6 takes in this and another edition of these printers. They were cited accordingly before the High Commission, fined 2,0007. or 3,000l., and the whole impression destroyed. Two copies, however, were known to the late Mr. G. Offor, one of which was about to be sent to America; another is in the Bodleian. A story told about Dr. Usher illustrates very forcibly the extent to which ignorant and inefficient men must have been employed in correcting the press. The Bishop of Armagh one day hastening to preach at Paul's Cross, entered the 'house of one of the stationers, as booksellers were then called, and, inquiring for a Bible of the London edition, when he came to look for his text, to his astonishment and horror he • discovered that the verse was omitted in the Bible! This gave the first occasion of complaint to the King of the in'sufferable negligence and incapacity of the London press, and, says the manuscript writer of this anecdote (Harl. MS. 6395), bred that great contest which followed between the University of Cambridge and the London stationers about the right of " printing Bibles.'+ One cannot help contrasting this negligence with the care employed over that rare treasure, Coverdale's Bible of 1535, where the reader's attention is called to a faute escaped in 'pryntyng the New Testament. Upon the fourth leafe the first syde in the sixth chapter of St. Matthew, "seke ye first "the kingdome of heaven," read "seke ye first the kingdome "of God." A New Testament, however, a revision of that translation, printed by J. Nicholson in 1538, was found to be so full of errata that Coverdale ordered the printer to recall as many copies as possible and destroy them. The edition consequently is a very rare one now. 6 The word not' was again omitted in a pearl Bible, printed by Field in 1653; 1 Cor. vi. 9, reads, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God.' Strange, indeed, must be the perversity that could take advantage of so manifest an error. Yet Kilburn, in a little book to be mentioned presently, declares, This is the foundation of a damnable doctrine; for it hath been averred by a reverend Doctor of Divinity to several worthy persons that many libertines and licencious people did produce and urge this text from the authority of this corrupt Bible against his mild reproofs, in 'justification of their vicious and inordinate conversation.' The printer was examined before the sub-committee for religion of the House of Commons, and acknowledged that he had * Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, vol. iii. p. 428. Ed. 1863. printed off 2,000 copies. The committee, however, succeeded in securing no less than 7,900 copies. Another of Field's Bibles printed at Cambridge in 1638, contained a famous alteration of the original text. Acts vi. 3, was made to run thus, whom ye may appoint.' It was said that the Independents bribed the printers for the sum of 1,500l. to make the alteration. The report, however, is most improbable, and appears to rest on no good authority. Of another edition, printed in King Charles's time,' Noye says in his Defence of the Canon of the New Testament' (p. 86), that Psalm xiv. 1, was, The fool hath said in his heart, there is a God'; he adds that the printers were fined 3,000l., and all the copies suppressed. An opposite error occurs in Dr. Conquest's edition of the Bible, with 20,000 emendations,' (Lond. 1841), where Job v. 7, is, Man is not born to trouble as the sparks 'fly upwards.' Kilburn had then only too many reasons for the pamphlet he published in 1659, entitled Dangerous Errors in several 'late printed Bibles, to the great scandal and corruption of 'sacred and true religion.' He describes it as an animadversion to all good Christians of this Commonwealth, discovering among many thousands of others, some pernicious, erroneous, and corrupt erratas, escapes and faults, in small impressions of the Holy Bible and Testament, within these late years, 'commonly vented and dispersed, to the great scandal of reli'gion, but more especially in the impressions of Henry Hills and John Field.' The suppression of the office of King's Printer led, he says, to the importation of impressions from abroad, which were so full of errors that in 1643 Parliament, at the instigation of the Assembly of Divines, destroyed all copies that could be obtained, and forbade all further importations. The assembly desired to find an English printer who would undertake the work; but no one ventured to do so, till Mr. Bentley, of Finsbury, brought out an impression in 1646. In 1655 Hills and Field attempted to monopolise the printing by abusing the authority of the State; but, by Kilburn's account, they were as grievous offenders as any others. After mentioning one of their editions, printed in 1655, which was seized and prohibited, he loses all grammatical propriety in speaking of an edition brought out the following year. I am confident, if the number of the impression was (as I am informed) 20,000, there were as 'many faults therein. . . . It is the worst of all the rest.' The sale of this edition was prohibited by Parliament, but with little effect, as the petty chapmen managed to find customers for them at country fairs and markets. Of English works committed to the flames before the invention of printing, we must allude, and that briefly, to only one instance, that of Reginald Peacock, the author of 'Precursor,' which Dean Milman characterises as the greatest work, certainly the greatest theological work, which had yet appeared in English prose. In the Dean's Annals of St. Paul's Cathe'dral,' may be read the story, very graphically told, how the greatest intellect of his age, the most powerful theologian in England, disgraced himself by miserable cowardice,' in casting his voluminous works with his own hands into the fire. 6 On June 19, 1520, was issued the Papal bull for the destruction of all Luther's publications. Wolsey declined to enforce it in England, saying it gave him no power to do so; and there is little doubt but that if the Cardinal had been left to himself, none of the cruel proceedings which disgrace the reign of Henry VIII. would have been set on foot. It is in this point he contrasts so favourably with the Lord Chancellor. 'With Wolsey,' says Froude, heresy was an error, with More it was a crime.' A special request, however, from the Pope himself to have the bull published in England left him no longer free in the matter. A large number of books accordingly was secured; Wolsey goes in state to St. Paul's; the Bishop of Rochester, at the Pope's command, preaches against Luther, and denounces those who kept any of his writings, and there were many burned in the said churchyard of the said books during the sermon.' Besides the Bibles which were prohibited by the proclamation already mentioned, which was issued in 1530, several other books were laid under similar penalties. Those mentioned by name are: The Wicked Mammon,'' The Obedience of a Christian Man,' The Supplication of Beggars,''The Revelation of Antichrist,' and The Summary of Scripture, which, imprinted beyond ye see, do conteyne in them pestiferous errours and blasphemies, and for that cause shall from hensforth be reputed and taken of all men for books of heresie, and worthy to be dampned and put in perpetuall oblivion. The Supplication of Beggars was the production of Simon Fish, a student of Gray's Inn. Soon after entering, an interlude was performed, written by a member of the Inn, Mr. Roo or Roe. In it there was a considerable amount of abuse of Cardinal Wolsey, and no one else venturing to play the character to which the abuse was assigned, Fish professed himself ready to do so. That night the Cardinal attempted to apprehend him, but Fish escaped to Germany, where he fell in with Tyndal. It seems to have been soon after this that he wrote the book. The British Museum possesses a unique copy of what is probably the first edition. Of the other works mentioned, The Summary of Scripture' was a translation by Fish from the German. The Wicked Mammon' and The 'Obedience of a Christian Man' were by Tyndal. Another of Tyndal's publications was The Practyse of Prelats: whether the Kynges Grace may be separated from hys Queene because she was hys brothers wyfe:' 1546. It is often mentioned by Foxe among the books that were forbidden under heavy penalties to be read or possessed. Frith's writings, too, by which Cranmer is said to have been converted, were among the prohibited books. 6 In 1546, in the proclamation already mentioned, came the sweeping order that no person whatever should possess any 'manner of bookes, printed or written in the English tongue, which shall be set forth in the names of Frith, Tyndal, Wickliff, Joy, Roye, Basil, Bale, Barnes, Coverdale, Turner, Tracy, or by any of them; or any other booke or bookes containing matter contrary to the Act made in the year 34 or 35. All such books are to be delivered to the bishop, chancellor, commissary, or sheriff, who shall cause them incontinently to be burned. The extent to which this order was carried out may be inferred from the fact that four treatises attributed (but erroneously) to Wyclif, printed by R. Redman, in 1527-1532, fetched at Mr. James Dix's sale, in February last, no less than 100l. a-piece. In each case the copy was presumed to be unique. The treatises are really parts of a book, a more perfect copy of which is to be found in the Lambeth Library. A vast number of curious books perished in consequence of 'An Act for the abolishing and putting awaie of diverse books and images,' passed 3rd and 4th Edward VI. 'The Booke of Common Prayer having been set forth, it is enacted that "All bookes called antiphoners, myssales, scrayles, processionales, "manuelles, legends, pyes, portuyses, prymars in Lattyn or Inglishe, cowchers, iournales, ordinales, or other bookes or writings whatsoever, heretofore used for service of the churche, written or prynted "in the Inglishe or Lattyn tongue shalbe . . . . clerelie and utterlie แ abollished, extinguished, and forbidden for ever to be used or kepte "in this realme or elleswhere within any of the King's dominions." Persons in possession of such books are immediately to give them up to the authorities, who within three months are to deliver them to the archbishop or bishop of the diocese, "to be openlye brent or otherwayes defaced and destroied." Persons found with such books in their possession after the time specified are, for the first offence, to pay a fine of twenty shillings, for the second, four pounds, and for the third, 44 to be imprisoned at the King's will. If the civil or ecclesiastical authorities fail to carry out their instructions within forty days, they are to be fined 401. 'Provyded alwayes and be it enacted by thauctoritie aforesaide, that any person or persons may use, kepe, have, and reteyne any prymars in the Englishe or Lattyn tongue, set forthe by the late Kinge of famous memorie, Kinge Henrie theight, so that the sentences of invocation or prayer to saintes in the same prymars be blotted or clerelye put out of the same, anie thinge in this Act to the contrarye notwithstandinge.'* Hearne† believes that the King, if he had lived, would have repented of this extravagant Act, and lays the blame of it on Cranmer. Only three proclamations were issued by Queen Mary against books: the first of August 18, 1553, which, amongst other things, forbad the public reading and interpreting of the Scriptures; the second, June 13, 1555; and the third, June 6, 1558. With reference to the second, in which twenty-three authors are denounced by name, twelve foreign and eleven English, Strype tells us that the occasion of it was a book sent from abroad, called A Warning for England,' which put Englishmen on their guard against Spain, and gave information of a plan that was on foot for regaining possession of the lands formerly belonging to monasteries. And, with regard to the last, he gives the following explanation: 'There was one book indeed that came out this year, which the proclamation might have a particular eye to, viz., Christopher Goodman's book. It was entitled "How superior powers ought to be "obeyed of their subjects, and wherein they may lawfully by God's "law be disobeyed and resisted; wherein is declared the cause of all "this present misery in England, and the only way to remedy the same. Printed at Geneva by John Crispin, mdlviii." The preface is writ by Will Whittingham, then also at Geneva. Though a little book in decimo-sexto, it is full of bitterness, and encourageth to take up arms against Queen Mary, and to dethrone her; and that upon this reason among others, because it is not lawful for women to reign. As it had Whittingham's preface at the beginning of it, so had it William Kethe, another divine at Geneva, his approbation in verse at the end, which verses will show the intent of the book.' Then follow four verses, the third of which will be enough to quote here: Statutes of the Realm, vol. iv. pp. 110, 111. Peter Langtoft's Chronicle, vol. ii. p. 550 (ed. 1810). |