial interest in the Red Well printing press after the deaths of Francis
Burge (1706) and his wife (1708). He can be identified on the ‘yellow map’ in Appendix Z.
93
It is hard to do a direct comparison with the scriveners (Appendix A) of whom 12% of the total were
elected to the council. The lists however are not comparable as the research is not cognisant of scriveners
who migrated into the community from outside, nor are the roles, such as undersheriff (24% of scriveners),
easy to compare to, say, a guardian of the poor. However, 9% of scriveners were parish constables, while
14% of stationers took on that responsibility. Purchase of freedom for a scrivener was unknown until 1717
and a high percentage attained their freedom through patrimony: 56%. Also of note, scriveners could, and
did, attain the height of the aldermanry in this period, a full seventy-five years before a stationer.
94
By 1622 stationers came under the fourth Grand Company, known as the Apothecaries Company, which
included trades such as upholsterer, tanner and carpenter. Unlike the vast numbers of weavers, book traders
were a compact group in the city and were slow to consolidate ordinances for their newly formed company,
because, one might assume, they could keep a tight control on unruly members. Stoker observes that the
city authorities made little effort to impose officers upon them: numbering under eleven freemen at any
time, electing a warden for the company appears to have been neglected. Although ordinances were drawn
up in 1636, they still failed to implement a warden. D. Stoker (F.L.A. Thesis, 1975), pp. 24; 93-97.
95
A graph of the widow stationers who operated in Norwich as independent traders, along with brief
biographical detail of their careers, can be found in Appendix F.
96
Five weeks before these ordinances were drawn up Abraham Atfend (1636) had acquired his freedom
through patrimony. There may have been some animosity towards him because his eight year stationers
apprenticeship had been in London. He had returned to his native city to take up the trade because London
was saturated with stationers and he could not become a master in the capital. D. Stoker (F.L.A. Thesis,
1975), p. 97.
97
Purchase by freedom was the resort for those who did not qualify any other way. The charge was flexible
and depended on how much the Corporation thought could be afforded. The ordinance was first waived for
William Nevill in 1644/5 (possibly another London apprentice) when he purchased his freedom for £6.
However, the wealthy Joseph Cranford from London (1659) paid a princely ransom of £20, and George
Rose bought his for £16 in 1671. Officially the cost was fixed at £20, but it appears to have been applied
with discretion. William Pinder traded the financial cost in return for taking in a poor boy as an apprentice
and binding a certain quantity of books ‘free’ for the corporation. Henry Crossgrove, as a printer, seems to
have fallen outside the remit of the ordinances for the stationers, and in 1710 managed to purchase his
freedom for £3. 4s. 6d. Assembly Book 8 (1668-1707) f. 261.1.6.1703; D. Stoker (F.L.A. Thesis, 1975), pp.
81- 83
98
Assembly Book 8 (1668-1707) f. 261. 1707. D. Stoker, F.L.A. Thesis,(1975), p. 101.
99
N.G. 22nd. Sept. 1722.
100
John Dunton (1659–1732), bookseller and author of The Life and Errors of John Dunton, Citizen of
London (1705). Most notably too is the fact his work is: ‘one of the earliest examples of autobiography in
English’. (See ODNB entry). The bookseller/author was not uncommon. Francis Kirkman, Thomas Gent,
75
Luke Hansard, would all leave accounts of their lives, and Nathaniel Crouch would write successful,
accessible, History books, under the name of Richard Burton.
101
J. Dunton, The Life and Errors … (Westminster., 1818), vol. I, p. 38.
102
Ibid, p. 43.
103
Thomas Gent (1693-1778). The ODNB reminds us that the aspiring printer was a comparably well
educated apprentice: ‘Gent's parents, who had given him a Presbyterian baptism, saw to it that he learned
reading, writing, arithmetic, and Latin, and that he read his Bible and was God-fearing. On 25 March 1707
Gent was apprenticed to Stephen Powell, printer in Fishamble Street, Dublin’. ODNB entry for Thomas
Gent.
104
Thomas Gent (ed. J Hunter), The life of Mr Thomas Gent … written by himself (1832; and reproduced in
1974), pp. 26-27.
105
Hansard was a Kirton-in-Holland free Grammar school boy (1759-65), and, as with Dunton and Gent, it
is worth noting the required high level of education for such an apprenticeship. He wrote a memoir for his
younger sons, published in 1817. ODNB entry for Luke Hansard (1752–1828), printer to the House of
Commons.
106
For brief details of Stephen White see ‘yellow map’ in Appendix Z. White had been Crossgrove’s
apprentice, perhaps even responding to the aforementioned ‘lusty proper Ladd’ advertisement.
107
L. Hansard (ed. R. Myers), The auto-biography of Luke Hansard, written in 1817 (1991), p. 9.
108
See ‘yellow map’ in Appendix Z.
109
In April 1730, London bookseller John Oswald and the auctioneer John Dansken rented rooms in the
upstairs of the Guildhall for a massive book auction to take place during assize week. Collaborating,
Goddard and Chase responded swiftly by advertising an auction on the same day in the same venue. The
competition duly panicked and removed themselves, and their auction, to Bungay. D. Stoker, ‘To all
Booksellers, …’, in Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade (London. 2007), edited by R. Myers, M.
Harris and G. Mandelbrote, pp. 127-128, citing: N.G. 1227 and 1228, 11th and 18th April 1730.
110
J. Dunton, The Life and Errors …, (Westminster. 1818), vol. I, p. 87.
111
However, Mandelbrote, whose focus here is on publisher/booksellers and whose figures therefore must
be considered conservative, enumerates some 650 individuals whose names are recorded more than twice in
‘Printed for’ imprints between 1660 and 1700, but they seems to include all ‘English speaking’
publications. G. Mandelbrote, ‘From the warehouse to the counting-house…’, in A Genius For Letters… ,
(Delaware, 1995), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris. p. 51, ff. 10.
112
Atkyns anxiously complains: ‘There are at least 600 Booksellers that keep Shops in or about London,
and Two or three Thousand free of the Company of Stationers.’ Richard Atkyns, The Original and Growth
of Printing, Printed by John Streater for the author (1664), p 16. [EEBO Wing / A4135. Henry E.
Huntington Library and Art Gallery.]
113
Those enumerated in this study were members of the Stationers’ Company, or listed in other City livery
companies; whose names appear more than twice in imprints of books. For details of his sources see
Appendix U.
114
G. Mandelbrote, ‘From the warehouse to the counting-house…,’ in A Genius For Letters…, (Delaware,
1995), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris, p. 51, ff. 10.
115
A pillar graph representing Mandelbrote’s findings and a breakdown of the statistics and references used
for his study can be found in Appendix U.
116
William Oliver had three sons, Samuel became a bookseller, Edward became a Doctor of Divinity and
eventually Prebendary of St Paul's Cathedral, and John held several Norfolk benefices. (D. Stoker,
‘The Norwich Book of Trades before 1800’. Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society,viii,
Part 1 (1981), p. 113). William Chase’s son, William Chase II, gifted his diamond ring to his brother, ‘The
Reverend Mr Richard Chase Clerk’, in his will dated 9th January 1781: NRO, NCC, 1781, MF 447, fols.
50r-51v. The ‘exception to the Norwich rule’ was printer Francis Burges who was the son of a cleric (see
ODNB) yet as he was an ‘import’ from London is not deemed representative. The Norwich
distiller/newspaper proprietor, Samuel Hasbart, was however the nephew of the non-conformist Pastor,
John Hasbert, and is mentioned in his uncle’s will. NRO, NCC, 65 Alexander, Will of John Hasbert.
117
William Pinder’s will does not give details of his wealth in exact monetary terms, but states, ‘all the rest
of my houses, lease lands, tenements and goods whatsoever I give to Alice my wife’, indicating a wide
property portfolio. (Pinder also left £5 to William Oliver as a gift, implying a fraternal camaraderie within
the trade. Oliver had however just predeceased him). (NRO.NCC. MF. 425 , 1689-1690, will no. 14.
William Pinder). William Oliver’s Probate Inventory tells us of a well furnished, at least five bed-roomed,
house, with ‘luxury bedstead with canopy and featherbed’ and servants’ quarters, and his material wealth,
including ‘good debts’ and stock comes to over £450. (NRO DN/INN 65/3, reel MF/X 18/section 3,
76
William Oliver). Based on figures for mid-seventeenth century, this sum would represent at least 30 years
of gross wages for a labourer earning 12d. a day: e.g. between £12- £15 a year. (see: Tessa Watt, Cheap
Print and Popular Piety, 1550-1640 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 261-62).
118
See Appendix D for the ‘Address to General Monck’ and sample of Franklin’s signature on the
document.
119
From 1663 until 1665 William Nowell was given the post of entertaining the visiting preachers on
behalf of the city authorities; after 1665 he shared this role with William Oliver who would
eventually take sole responsibility for this function from 1669. See: Mayor's Court Book 14 Oct.
1665 and 20 Oct. 1669.
120
J. Dunton, The Life and Errors (Westminster, 1818), vol. I, pp. 235-236.
121
Reproduction taken from G. Mandelbrote’s article ,‘From the warehouse to the countinghouse…’ in A Genius For Letters…(Delaware, 1994), edited by R. Myers and M. Harris, p. 54;
citing, Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum: Political and Personal Satires,
vol. ii, 1873, no. 1415.
122
The first recorded book auction in the region was three years before Mrs Olivers, and was held
at an inn at Trumpington near Cambridge in May 1686; organized by the London bookseller
Enoch Wyer. Stoker, ‘To all Booksellers, Country Chapmen, Hawkers and Others…’, in, Fairs,
Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade (Oak Knoll Press & the British Library, 2007), edited by R.
Myers, M. Harris and G. Mandelbrote, p. 124.
123
Stoker, ‘The Establishment of Printing in Norwich 1660-1760….’ (1977), p. 96. ff. 14.
124124
J. Dunton, The Life and Errors , pp. 235-236.
125
See Appendix G.1; G.2; G.3 ;H.1; H.2; H.3; I.1; I.2; I.3 for the front pages for each catalogue,
their introductions, and a sample page of the content of each.
126
Rose was positioned on the eastern side of the market place close to the corner of Gentleman’s
Walk and Cockey Lane, Priestley notes that the eastern side of the Norwich Market Place was
where the most imposing houses were located. (U. Priestley, The Great Market (Norwich, 1987)
p. 17).
127
The copy of the catalogue used here is the only one extant. (See Appendix G). It is a photostat
of the original document and is truncated: the book has been, at some stage, sliced at the bottom of
the manuscript removing one typographical title from each page of print. The figures here have
compensated by following the catalogues chronological numbers of the lots for sale.
128
This theory is put forward by Susan Gattuso in her article ‘Did they own Books?...’, Norfolk
Archaeology, xlv, part I (2006). Gattuso discovered a diminishing evidence of Bibles as a part of
total ‘book ownership’ in probate inventories.
129
These sermons were most often authored by local ministers, such as Thomas Allen, Martin
Finch and John Collinges, who had resigned their livings after the Act of Uniformity. Although
muted in tone to avoid being seditious, the content of the sermons was non-conformist in tenor
while urging religious toleration for dissenters (though not for Roman Catholics or Quakers). As
non-conformist authors they can easily be identified by the expression ‘late minister’ or ‘late
pastor’ after their names. (Many of whom, during the 1660s, would continue to hold, ‘secret
services, despite the provision of the Clarendon Code’. C. Wilkins-Jones, ‘Norwich City Library
and its Intellectual Milieu; 1608-1825’ (PhD, 2000), p. 154.) Details of any individual oath taking
relating to the Five Mile Act of 1665 are not known. After losing his living, Collinges is often
assumed to have received hospitality from prominent Whigs, Sir John and Frances Hobart, at
Chapelfield House. (C. Wilkins-Jones, PhD, p.194). After years ‘out in the cold’, in 1689 a new
meeting-place was built for Collinges and his congregation in the parish of St John Colegate. See
Appendix J.1-J.5 for a samples of the advertised stock sold by Giles and found in the back of his
publications.
130
Whether this collaboration was facilitated by the 1689 Act of Uniformity itself can only be a
matter of conjecture. These were politically divisive times. In 1688 the Bishop of Norwich,
William Lloyd, together with thirty-eight clergymen from Norfolk and Suffolk had refused to take
the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. C. Wilkins-Jones (UEA, PhD., 2000), p. 226; J. T.
Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich… (Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 316.
131
Therefore we cannot compare the prices raised at auction with the ‘normal’ retail price for the
books on offer. William Oliver’s probate estate was valued at £451. This sum included £235 worth
of stock. If the 1,248 volumes in the 1689 auction constituted all of his stock then the average
price for each item would be a hefty, though not impossible, 4s. 11d. (From the valuation made in
Norwich probate inventories, Gattuso estimates an average book price of under one shilling for
77
‘unnamed’ books in ‘parcels’, and between one shilling and £2 for those named. Mindful that
inventory assessors usually under-valued the market price. See Gattuso, p. 81). Oliver’s inventory
evaluates the total folio collection alone, to be worth £81.13s.4d. [1,633 shillings] making an
average of only 5s per volume, if divided by the 325 folios available in the auction. The
implication here is that Widow Oliver held back a sizeable proportion of his books, and did not
intend to quit the business. (N.R.O., Norwich Consistory Court, INV 658/3, 23rd June 1689.)
132
In a letter to Lord Arlington in 1665, L’Estrange claimed eighty printers, including workmen as
well as masters, had died of the plague. See H. R. Plomer, A Short History of English Printing
1476-1900 (London, 1927), p. 174
133
John Locke, Some Considerations of the Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising
the Value of Money (1692), 2nd ed., 1696, p. 45.
134
B. Harris Bronson, Facets of the Enlightenment (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), p. 332.
135
Ibid, p. 332.
136
Sutherland summaries the publishing history of Trollope in terms of the format his works took.
After a rocky commercial start in life as a ‘small, ugly, cramped book’ (pulped en masse for the
war effort in 1914-18), he links the ultimate success of The Way We Live Now with its eventual
publication, in the 1940s, as a high status oversize double volume. A point that illustrates how the
decisions made by publishers can be crucial to a books reception. (J. Sutherland, ‘Publishing
History: A Hole at the Centre of Literary Sociology’, Critical Inquiry, vol. 15, no.3, The
Sociology of Literature. (Spring, 1988), pp. 582-584).
137
At the end of the eighteenth century, Edmond Malone apparently sniffed at James Boswell for
suggesting that he would print his Life in folio, with the retort that Boswell, ‘ might as well throw
it in the Thames, for a folio would now not be read’. B. Harris Bronson: Facets of the
Enlightenment (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), p. 333. (No citation is given for the Malone
quote).
138
This is a view articulated by B. Harris Bronson: Facets of the Enlightenment (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 1968), p. 334.
139
Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816), playwright and politician, author of The Rivals (1775).
The above extract came from Act 1, scene II of the play.
140
This is the conclusion drawn by B. Harris Bronson: Facets of the Enlightenment (Berkeley and
Los Angeles, 1968), p. 333
141
B. Harris Bronson: Facets of the Enlightenment (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1968), p. 333
142
Dunton stated that Giles counted the ‘pious and learned Dr Collings [as] his great
friend’. (Dunton, The Life and Errors, p. 237). Collinges’ Presbyterian views are well
documented: ‘After that way which they call Presbytery, I desire to worship the Lord Jesus
Christ…’. (J Collinges, Responsaria ad Erratica Pastoris (London, 1652), p. 42. EEBO Wing
(2nd ed., 1994) / C5331). Interestingly, Collinges had been a signatory to the Address to General
Monck in 1660. (H. Le Strange and W. Rye, An Address from the Gentry of Norfolk and Norwich
to General Monck 1660 (Norwich, 1913), p. 30; see also Appendix D for sample of Collinges
signature).
143
John Collinges wrote The Weaver’s Pocketbook, dedicated to the worsted weavers of Norwich.
(Edinburgh, 1724), as cited by Gattuso, ‘Did they own Books?...’, Norfolk Archaeology, xlv, part
I (2006), p. 75, ff. 8.
144
Gattuso, ‘Did they own Books?...’, Norfolk Archaeology, xlv, part I (2006), p. 75.
145
In 1710 Giles’ property was assessed for the purposes of Window Tax; ‘having twelve
windows it paid a tax of 6d. and was therefore one of the largest properties in the parish’.
Stoker, ‘The Norwich Book of Trades before 1800’ (1981), p. 103.
146
See figs 14 & 15.
147
See Appendix K for a list of a few of the publication titles of the Norwich stationers. (An overambitious attempt was made to collate as many known and found imprints as possible, however
time-restraints prohibited the process, therefore only a modest selection are included to give an
indication of possible political/religious partiality of the publisher).
148
The taste for the sensational can be seen in one of Francis Burges’ early commissions for
Goddard in 1704: An account of the tryal and condemnation of Mr. William Boone, …for the
murder of Mrs. Wenman; ... [including] the account of his behaviour at the place of execution,
with his confession, &c. This tract was also distributed by the famous London Whig publisher
Richard Baldwin’s widow Abigail/Ann*. Such accounts had a religious theme relating to
repentance and yet were often thinly disguised sensationalist works detailing the crimes
78
committed. (*The ODNB author for Richard Baldwin and his wife, claims historians are at fault
for recording the widowed publisher’s name as ‘Ann’ when she reputedly only published imprints
under the name Mrs. A. Baldwin. The ‘A’ in question referring not to Ann but to her ‘correct’
name, Abigail. The tract in question quite clearly has the printed imprint ‘Mrs. Ann Baldwin’ in
the front. The ODNB needs revising on this matter). A copy of Goddard’s 1705 Auction
Catalogue is held at the Bodleian Library. See: ESTC: star ID: T208704. (Space inhibited an
examination of the later Norwich book auctions, although any future analysis and further
comparisons of them would prove valuable).
149
See Appendix K for Rose’s publishing association with the controversial London stationer and
printer Benjamin Harris (c.1647–1720) in 1676. Harris’s publications reveal him to be a Baptist;
anti-papist, and significantly - a Monmouth supporter. Harris would be imprisoned as a result of a
pro-Monmouth tract (1680). Eventually, after the ascendancy of James II (1685) he would go into
exile to Boston Massachusetts; not returning to England until after the final lapse of the Licensing
Act in 1695. (See: Mark Knights’ ODNB entry).
150
The Norwich Post Man began publication in 1706, and would change it’s title to Norwich
Mercury sometime between 1717-1726. (See chapter 3).
151
This anonymous publication attempted to substantiate the credibility of an earlier letter from a
Dutch emissary Gaspel Fagel addressed to ‘Mr. James Stewart’, and was part of William of
Orange’s propaganda output. The pamphlets outlined and affirmed the latter’s earnest wish to see
the repeal of the Test Act – but not to include Roman Catholics in any civic exemption. The
anonymous letter, and its predecessor pamphlet Monsr. Fagel’s Letter, arrived at a crucial moment
in James II’s last months as monarch when he was eagerly attempting to win over non-conformists
with his own repeal and Declaration of Indulgence which would include Catholics. See Appendix
M for frontispiece of: Reflexions on Monsieur Fagel's letter, [London : s.n., 1688]. EBBO Wing
(2nd ed.) / R701; Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘Propaganda in the Revolution of 1688-89’, The American
Historical Review, 82 (1977), p. 848.
152
Giles and Rose were questioned by the Norwich Justices on the 17th March 1688. State Papers
Domestic: Feb.28 and March 15 1687/8. [S.P. 44/56, p. 407; S.P. 44/56, pp 410-411]. See:
Calendar of State Papers Domestic p, 153; p,166. [Stoker has misdated Giles’s and Rose’s
appearance in front of magistrates, and the entry in CSPD as: 1688/89. By March of 1689 William
and Mary were on the throne; they were crowned in April of that year].
153
See Appendix E.2; D. Stoker, ‘The Norwich book trades before 1800’ (1981), p. 117.
154
Rose was employed to supply books to the Mayor's Court from the 1680s until his death in
1707. Together with his first wife Suzanne, he appeared before the Norwich Quarter Sessions
on 14 Jan. 1683/4 and they were ordered to keep the peace. In the Quarter Sessions 6 Apr. 1695,
he lost an appeal against a ruling in the Mayor's Court that he was guilty of fathering an
illegitimate child, and two months later was called upon to apologize for remarks made as a result
of the Court’s decision. (15th June 1695). Stoker, ‘The Norwich book trades before 1800’ (1981),
pp. 117-118.
155
See Appendix G.1;G.2;G.3.
156
For this section only, to stay in keeping with the catalogues themselves, I have adopted the
seventeenth century convention of italicising the author not the tract. A Catalogue of Valuable
Books…by Edward Millington. 1689. [EEBO: Wing / O274]. Lot no. 2, p. 1.
157
The above noted edition of Shakespeare was the only work found by him in all three auctions.
A Catalogue of Valuable Books…by Edward Millington. 1689. [EEBO: Wing / O274]. Lot nos.
37, p, 18; 87, p 19; 72, p 19. Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679: Leviathan. EEBO Wing / H2248; Hugo
Grotius, 1583-1645, of the Right of War and Peace… EEBO Wing / G2126.
158
Sebastian Brandt (d. 1520), was the author of Das Narrenschiff (1494), known in English as
Ship of Fools, with Mirror of good Manners. It tells, ‘the story of a sailing vessel taking a shipload
of fools to a fool's paradise. Each of more than 100 characters embodies a particular facet of
foolishness.’ The book gave rise to a movement of ‘fool's literature’, including Erasmus’ The
Praise of Folly. See: ‘Who’s Who in Medieval History and the Renaissance’; Littell's Living Age
(volume 146, issue 1891), ‘The Ship of Fools’, originally published in Cornhill Magazine. (The
web pages for both sites can be found in the bibliography).
159
Culpeper translated the above tract from Joannes Jonstonus’s original in Latin: EEBO: Wing /
J1018. Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654), was an English botanist, physician and astrologer. He
‘condemned the unnatural methods of his contemporaries’. Culpeper wrote in the introduction to
The Complete Herbal (1885), ‘I consulted with my two brothers, DR. REASON and DR.
79
EXPERIENCE, and took a voyage to visit my mother NATURE, by whose advice, together with
the help of Dr. DILIGENCE, I at last obtained my desire; and, being warned by MR. HONESTY,
a stranger in our days, to publish it to the world, I have done it.’ See Wikiepedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Culpeper.
160
Edward Ward (1667-1731), Step to Stir-Bitch-Fair with remarks upon the University of
Cambridge (London, 1700), p. 15. B. L. EEBO: Wing / 442:10.
161
Lot 26, on page 11, in ‘Divinity in Octavo’, states: ‘K. Charles I. Eikon Basilike. 1648’. The
same title can also be found on page 25 under ‘Miscellanies in 8o, 12o, 18o &c.’ lot 116.
Attributed to the executed King, it is written in the form of a diary: ‘the book combines irenic
prayers urging the forgiveness of Charles's executioners with a justification of royalism and the
King's political and military program that led to the Civil War.’ It went into 35 impressions in its
first year of print. (See Eikon Basilike Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eikon_Basilike;
Melvyn Bragg, Radio 4: ‘In Our Time’, broadcast 26 January 2006). William Dugard, headmaster
of Merchant Taylor’s school, printed the first edition of Eikon Basilike in 1648/9. He immediately
followed it up by a translation of Salmasius' Defensio Regia, for which the Council of State
immediately ordered his arrest and seized his presses. Sir James Harrington successfully
interceded on his behalf and persuaded him to give up the Royalist cause; Dugard would go on to
publish Milton’s answer to Salmasius. (H. R. Plomer, A Short History of English Printing 14761900 (London, 1927), pp. 159-160).
162
Frontispiece showing an engraving of the author Nicholas Culpeper, found inside the ‘English
Physician’ (1652). Lot Number 114, p. 25 of the 1689 Catalogue. EEBO Wing / 1254:11.
163
The Antiquarian Booksellers of America have a copy of this edition currently for sale at
£7,000. See http://search.abaa.org/dbp2/book772_B5492.html
164
Quoted in E. Vailati, Leibnitz and Clarke: a Study of their Correspondence (New York,1997),
p. 5.
165
Samuel Clarke’s father was Edward Clarke, cloth manufacturer and MP. Clarke attended the
Norwich Free Grammar School until 1690. See John Gascoigne, author of the ODNB entry for
Samuel Clarke (1675–1729).
166
William Whiston (see footnote below), recounts a story in which Samuel and his father were
using a 15 or 16 foot telescope to watch Saturn’s rings. This event took place in Norwich in the
1690s. Together the Clarkes identified a ‘fixed star’ between the rings and the planets, producing
‘sure evidence’ that the rings were quite distinct from the planet. Although this was thought to be
the case, it had not been demonstrated before. See W. Whiston. Historical Memoirs of the life of
Dr. Samuel Clarke (London , 1730), p. 5.
167
John Moore (1646–1714), was appointed to the See of Norwich after it became vacant by the
deprivation of the nonjuror, William Lloyd. His extensive and valuable personal library is well
documented. Another important Cambridge Newtonian, Richard Laughton (c 1668-1723),
followed by both Whiston and Clarke, would all take on the role of Moore’s chaplain in Norwich.
See, P. Meadows, for Moore’s entry in the ODNB.
168
William Whiston (1667–1752), is described in the ODNB as a ‘natural philosopher and
theologian’. In 1694 he became the chaplain to fellow Clare graduate, John Moore (1646–1714),
bishop of Norwich. He was hugely influential, along with Clarke, as a leading intellectual who
popularised Newton’s theories. Famed for his publication A New Theory of the Earth (1696)
dedicated to Newton, he also played a significant role in early eighteenth-century attempts to
determine longitude at sea. (See S. D. Snobelen’s ODNB entry for Whiston). Richard Laughton
(bap. 1670, d. 1723), clergyman and natural philosopher (see J. Gasciogne’s ODNB entry for
Laughton).
169
The Norwich Library was founded in 1608 and was attached to St Andrew’s Hall. Yet to be a
subscription library (1784), membership was largely the preserve of clergy and a few surgeons at
this time: Laughton was a member from 1693-4; Whiston from 1695-97; Clarke from 1697-1729.
C. Wilkins-Jones (UEA, PhD., 2000), p xxiv; pp. 258-259.
170
Ibid, p. 259.
171
Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), physician and author. See ODNB entry by R. H. Robbins.
172
Browne goes on to say, ‘The newes letters mention’d it [the comet], butt to little or no purpose
or any information.’ Sir Thomas Browne, Works…vol. 4, p. 119. [ BL. Wing / B5150].
173
Millington’s 1693 catalogue: lot no. 167 in divinity in quarto, p. 7.
174
(Millington’s 1693 catalogue: lot 245 in divinity in 8o etc., p 21). Edward Chamberlayne/
Chamberlain (1616-1703), was the author of Angliae notitia, or, The present state of England. In
80
his ranks of social status, Chamberlayne put yeoman after gentry; copyholders followed them, and
then tradesmen. The fact that tradesmen were the most expansive group in the late seventeenth
century exposes Chamberlayne’s own prejudices. In his 1702 edition, his ranks would number 28;
27 of whom were dedicated to nobility and gentry. [EEBO Wing: (2nd ed., 1994) / C1819.]. See
also, D. Cressy. ‘Describing The Social Order of Elizabethan and Stuart England.’ Literature and
History. 3 (1976). pp. 32-36.
175
Millington’s 1693 catalogue, lot 37, divinity in folio, p. 2.
176
Millington’s 1693 catalogue: lot 80 in misc. in folio, p. 29; lot 16 in misc. in folio, p. 27; lot 73
in misc. in quarto, p. 31.
177
Jakob Rüff, Expert Midwife (1637), [EEBO Bib name / number: STC (2nd ed.) / 21442].
178
Millington;s 1693 catalogue: lot 17, in misc. quarto, p. 30; Millington’s 1693 catalogue: lot 99
in misc. in octavo, p. 35.
179
For example, Paris midwife Louise Bourgeois. Having worked amongst the poor most of her
life, she went on to serve the French royal family and published a book on her art in 1608. She
believed herself the first woman to do so. She anticipated that her knowledge would expose, ‘the
mistakes of Surgeons and Physicians – even Master Galen himself.’ Natalie Zemon Davis, Society
and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1979), p. 217. Culpepers’ Directory for midwives,
1671, was perhaps the more recent publication on the subject in England. EEBO Wing / C7498.
180
John Bulwer, Deaf and Dumb Man’s Friend (London,1648). Wing (2nd ed., 1994), B5469. G.
Richards, author of ODNB entry for John Bulwer (bap. 1606, d. 1656), medical practitioner and writer
on deafness and on gesture. Richards points out that others – John Wallis (1662) and George Dalgarno
(1680) – had subsequently published on the subject, but that they had borrowed much from, and added
little to, Bulwer’s original work.
181
William Austin (1587-1634), Excellency of Woman (London, 1638), [STC / 820:01], in
octavo/misc., lot 104, p. 35 of Edward Millington’s 1700 catalogue. [EEBO Wing / 1647:14 ].
(See Appendix I.1;I.2;I.3).
182
William Austin’s name can be found in a ‘Feminist Forefathers’ web page (see bibliography for
details).
183
See Appendix I.1; I.2; I.3 for samples of: Millington’s auction catalogue for 1700. [EEBO
Wing / 1647:14 ].
184
Millington’s auction catalogue (1700): lot 182, misc. in folio, p. 21.
185
Openly selling imported books, published abroad, meant escaping censorship and had been
prohibited before 1695. The London Company of Stationers’ had policed its enforcement as this
clause protected their publishing monopoly on titles. The above mentioned text published in
Amsterdam is an edition of [David] ‘Pareus’s Comment on the Revelations’ (1644), and is lot 9 in
divinity in folio, p. 1. The work was much admired by Milton. On page 489, Pareus comments:
‘The Majesticall description of the Captaine figureth the glorious comming of Christ from heaven,
to judge Antichrist and the ungodly.’ See, John R. Knott, Jr. ‘Milton's Heaven’, PMLA, 85 (May,
1970), p. 490.
186
Milligton’s auction catalogue (1700): lot 102 in divinity in folio, p. 3.
187
See J. B. Bamborough’s entry for Robert Burton (1577-1640), writer, in the ODNB.
188
In the ‘Conditions of SALE’ in the catalogue (see Appendix I.2) it states in clause iii that ‘no
Person advance less than 6 d. each Bidding after any Book comes to 10s.’ And in clause iv: ‘That
every Person bid at first six-pence for Quarto’s, Four-pence for 8o.12o.24o. The advance left at
the Pleasure of the Company’. The indication, from these assumed prices, is that the bidding, once
having reached such dizzying heights, in its latter stages at least, must have nudged up 1d. at a
time to eek out the last morsel from the punters. Based on these ‘rules’, ignoring the possibility of
any ‘jump bidding, it would involve a staggering 156 bids to get to 39s. 3d. for the 1639 edition of
Burton. It is also clear from the annotated copy of the catalogue that a few books did not reach the
minimum reserve ‘start’ price of 4d., and sold for less.
189
Gattuso, ‘Did they own Books? …’, Norfolk Archaeology, xlv, part I (2006), p. 81.
190
See ‘yellow map’ in Appendix Z for all those in the trade who went on to diversify into the
auction business; with many stationers collaborating.
191
David Jenkins, Lex terrae [originally published in 1647] (classics of English legal history in
the modern era), Garland (1979); found on web page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jenkins_(Royalist). See also, C. Brooks’s entry for Jenkins in
the ODNB.
81
192
John Dryden (1631 -1700), see Wikiepedia; Paul Hammond’s ODNB entry; above:
Millington’s catalogue 1700, lot 124, divinity in quarto, p, 5; lot 188, in misc. in folio, p. 21.
193
Millington’s catalogue 1700, lots 19 and 74, misc. in quarto, p. 22.
194
Millington’s catalogue 1700, lot 81 misc. in octavo twelves etc., p. 24.
195
Alexander Oldys, The female gallant, or, The wife's the cuckhold (1692), Bodleian Library.
EEBO Wing / O265, preface.
196
It is listed as, ‘misc. in octavo twelves &c.,’ in the 1700 catalogue; EEBO does not state its
physical size, but at 100% magnification the image measures 13.5 cms: sextodecimo. There is not
room for a comprehensive analysis of all the titles on offer. The titles discussed above were
selected at random, no doubt another eye would have been drawn to different titles, and a further
more detailed analysis of all these and subsequent catalogues would prove revealing, not least for
what titles these Norwich catalogues are missing and which may have been popular reading
material in other towns.
197
To put it in proportion, the realised value of George Cock’s book collection was just over £100
higher than the valuation placed on the bookshop stock of William Oliver in his probate
inventory sixteen years later in 1689: £235. (See: Wlm. Oliver Probate Inventory, N.R.O.,
Norwich Consistory Court Inventories, INV 658/3, 23rd June 1689).
198
George Cock’s total estate was worth £2,366. The fact that 14% of his estate was tied up in
books, gives an indication of their importance in the fabric of the life of a seventeenth century
cleric. (NCC/NV/59B/74) [In 1630 a Merchant Grocer of that name and parish had been a
Mayor of Norwich. It has not been firmly established if there was a familial connection].
199
Gattuso, ‘Did they own Books?...’, Norfolk Archaeology, xlv, part I (2006), p. 78.
200
Ibid, pp. 76-77.
201
There is not space to rehearse all the issues raised by all the historians whose writing on the
subject implies an intellectual and cultural disenfranchisement of the ‘illiterate’ lower classes at
this time. For brevity, I would cite the arguments advanced by Eisenstein (following McLuhan) on
viewing the print-split-culture as that between ‘heart and head’: science and magic. And, that
learning through reading was the preserve of the highly literate and therefore marginalised those
with experiential knowledge. Elizabeth Eisenstein, ‘Some Conjectures about the Impact of
Printing on Western Society and Thought: A Preliminary Report’, The Journal of Modern History,
40 (1968), pp 1-56; Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographical
Man (Toronto, 1962), p. 170.
202
Cressy also concludes that the ‘hierarchy’ of literacy skills dovetailed with social status and
occupation: ‘Among 17th-century [court] deponents 79% of the husbandmen, 85% of the
labourers, 88% of the bricklayers and 97% of the thatchers could not sign their names.’ D. Cressy,
‘Levels of Illiteracy in England 1530-1730’, The Historical Journal, 20 (March 1977), pp. 1-23;
esp. pp. 8-10.
203
The method of recovering literacy levels through signing has variously been applied to
protestation returns (1641/42), hearth tax returns (1662), court deposition statements, and marriage
registers (after 1754), to gather an impression of literacy aligned to occupation across the board.
For some of the different views over methods and ‘literacy level’ findings, see: Lawrence Stone,
‘Comment and Controversy’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, viii: 4 (Spring, 1978), pp. 799 –
801; J. Barry, in Popular Culture in England, c. 1500-1850 (New York, 1995), edited by T.
Harris, p. 75; R. T. Vann, ‘Literacy in Seventeenth–Century England: Some Hearth Tax
Evidence’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 5, no.2 (Autumn, 1974), pp. 287-293.
204
M. Spufford, Contrasting Communities: English Villagers in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries, Cambridge (1994), chapter 7.
205
R. S. Schofield, ‘The Measurement of Literacy in Pre-Industrial England’ in, Jack Goody (ed.),
Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), p. 323-24.
206
D. D. Hall, Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book. (University of Massachusetts
Press, 1996), p. 84. See also P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot,
1994), pp. 58-63, for a cogent argument that cultural transmission, including that which came from
books, was a two-way process and not purely descending down from the elite to the semi-literate
and illiterate masses.
207
After comparing occupations in the freemen records in the city in the period 1675-1699 against
those of 1700-1724, Branford concluded that ‘luxury’ traders had increased as a proportion of the
‘freeman whole’ (from 4.3 to 4.4%) . However, he placed the occupation of printer in the
miscellaneous category of trades. Indeed, only one printer attained their freedom as such in the
82
city – H. Crossgrove in 1710. Yet many more had either gained their freedom in other trades
(Hasbart), or elsewhere (Burges et al.). As booksellers as well as publishers and printers of items
that can not be regarded as essential, their inclusion in the numbers of ‘luxury’ traders would have
substantially increased the figures from those as reflected in Branford’s table. C. W. Branford,
‘Powers of Annotation….’ (PhD, 1993), p. 26: table 1.2; and Appendix 1.3 on p. 434.
208
A. McInnes, ‘‘Reply’ to Peter Borsay, The Emergence of a Leisure Town: Or an Urban
Renaissance?’ Past and Present, no. 126 (Feb., 1990), pp. 198-199.
209
In June 1695 Shrewsbury had 7, 383 inhabitants. A. Mclnnes, ‘Emergence of a Leisure Town’,
Past and Present, 120 (1988), p. 54, ff. 4.
210
The only ‘petty chapman’ to gain his freedom as such in the period was Robert
Wollham/Woollam active in St Stephen’s parish (1700-1716), who, as a freeman has been
included in this study.
211
See Stoker, ‘To all Booksellers, Country Chapmen, Hawkers and Others…,’ in, Fairs, Markets
and the Itinerant Book Trade (Oak Knoll Press & the British Library, 2007), edited by R. Myers,
M. Harris and G. Mandelbrote, p. 107.
212
Stoker lists include people trading in Stowmarket, Lavenham, Bury St Edmunds, and Sudbury,
not forgetting Ipswich, Kings Lynn, Swafham, Fakenham, East Dereham and Downham Market.
Forty-four towns in East Anglia would have part-time or itinerant book traders by the close of the
eighteenth century. Ibid, p. 112-114.
213
For the details of these comparisons with Bristol, Exeter, York and Preston see: Appendix L.
The tables contained in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain of freemen in the provincial
book trade were not used for these comparisons as the dates for those active in the period did not
easily coincide with this study.
214
See Appendix K.
215
See Appendix N for an extract from Francis Kirkman’s novel English Rogue, part II, giving an
insight into London book trade and the risks some took to make a profit.
216
Dunton, The Life and Errors, p. 237.
217
See Appendix J and K for some of the titles published by Giles, which in total must have well
exceeded fifty publications.
218
John Jeffery (1647-1720), Rector of St Peter Mancroft, A Discourse of the Repugnancy of Sin to the
Principles of Universal Reason (London, 1682), as cited by C. Wilkins-Jones, ‘Norwich City Library
and its Intellectual Milieu; 1608-1825’ (PhD., 2000), pp. 235-236.
219
Collinges put his case for broader toleration in a sermon to celebrate the ‘Glorious
Revolution’, published by Giles. See John Collinges (1623-1690), The happiness of brethrens
dwelling together in unity discoursed upon Psalm 133, vers. 1, on occasion of the late
thanksgiving, Feb. 14, 1688/9 London : Printed by T. S. for Edward Giles, 1689. EEBO Wing /
C5318. Contrast: J. Winter, A sermon preached at East Dearham in Norf. May 29, 1661 being the
day of the coronation of our Most Gracious Soveraign Lord King Charles the Second &c....,
London : Printed for William Oliver ... in Norwich, 1662. Harvard University Library. EEBO
Wing / W3083A. For the most vituperative sermons targeted at Quakers see: John Jeffery, The
Dangerous Imposture of Quakerism (London,1698). Wing / D198 Variant.
220
‘Colen Campbell’s Vitruvius Britannicus [1715] is remembered today as the manifesto of
English Palladianism….[his role] both as a publisher and as an architect was fundamental to
the Palladian revival’. T. P Connor, ‘The Making of Vitruvius Britannicus’, Architectural
History, vol. 20 (1977), p. 14.
221
Bearman and Deane identify that there was a fragile association of Royalists and conservative
Presbyterians controlling the city between 1660-1663. However, this alliance broke down in 1664
and for the next twenty-five years friction and conflicts, ‘structured Norwich politics’. P. S.
Bearman; G. Deane, ‘The Structure of Opportunity: Middle-Class Mobility in England, 15481689’. The American Journal of Sociology, 98, no. 1 (Jul., 1992), p. 58. See also: J. T. Evans, 17th
Century Norwich (Oxford, 1979), esp. chapter vii. For a later perspective, see: M. Knights,
‘Politics, 1660-1835’, in Norwich Since 1550 (London, 2004), edited by C. Rawcliffe and R.
Wilson, chapter 7. Knights notes the city’s ‘appetite for political conflict’ and the partisan
divisions that often resulted in riots, especially after municipal and general elections, in the
eighteenth century.
222
James Boswell, Life of Johnson, (London, 1791), vol. 3 (entry for April 5, 1776), p. 302.
See: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/9180.
83
223
Norwich (1701) followed hard on the heels of Bristol (1695), Shrewsbury (1696), and Exeter
(1698), with its own printing press. See, Berry and Poole, Annals of Printing (London, 1966), pp.
140-141.
224
Humphrey Prideaux, archdeacon of Suffolk had encouraged Burges to set up in the city
(ODNB). The publishing output of Giles, the Olivers, Goddard and Rose must have encouraged
him further; while the increasing bureaucratic dependence upon printed forms, for bye laws,
marriage licence bonds, apprenticeship indentures and the like, offered to provide a decent staple
for a local printer. See, Stoker, ‘The Establishment of Printing in Norwich 1660-1760….’
Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vii (1977), p. 95. More research is
required to look into the increased bureaucratic dependence on printed forms and how that may
have altered attitudes to record collection - and attitudes to authority. Space limited an
examination of this particular cultural shift as a separate dynamic of the medium.
225
In 1695, the first paper mill in Norfolk was in Castle Rising. However, it was the Taverham
Mill near Norwich, also operational towards the end of the seventeenth century, which would
provide the paper for Burges workshop. Stoker, 'The early history of papermaking in Norfolk',
Norfolk Archaeology , 36 (1976), p, 243: citing British Library, Harleian MS. 5910. 11. fol. 151.
226
Printed on Saturday 27th September 1701.
227
Using the extant remaining parts from the Harleian MSS collection in the British Library, along
with references and transcripts in other works and contemporary plagiarised extracts of the
original, Stoker has reconstructed Francis Burges’s full text: Stoker, 'Francis Burges's
‘Observations on printing’ 1701: a reconstruction of the text', The Library: Transactions of the
Bibliographical Society , 7th series, vi (2005), pp. 161-177, see p. 163.
228
D. Stoker, 'Francis Burges's ‘Observations on printing’ 1701: a reconstruction of the text', The
Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society , 7th series, vi (2005), p. 169.
229
Ibid. pp. 170-171; 173.
230
Ibid. p. 171.
231
Those quoted by Burges include: the naturalised English historian, Polydore Vergil (c.1470 –
1555); the Italian Renaissance physician and mathematician, Girolamo Cardano (1501 - 1576),
and the Dutch writer and scholar, Pieter Schrijver (1576-1660).
232
Anxiety over a French invasion, the succession issue, the possibility of the return of James II to
the throne and parliamentary rivalries between Tories and Whigs, had all helped sustain an
appetite for international and national news.
233
The earliest surviving edition of the Norwich Post is 26th April 1707. In the absence of
surviving copies of so many early newspapers, establishing the claim that the Norwich Post was
the first provincial newspaper is not completely settled. However, Cranfield and Plomer believe it
to be so, and the former estimates its first publication to be September 1701. However, the fact
that Burges himself dates his first publication Observation on Printing to 27th September, leaves
little time to print a newspaper in that month: Stoker’s date of November 1701 seems the more
likely. G. A. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper 1700-1760 (Oxford, 1962),
p. 13; H. R. Plomer, A Short History of English Printing 1476-1900 (London, 1927), p. 208;
Stoker, ‘Observations on printing’ …’ pp. 161-162
234
Section of Campbell’s rendition of Hochstetter’s map of 1789: with estimated position of
Francis Burges’s ‘Red Well’ print shop. James Campbell, Historic Towns – Norwich (London,
1975). The same numbers associated with individual stationers in other keys and maps have been
maintained throughout.
235
Thomas Tanner (1674–1735), bishop of St Asaph and antiquary, was at this time chancellor of
Norwich diocese. Dr Tanner wrote to Browne Willis, 1st August 1706, as cited by, Cranfield, The
Development of the Provincial Newspaper…(Oxford, 1962), p. 22. Burges success had not rested
solely with the Norwich Post, he was also kept fairly busy with commissions for works, such as
sermons and small books, and had also speculatively financed some publications himself. There
were more than fifty items surviving from his press dated between 1701 and 1706 (although many
of these were lost in the Norwich Central Library fire in 1994) (ODNB). Thirty of the surviving
titles are listed by Stoker in, ‘A history of the Norwich Book trades 1560-1760’ (F.L.A. Thesis,
1975), vol. 2, pp. 494-97. See also, Stoker, ‘The Establishment of Printing in Norwich 16601760….’ Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vii (1977), p. 98.
236
Stoker, ‘The Establishment of Printing in Norwich 1660-1760….’ Transactions of the
Cambridge Bibliographical Society, vii (1977), p. 99.
84
237
Samuel Hasbart is sometimes recorded as Hasbert; as noted already, his uncle was the Rev.
John Hasbert.
238
The building that constituted The Bull Inn is still in existence today, although split into two
retail shop units. The gap where the coach and horses would have had access to the back of the
building has now been filled in by a 1930s building. For a 1938 photograph of the building, see
Appendix O.1
239
Norwich Gazette, 30th Nov. -7th Dec. 1706. Portugal had recently become subservient to
English foreign policy having signed the Methuen Treaty (1703). Subsequently, it was reluctantly
drawn into the War of the Spanish Succession. The allies were campaigning in Spain when Pedro
died. He was succeeded by his son, John V. The death as Pedro II is treated as a ‘family’ tragedy.
240
J. B. Stern, ‘From Family Album to Literary History, New Literary History, 7, Critical
Challenges: The Bellagio Symposium (1975), p. 115.
241
N.G., 14th December, 1706. [* indicates unreadable word on the microfiche].
242
A taste for the sensational amongst the stationers has already been noted (see chapter two).
However, the disagreements between Chase and Crossgrove would also encompass a rivalry over
gallows confessions, with accusations of fabricating the facts to corner the market. See Appendix
T.
243
Sharpe traces the convention of ‘Gallows literature’ back to Henry VII, and views it as a ritual
discourse rooted in ideological control to bolster state order. He notes its stereotypical nature and
the compliance of the condemned to conform, repent and confess. (J. A. Sharpe, ‘ ‘Last Dying
Speeches’: Religion, Ideology, and Public Execution in Seventeenth-Century England,’ Past and
Present, no. 107 (1985), pp.144-67.) However, while newspapers capitalized on this familiar
sensational discourse, reporting such events, by necessity, also demanded that the nonstereotypical non-repentant (such as Gadner) would also receive coverage, and a sub-textual rival
discourse had formed to counter the ‘propaganda’.
244
As entered in the 1714/15 Election Poll Book printed by Crossgrove, who also voted for both
Tory candidates. Hasbart and Crossgrove were two of only three stationers to vote in that election,
the other being John Wilson the bookbinder/cordwainer who voted for the Whig candidates.
Despite his unorthodox Jacobite political views, Crossgrove was still winning commissions from
the Corporation. See Appendix P for a photocopy of the frontispiece of the 1714/15 Poll Book.
245
After 1695 the London ‘independent’ tri-weeklies, the Post Boy, the Post Man and the Flying
Post, began to increasingly dominate the provincial market, competing with the state organ, the
London Gazette. The former were published on the three days, namely: Tuesday, Thursday,
Saturday, on which the post left London for the provinces. The journey from London took a day
and a half by coach (two days by sea): the Thursday morning London editions arriving perhaps by
Friday night in Norwich; leaving little time to set the presses for a Saturday deadline. See: R. B.
Walker, ‘The Newspaper Press in the Reign of William III’, The Historical Journal, 17 (1974), pp.
698-707; A. Griscom, ‘Trends of Anarchy and Hierarchy: Comparing the Cultural Repercussions
of Print and Digital Media’ (web page in bibliography). See also: Norfolk County Council and the
History of Transport and Travel: web pages in the bibliography.
246
A classic example of where ‘big’ news found itself relegated to small type and a brief mention
on the back pages, was the Duke of Marlborough’s victory at Blenheim on the 13th August 1704.
Mindful that the English calendar was still 12 days in arrears of the continent, the Bristol Post-Boy
of the 12th August (a day ‘before’ the victory) allocated the lately arrived story ten lines, the lion’s
share of which included the scribbled verbatim account of his success, penned by the Duke, ‘on
Horseback with a Lead Pencil’. The victory attracted no editorial comment; yet the bulk of that
edition was full of dull copy on domestic trivialities. The Norwich Post for that date has not
survived. See, Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper 1700-1760 (Oxford,
1962), p. 35.
247
Cranfield states that Dawks (1661-1731) charged thirty shillings a quarter for his services.
Although Cranfield estimates newsletters ceased to find favour in the provinces after 1720, in
Norwich there is evidence of their use as late as 1742, when both the Norwich Gazette and the
Norwich Mercury used the same contributor, Wye, for a story on a new machine ‘For conveying
fresh Air into the different Parts of Men of War’ as recently shown to the Royal Society. Only the
Gazette credits Wye, but both stories are identically worded. See, N.G., vol. 36, no. 1847.
Saturday Feb. 20th, to Saturday Feb. 27th, 1742, p. 1, col. 2-3; N.M., Friday Feb. 27th to Saturday
Mar. 6th 1741/2, p. 3, col. 2. Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper … (Oxford,
1962), pp. 3, 31.
85
248
N.G.. 20th–27th December. 1707. * unreadable two letter word. A full transcript of Hasbart’s
letter can be found in Appendix O.2.
249
See Appendix O.2.
250
N.G., 3rd–10th Jan. 1707. For full transcript see Appendix O.3.
251
Executor, Freeman Collins, the prosperous London master of Francis Burges and possibly
Elizabeth’s father, kept the Norwich business running by proxy until his death in 1713. He was
succeeded by his widow Susanna, until 1717. Both dispatched trusted apprentices, and sons, to
manage the Norwich print shop. See Appendix Z.
252
Sherard Sheffield did not remain in Norwich long and Chase probably took over the running of
the press in the spring of 1707/8. See Appendix Z.
253
Newspapers attracted a stamp duty of one half-penny on every copy printed on paper of halfsheet size, and one penny on every copy on paper ‘larger than half a sheet and not exceeding one
whole sheet.’ By the end of 1712, seventeen county newspapers folded. However, printers worked
out a loophole and reduced the format size of the individual printed sheet, but increased the
numbers of the sheets of paper, thereby turning their news organs into pamphlets. The additional
paper required, ink and type setting, was far outweighed by the tax savings made. (Cranfield
estimates that a run of 300 newspapers in large paper would have had to pay 25 shillings in duty, a
half-size newspaper on a single leaf would have to pay 12s. 6d . Yet a pamphlet of 300 copies of a
sheet-and-a-half of paper would be taxed only 3 shillings. Cranfield, The Development of the
Provincial Newspaper … (Oxford, 1962), pp. 17-19.
254
Transactions of the Universe or Weekly Mercury would change its name to the Weekly Mercury
or the Protestant Packet sometime before 1722. After approximately 1717, William Chase was
solely responsible for the newspaper(s). He finally settled for the simpler and enduring title
Norwich Mercury by 1726. The Norwich Mercury stayed in production until 1949, to be revived in
1962. The Mercury title remained in production in the form of a free paper until c.1998. See:
http://newsplan.liem.org.uk/details.asp?pid=3F297F10-E526-44E1-B9AD-787356ADB130;
[Weekly Mercury or the Protestant Packet]; Stoker, ‘The Norwich Book Trades Before 1800’, p.
103.
255
Crossgrove was offered the lease for the ‘inflated rent’ of £30 a year for a period of twenty
years. Stoker, ‘The Establishment of Printing in Norwich 1660-1760….’ , p.104.
256
In defiance, Hasbart employed journeyman Robert Raikes in 1718 (see ODNB), and started up
a fourth Norwich newspaper, which failed after a few weeks.
257
Aged 52, Chase died on the 31st May 1744, and was followed by the 65 year-old Crossgrove on
the 12th Nov that year. The future fortunes of the newspaper empires are loosely charted in
Appendix Z.
258
During their careers, both Chase and Crossgrove would be sued for printing seditious material,
and they would both spend short periods in prison. Crossgrove’s Jacobite sympathies would place
him on a charge of High Treason in 1714/15. (See, J. B. Williams, ‘Henry Cross-grove, Jacobite,
Journalist and Printer’, Library, 3rd series, 5 (1914), pp. 206-219. Chase’s glee in this matter can
be witnessed in the Mercury entry in Appendix T. See also: Stoker, ‘The Establishment of
Printing in Norwich 1660-1760’, p. 106.
259
This supposition involves some licence with the known ‘facts’, and is based on Stoker’s
hypothesis, that Lyon's disappearance might be connected with his appearance before the
Norwich Quarter Sessions 11 Nov. 1717. Lyon had to find recognizances of £60 and
return to answer a charge of printing a libel paper. His reappearance is not noted in the
Quarter Sessions Minutes and the Assize records for this period have been lost. Stoker, ‘The
Norwich Book Trades Before 1800’, p. 109.
260
Harris shows that the great thrice-weekly papers such as the London Evening Post and the
General Evening Post owed their success to an extensive provincial readership, which they
answered by publishing on the three post days, before the post went out. M. R. A. Harris, ‘The
London Newspaper Press’ (University of London, PhD, 1974), pp. 31-63.
261
J. R. Sutherland, ‘The Circulation of Newspapers and Literary Periodicals, 1700-30’, Library,
4th Series (1934), 15, p. 113, citing Daniel Defoe’s preface to the seventh volume of the Review;
Dunton, Life and Error, p. 428.
262
In Read’s Weekly Journal for the 29th Nov. 1718, Read carried an attack on a papist publisher
who had failed to make ends meet despite apparently printing 1200 copies of his (papist) Weekly
Medley and selling it at three halfpence. Sutherland is inclined to believe this ‘minimum’ figure
for publishing survival to be a misprint for either 120 or 200 copies. (J. R. Sutherland, ‘The
86
Circulation of Newspapers and Literary Periodicals, 1700-30’, Library, 4th Series (1934), vol. 15,
p. 123). Hard facts about the numbers of a print run of any of the news publications in the first
quarter of the eighteenth century are hard to find, and interpretations of the figures, if available
anecdotally, are invariably contentious.
263
See Cranfield, The Development of the Provincial Newspaper (Oxford, 1962), p. 32.
264
Ibid, pp. 32-33; 169. Cranfield’s ‘one to two hundred’ for provincial circulation figures are
rarely disputed: see Botein et al., p. 471.
265
J. R. Sutherland, ‘The Circulation of Newspapers and Literary Periodicals, 1700-30’, Library,
4th series (1934), 15, esp. pp. 123-24.
266
N.G., 3rd -10th Jan. 1707. (See Appendix O.3). This was a self-promotional boast engendered
by Crossgrove - reminding his readers that the number of copies the Gazette sold each week was
‘prodigious great’. (N.G. 4th -11th March 1710). Later, in 1714, in a private correspondence with
his friend, Dr Strype, Crossgrove mentioned that his paper ‘spreads all over Norfolk and Suffolk,
part of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire’. (As cited by J. B. Williams, ‘Henry Cross-Grove , Jacobite,
Journalist and Printer’. Library, 3rd series 5 (1914), p. 210.)
267
The Newcastle Journal claimed a weekly printing of 2,000 in 1737 and by 1755, despite
competition, the York Chronicle’s circulation apparently ranged between 1,900 and 2,500.
(Stephen Botein et al, ‘The Periodical Press in Eighteenth-Century English and French Society…’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22 (1981), p. 471). Collectively the Norwich papers,
with their network of hawkers and carriers, may well have attained those sorts of circulation
figures sooner in the century.
268
N.G., 14th Dec. 1706. Elizabeth Burges, in the Norwich Post was doing the same thing, trying
to attract chapmen to purchase her, ‘history-Books, Song-Books, Broad-sides &c…’ Norwich
Post 257, 3rd May 1707, as cited by Stoker, in, ‘‘To all Booksellers, Country Chapmen, Hawkers
and Others’…’ in, Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant Book Trade (Oak Knoll Press & the British
Library, 2007), edited by R. Myers, M. Harris and G. Mandelbrote, p. 117. See also Appendix
O.4.
269
Taken from a reproduction of Marcellus Laroon, The Cryes of the City of London, found in G.
Mandelbrote, ‘From the warehouse to the counting-house…’, in, A Genius For Letters:
Booksellers and Bookselling from the 16th to the 20th Century. (Delaware, 1994), edited by R.
Myers and M. Harris, p. 52 ff.16; citing his source as, Sean Shesgreen, The Criers and Hawkers of
London (1990), nos 38 & 56.
270
Looney, looking at hawkers later in the century, suggests they were allowed ½ d for every
paper sold, but this seems very generous for those employed in the first ten years of the Norwich
newspaper trade as that sum constituted the face value of the news journal, such as was the case
for the Norwich Gazette. (J. J. Looney, ‘Advertising and Society in England,…’ (Princeton
University, PhD, 1983), pp. 40-41). The Norwich Gazette’s advertisement calling for ‘Post-men’
speaks only of offering them ‘Advantagious Terms’ [sic]. See Appendix O.4 for an example of
same.
271
Sisters Barbara Kerrich and Elizabeth Postlethwaite maintained contact with each other in this
way from 1733 to 1751. Each of them paid the hawkers a small bonus to hand over their letters to
a colleague covering their sister’s round. This courier service was seen as a legitimate fringe
benefit. When confronted by Chase, the hawker in question stood his ground. Stoker, ‘’To all
Booksellers, Country Chapmen, Hawkers and Others’…’, in, Fairs, Markets and the Itinerant
Book Trade (Oak Knoll Press & the British Library, 2007), edited by R. Myers, M. Harris and G.
Mandelbrote p.119, citing: Nigel Surrey (ed.,) Your affectionate and loving sister: the
correspondence of Barbara Kerrich and Elizabeth Postlethwaite (Dereham, 2000), pp. 114-15.
272
N.G., 21st -27th Dec. 1708.
273
N.P. 26th April – 3rd May 1707. For an exposition on seventeenth and eighteenth century tulip
mania, and the extortionate prices that bulbs fetched, see Charles Mackay (foreword by Andrew
Tobias), Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (New York, [1841],
Harmony Books, 1980). The Norwich Floral Feast, introduced in 1630, was an important annual
feature of civic life in the city and is indicative of the high value placed on horticultural display.
274
For example, see, N.G., 22nd Sept – 29th Sept. 1711, for an advert promoting the appending
arrival in the city of ‘Her Majesty’s Principal Ocultist’, Sir William Read. For illustrations of
medicinal advertisements see Appendix O.4.
275
See fig.7, in chapter one, for illustration of William Pinder’s advertisement.
87
276
Looney opines that: ‘Some tradesmen presumably refused to advertise at all, concluding either
that advertising would actually reduce their custom by lowering their reputation, or that any
increase in profit would be offset by the loss in self-esteem induced by recourse to such methods’.
J. J. Looney, ‘Advertising and Society in England, 1720-1820…’ (Princeton University, PhD,
1983), p. 208.
277
N.G., 28th Dec. – 4th Jan. 1707.
278
J. B. Williams posits the hypothesis that the squabbles between the Norwich papers, as outlined
in John Chambers General History of Norfolk (1829), inspired Dickens’ characters Pott of the
Gazette and Slurk of the Independent in his novel The Pickwick Papers. J. B. Williams, ‘Henry
Cross-Grove, Jacobite, Journalist and Printer’. Library, 3rd series, 5 (1914), pp. 206 -219.
279
For an example, see: Stoker, ‘The Establishment of Printing in Norwich 1660-1760….’ (1977),
esp. p. 108.
280
For a view that argues that the abundance and ubiquity of newspapers and periodicals in the
late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ‘affected the way in which people constructed the world
around them’, see: P. Rogers, Literature and Popular Culture (Brighton, 1985), esp. p. 22.
281
M. MacDonald, ‘Suicide and the Rise of the Popular Press in England’ Representations, 22
(1988), p. 42.
282
Suicides were usually included in the ‘casualties’ portion of the bill of mortality. See Cranfield,
The Development of the Provincial Newspaper … (Oxford, 1962), pp. 95-96. This process, and
the public exposure to suicide, reached its apogee with the South Sea Bubble crash of 1721: at
which time the sheer numbers of suicides may have inured the reader to the act. See M.
MacDonald, ‘Suicide and the Rise of the Popular Press in England’ Representations, 22 (1988), p.
43
283
Quote from: D. F. McKenzie (ed. Peter D. Mc Donald & Michael F. Suarez), Making Meaning:
‘Printers of the Mind’ and Other Essays (Boston, 2002), p. 258.
284
‘Age in Distress; or a full and true account of one Elizabeth Wasteoat who hanged herself [for]
love of a young Smith’ published by Crossgrove in May 1707 is still listed on ESTC as being in
the Norwich Heritage Collection. However after an extensive ten day search the library staff
concluded it must have been destroyed in the 1994 fire.
285
It should be noted that in his article that examines the press in relationship to the reporting of
suicides and argues for its influence in shaping attitudes, MacDonald scrutinized twelve
newspapers of the period; amongst the twelve were the Norwich Gazette and the Norwich
Mercury. M. MacDonald, ‘Suicide and the Rise of the Popular Press in England’ Representations,
22 (1988), pp. 36-55.
286
John Jeffery, ‘Felo de Se: Or, A Warning Against the Most Horrid and Unnatural Sin of SelfMurder’. Extracted from a complete collection of sermons and tracts written by Jeffery. (London
1751). It was originally printed by ‘Francis Burges for A. and J. Churchill, bookseller in London
and for Thomas Goddard, bookseller in Norwich.’ Norwich Heritage Library. Coleman Collection.
(Felo de se literally translates into ‘felon of himself’). See Appendix Q.
287
The OED suggests its earliest use was: 1651 CHARLETON Ephes. & Cimm. Matrons (1668),
p. 73: ‘To vindicate ones self from…inevitable Calamity, by Sui-cide is not..a Crime’. MacDonald
however places its use earlier, citing, Thomas Browne, Selected Writings, ed. Geoffrey Keynes
(Chicago, 1968), p. 50; where Browne uses the word suicide in Religio Medici. (Composed in
1636, its first authorized publication being in 1643. I have checked and while the word is present
in the 1643 edition is it absent in the 1642 pirated publication). See, M. MacDonald, ‘Suicide and
the Rise of the Popular Press in England’ Representations, 22 (1988) p. 36, ff. 1.
288
John Jeffery, ‘Felo de Se… (London 1751), p. 146.
289
Ibid, p. 151.
290
Ibid, pp. 148-49.
291
John Jeffery, A Discourse of the Repugnancy of Sin to the Principles of Universal Reason
(London 1682), as cited by C. Wilkins-Jones, ‘Norwich City Library and its Intellectual Milieu;
1608-1825’ (UEA, PhD, 2000), pp. 235-237.
292
M. MacDonald, ‘Suicide and the Rise of the Popular Press in England’ Representations, 22.
(1988), p. 42.
293
See Appendix R.1 for the ‘advice’ to a Maid torn between four lovers. The other two examples
can be found in The Norwich Gazette of the Feb 22nd – March 1st, 1707; the microfiche is too
scratched for them to be transcribed here with sufficient accuracy.
294
N.G. March 1st - 5th 1707.
88
295
Henry Crossgrove, The Accurate Intelligencer, Norwich (1708), ESTC Star ID: T137152;
Apollinaria: or, a second volume of the Accurate intelligencer Containing Answers To a Number
of Curious Letters Never before Published, Norwich (1708). ESTC Star ID: T137153. See
Appendix S.
296
His birthday was declared in the Gazette of the 14th August 1731, as cited by J. B. Williams,
‘Henry Cross-Grove , Jacobite, Journalist and Printer’. Library, 3rd series, 5 (1914), pp. 216-217.
For Crossgrove’s outspoken political views see Appendix R.2 and R.3.
297
See Appendix V, which also includes the attack by Chase for his swift re-marriage a few
months later.
298
S. Botein, J. R. Censer, H. Rituo, ‘The Periodical Press in Eighteenth-Century English and
French Society…’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22 (1981), pp. 482-484.
299
Ibid, p. 485.
300
Mindful, that while in some regards the structure of the ‘establishment’ in the provinces was a
microcosm of the capital and served the national government as well, yet structurally and socially
it was markedly dissimilar to that of London, which was dominated by the court and parliament.
This fact would also have shifted any ‘establishment’ cultural emphasis in what was reflected by
the early provincial papers and their editors in their approach to what they printed or how they
viewed themselves in the more intimate urban society in which they had become a part.
301
Comparisons with the pre and post Licensing Act presses in London would need to be made,
and those findings then compared to the output of the provincial press in order to firmly establish
this position.
302
‘Sold at CROSS-GROVE’S Printing-Office, and at no other Place in NORWICH The Famous
New-Invented BLACKING-BALL FOR SHOES’. N.G. Vol. 36, no. 1859. Saturday May 15th, to
Saturday May 22nd 1742, page 4, col. 2.
303
In 1731 Chase and Goddard pirated the cartography of surveyor James Corbridge. Not only did
they not acknowledge the author, who had already published his map the year before, but Chase:
‘used letters in his newspaper to cast doubt upon the accuracy of the original.’ (Stoker, ‘Prosperity
and success in the eighteenth century provincial book trade…’, Publishing History, xxx (1991),
pp. 11-13). For an example of Chase’s ribald attacks on his opponent’s misfortune at being
brought before the Assizes see Appendix T.
304
Yet civic office with all the networking attendant therein, and like their very open rivalry, may
too have been ‘good for business’.
305
R. Sweet, The English Town 1680-1840: Government, Society and Culture (London, 1999), pp.
179-180.
306
P. Earle. The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society and Family life in London
1660-1730 (London, 1991), p. 3.
307
See Appendix E.1.
308
Archdeaconry of Norwich, Register of Wills (ANW: Archdeaconry of Norwich Wills, will of
Henry Crossgrove, 1744: NRO, MF 333, fols. 64v-66r).
309
Will of William Chase, 1781. Norwich Consistory Court, unpublished manuscript, 9th January
1781. NRO, NCC, 1781, MF 447, fols. 50r -51v.
310
L. Rostenberg & M. B. Stern, Between Boards: New Thoughts on Old Books (London, 1978), p.71
311
The exception that proves the rule is Robert Woollam in 1700 who attained his freedom as a pettychapman. See Appendix E.1.
312
For example see the ‘yellow map’, Appendix Z , for Chase family.
313
This is a view expressed by L. J. Miller, Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of
Consumption (Chicago, 2006), esp. p. 25.
314
Stoker, 'Francis Burges's "Observations on printing" 1701: a reconstruction of the text' (2005), pp.
169, 173, 171.
315
M. Bartholomew, D. Hall and A. Lentin (eds), The Enlightenment: Studies I, (Milton Keynes, 1992),
pp. v – vi.
89
BIBLIOGRAPHY
MANUSCRIPT SOURCES
BL, Add MS, 5853. Henry Crossgrove’s Correspondence with the Rev. John Strype.
Letter to Mr. Secretary Delafaye, 2 January 1718/19, State Papers Domestic 35, vol.
15(1).
BL, Harleian MS, 5910. 11. fol. 151.
NRO, NCC, MF, 425 , 1689-1690, will no. 14, William Pinder.
NRO, DN, INN, 65/3, reel MF/X 18/section 3, William Oliver.
NRO, NCC, 65 Alexander, will of John Hasbert.
NRO, NCC, 1781, MF 447, fols. 50r -51v. Norwich Consistory Court, unpublished
manuscript, 9th January 1781. Will of William Chase II, 1781.
NRO, MF 333, fols. 64v-66r. Archdeaconry of Norwich, Register of Wills (ANW:
Archdeaconry of Norwich Wills), will of Henry Crossgrove, 1744.
NRO, NCR, 23/3, The Property and Window Tax Records for 1715.
NRO, NCR, Ba (2), The Poll Tax in St. Peter Mancroft 1694.
NRO, NCR, 16(a)/24, Mayor’s Court Books 1666 -1677.
NRO, NCR, 16(a)/25, Mayor’s Court Books 1677- 1695.
NRO, NCR, Case 13a/55, 1694; Case 7, Shelf (k), 1694.
NRO, NCR, MF/X/267/14. Overseers Accounts 1694.
NRO, WKC, 7/9, 404 x1
NRO, Mayors’ Court Book.
NEWSPAPERS
Norwich Gazette
Norwich Mercury
Norwich Post
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RADIO
Melvyn Bragg, Radio 4: In Our Time, ‘Seventeenth Century Print Culture’, broadcast 26th Jan. 2006.
WEB PAGES
William Austin: ‘Excellency of Woman’ ‘Feminist Forefathers’ web page:
http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/4dads/4dads.html
John Britton’s, The Beauties of England and Wales, Or, Delineations, Topographical, Historical, and
Descriptive of each County, Embellished with Engravings. (1810). Other contributors to the volume
listed include: Joseph Nightingale, James Norris Brewer, John Evans, John Hodgson, Francis Charles
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Brayley. Web Page:
http://books.google.com/books?id=st4uAAAAMAAJ&dq=the+beaties+of+england+and+wales&prints
ec=frontcover&source=web&ots=T0sD9_ZXOQ&sig=uTgG8cKkQTCxLUzDofOWA1gxpGE
David Jenkins: Web page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jenkins_(Royalist)
Cultural Capital & Pierre Bourdieu: Wikiepedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_capital.
Origins of the Norfolk Newspapers: http://www.origins.org.uk/genuki/NFK/norfolk/newspapers/
David Stoker, “Edward Cave and the Norwich Post.” http://users.aber.ac.uk/das/texts/cave.htm
The Worshipful Company of Scriveners: http://www.scriveners.org.uk/general.htm
Donald Stark. M.A., ‘Was literacy, or its absence, the main cultural difference in 17th century
England?’ Published on-line at: http://www.donaldstark.co.uk/about.html.
The Editors. “Licensing Act.” The Literary Encyclopaedia. 2 Apr. 2004. The Literary Dictionary
Company. 3 July 2007. http://www.litency.com
Wikiedia Licensing Act: Licensing Act : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_Order_of_1643
Licensing of the Press Act 1662: Wikiepedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licensing_of_the_Press_Act_1662
Newsplan for information on news publications:
http://newsplan.liem.org.uk/details.asp?pid=3F297F10-E526-44E1-B9AD-787356ADB130
William Harrison’s, Description Of Elizabethan England, (from Holinshed's Chronicles, 1577), found
on: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1577harrison-england.html
History of the London Gazette: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Gazette#History
History of Transport and Travel:
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=1972&HistoryID=ab79
Norfolk County Council web page: http://www.norfolkesinet.org.uk/pages/viewpage.asp?uniqid=3362
Nicholas Culpepper: Wikiepedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Culpeper
Eikon Basilike: Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eikon_Basilike
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The Antiquarian Booksellers of America: http://search.abaa.org/dbp2/book772_B5492.html
Weekly Mercury or Protestant Packet: http://newsplan.liem.org.uk/details.asp?pid=3F297F10-E52644E1-B9AD-787356ADB130;
Virtual Norfolk Web Page: http://www.webarchive.org.uk/pan/12032/20051206/virtualnorfolk.UEA,
Norwich, .ac.uk/
‘Who’s Who in Medieval History and the Renaissance’:
http://historymedren.about.com/library/who/blwwbrantseb.htm.
‘The Ship of Fools’, an article originally published in Cornhill Magazine; can be found on-line at:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Littell's_Living_Age/Volume_146/Issue_1891/%22The_Ship_of_Fools%
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