Negotiating the Jacobean Printed Book

Pete Langman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351915403
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

By examining the spaces where authors, printers and readers interact, Negotiating the Jacobean Printed Book highlights the manner in which contemporary culture and canon not only co-existed but mutually nourished and affected one another. An international group of book history scholars look beyond the traditional literary and canonical texts to explore, amongst other things, the physical nature of books and their place in Jacobean society. The contributors interrogate not just the texts themselves, but the habits, proclamations, letters and problems encountered by authors, printers and readers. Ranging from the funding of perhaps the most important book of the early Jacobean period, the 1611 AV Bible, and the ways in which it changed the balance of power in the King's Printers, to how the importation of Continental drill manuals by professional soldiers influenced the Privy council, the essays focus on the fissures which open up between practice and proclamation, between manuscript and press, and between print and parliament. Together these essays nuance our understanding of how print culture affected, and was affected by, wider cultural concerns; the volume constitutes a compelling contribution to both literary and historical studies of early modern England.

Chapter 1
The King’s Printers’ Bible Monopoly in the Reign of James I

Graham Rees

Introductory¹

Who were the King’s Printers in the reign of James I? I answer this question in very summary form for the convoluted story of the Jacobean King’s Printers has been dealt with in detail by my partner on the King’s Printer Project, Dr Maria Wakely, in a recent and highly original archive-based article. At the beginning of James’s reign Robert Barker (1570–1645) held the King’s Printer patent but was an indifferent businessman who got into financial difficulties and became indebted to Bonham Norton (1564–1635) and John Bill (1576–1630). Norton and Bill (and especially the latter) were very successful, canny and ruthless stationers who had been in partnership since the accession (and in part because of the accession) of James in 1603. Taking advantage of Barker’s financial difficulties when the first edition of the King James Bible was being printed, Norton and Bill gradually encroached on Barker’s interests until in 1615 they bought into the King’s Printing House for the sum of £5,000, and entered into a three-way partnership with Barker’s son Christopher. Not long after they bought the present and future estate in the King’s Printing House from Robert Barker for £6,500. They invested heavily and prospered to such an extent that Barker presented a petition to Chancery against them to recover his interest in the business.

This was the start of long-running and tangled Chancery suits, with Barker pursuing his claim, and with Norton and Bill falling out and fighting each other in court. Bill retained his rights in the office of King’s Printer until his death. Barker was eventually reinstated as King’s Printer in 1629, displacing Norton. At the same time Norton, who rashly accused Lord Keeper Coventry of taking bribes, was slung into jail where he probably remained until his death.²

Bible Production before the King James Bible

The King James Bible (KJB), first printed in 1611, and the greatest novelty in Bible production in our period, was but the latest comer of three versions of Holy Writ produced by the King’s Printers. Before 1611 and after it the Bishops’ and Geneva Bibles and NTs were still current. The Bishops’ Bible, a revision of the Great Bible undertaken by Matthew Parker (1504–1575) assisted by the bishops and biblical scholars, was first issued in folio by Richard Jugge in 1568. In the main it corrected the Great Bible by drawing on the Hebrew and Greek originals, and was influenced in its translation of the prophetical books by the Geneva Bible. In April 1571 the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury ordered every cathedral and, as far as possible, every church, to acquire a copy, and ordered every ecclesiastical bigwig to display one in his house for the benefit of servants and guests.³ A second folio was issued in 1572 by Richard Jugge. In this edition the NT had undergone further careful revision which, arising from a memorandum by Giles Lawrence, was used in later editions of the Bishops’ Bible while the rest of the text (OT and Apocrypha) remained as it was in the first folio.⁴

By a nice irony of history Barker did not print any edition of the Bishops’ Bible in James’s reign but provided 40 copies of his last folio printing (1602) for the translators who were to prepare the KJB, the text whose printing was to accelerate the decline of his fortunes.⁵ However, he did print two editions (1606 and 1608) of the Bishops’ NT in 8^vo before 1611. These and earlier small format editions of the Bishops’ NT were those known as ‘Cheke’ or ‘Cheeke’ NTs, a denomination under which at least one edition appeared in a King’s Printer stock list of 1624/5.⁶

In the pre-KJB years the Geneva Bible’s fortuna was markedly different from that of the Bishops’ Bible. Popular from its first appearance in England soon after the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, no doubt because of its Calvinistic colouring and many annotations, it had been translated by William Whittingham, Anthony Gilby, Thomas Sampson, and perhaps other exiles in Geneva. First printed by Rouland Hall in Geneva in 1560, its OT and Apocrypha were based mainly on the Great Bible corrected from the original Hebrew and Greek, and compared with the Latin versions of Leo Juda and others. Its NT, ascribed to Whittingham, was based on Tyndale’s version compared with the Great Bible and influenced by Beza’s Latin translation. The Geneva NT was further revised twice. Laurence Tomson (1539–1608) produced a rendering with alterations stemming from Beza’s Latin version of 1565.⁷ This was first printed in 8^vo in 1576 by Christopher Barker, Robert’s father. This became the final and popular form of the Geneva Testament,⁸ except for Revelation which in Junius’s version superseded Tomson’s in some editions of the Geneva NT and Bible, beginning with the 1602 8^vo NT (STC 2902) printed by Robert Barker.⁹

Given that not a single edition of the Bishops’ Bible (as distinct from the Bishops’ version of the NT) was issued by the King’s Printers in the reign of James, Robert Barker’s output of Geneva Bibles in the period was by comparison astonishing. From the accession of James to the appearance of the KJB in 1611, 24 editions of the Bible were produced, including 15 editions in quarto in 8s, seven editions in octavo, and two folio editions. Of these 24 editions 17 were the unrevised Geneva version; six were the Geneva-Tomson-Junius; and one the Geneva-Tomson.¹⁰ In the same period, 1603–1611, Barker put out ten editions of the NT, of which two were the Bishops’ version in octavo and eight were Geneva versions mostly in the Tomson or Tomson and Junius form. Of the Geneva NTs, one was in octavo, two in 16^o in 8s, and five in 24 in 12s. What we have here is a truly prodigious output with an annual average of over one edition of the NT, and a striking average of 2 2/3 Bible editions per annum. No other printer in the Jacobean period published repeat editions of such long works – the Bible runs to some 783,000 words – and no other printer had the capacity to do so. Yet for Robert Barker production on this scale was efficient, absolutely routine and quite relentless. When stock of an edition in one format, in English or in roman type, began to run out, another such edition would be churned out, and especially in the relatively large 4^o in 8s format.

The Advent of the King James Bible

The market for Bibles and NTs must have seemed insatiable, and the profits to be made from it unfailingly reliable. However, as Barker was going about his routine and lucrative business, proposals were adopted and implemented which would result in a new translation of the Bible, a translation which was to become the KJB or Authorized Version, and in the end make Barker’s life a misery. The fact was that control of the Bible was an imperative of the early-modern British state, and no one was more alive to that than James I, and no one was more keen to use the press to propagate books, KJB among them, which encouraged the consolidation of an official national culture.¹¹ Indeed, just a few months after his accession he convened the Hampton Court conference which set on foot the new translation.¹² The translation, sent to the press in 1611, could not have had a more profound effect on the King’s Printing House, for the KJB was one source of the financial woes which eventually helped betray Robert Barker into the hands of John Bill and Bonham Norton, gave the latter pair the King’s Printer patent and established them as a dominant force in London printing for a decade.

Working with their 40 unbound copies of Barker’s last folio edition of the Bishops’ Bible, representatives of the six companies set up to produce the new translation were ready to confer together in 1609, though how much actual conferring took place is not at all clear. However, in 1610, nine months’ work took place which pretty well completed the translation ready for Barker. Yet Barker’s first efforts to act on his monopoly right to print it brought him no end of trouble. A seminal article by John Barnard on the financing of the KJB draws attention to an action brought in the Court of Exchequer in 1613 by Bonham Norton. This action was brought against individuals who had been erstwhile partners of Bonham’s recently deceased cousin John. This partnership had bought a very large number of books – Bibles, NTs and BCPs – from Barker in 1610–12. As John’s executor, Bonham wanted to recover John’s share of the profits from the surviving partners, profits gained from the sale of the purchases from Barker. The Exchequer case was eventually settled out of court but there is reason to believe that some of the Bibles acquired by John Norton’s syndicate were copies of one or both of the 1611 folio editions of KJB.¹³ There is also reason to believe that in selling them wholesale to the syndicate (a syndicate which turned out to be, in effect, a front organisation for the partnership of Bill and the two Nortons), Barker received a poor return on his capital, and that market power drained away from him and flowed with ever greater rapidity towards Bill and the Nortons.

In fact this was a pivotal moment in an ancient rivalry which divided the Barkers and Nortons. As John Barnard has shown, the rivalry dated back to the mid-1570s when William Norton (Bonham’s father) and others banded together to publish with Richard Jugge, the then Queens’ Printer, a five-part quarto Bishops’ Bible (1575) to forestall a forthcoming folio edition of the Geneva Bible (1576)¹⁴ printed by Christopher Barker (Robert’s father). The publication of the Geneva folio apparently put Christopher in a good position to succeed Jugge as Queen’s Printer when the latter died in 1577, at which point Christopher gained exclusive rights to publish both the Geneva and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations and Tables
• Notes on Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The King’s Printers’ Bible Monopoly in the Reign of James I
• 2 Brought to Book: Purchases of Special Forms of Prayers in English Parishes, 1558–1640
• 3 Prayer Book, Polemic, and Performance
• 4 Print in the Time of Jacobean Parliaments
• 5 Printed and Censored at the Same Time for One and the Same Statement? The Fate of George Hakewill’s Writings in the Context of the Spanish Match
• 6 John Donne, James I and the Dilemmas of Publication
• 7 Francis Bacon, King James and the Private Revision of Public Negotiations
• 8 The Evolution of the English Drill Manual: Soldiers, Printers and Military Culture in Jacobean England
• An Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index