The designations ‘alien’ and ‘stranger’ were used in the early modern period to refer to foreign-born individuals residing in the realm, but with none of the franchises of native Englishmen. The term ‘immigrant’ was rarely used at the time and belongs to later ages of concern. As a legal term, the word alien refers to a person who is in a country, but not a resident of that country. There were four types of persons known to the law: natural born subject; denisen; alien friend; and alien enemy. The Crown possessed absolute power over alien enemies. Alien friends (Protestant refugees) were protected by law and were granted limited rights. Immigrants were not allowed to own property; they were not entitled to vote or hold office; they were required to pay double the rates of taxation; and in times of war or political conflict the authorities reserved the right of immediate expulsion.
An alien could become an adopted subject with the acquisition of a letter of patent. There was a financial cost involved, but the most valued aspects of the letter of denisation were its grant of permanent residency and protection from expulsion. The letter of naturalisation from Parliament offered full security and rights. Naturalised aliens were able to trade freely, purchase (and bequeath) property and enjoy the same tax status as natural born subjects. Few aliens were able to acquire this status as acquisition of the letter was costly. During Elizabeth’s reign only twelve acts were granted.
The rise of the cloth industry in the fourteenth century gave the country her first considerable manufacturing base. It is noteworthy that the initial influx of foreigners into England during that period was by Royal invitation when, in 1331, Edward III asked a group of Flemish weavers to revive a decaying local industry.
Early immigration was economically determined, strangers were invited because of their superior skills, although strict conditions were imposed which was an early attempt at formulating an ‘immigration policy’. At a time that the potentialities of government action were limited, the encouragement of a refugee influx was a significant act of state in the socio-economic sphere.
In the course of the sixteenth century an increasing number of religious refugees found asylum in England. Most of them moved to London and settled outside the City walls. They brought with them new skills and techniques which gave them the edge over local Londoners in trades as diverse as weaving, silver and gold-smithing, tailoring, clock-making or brewing. In addition, there were printers, basket makers, joiners and caterers.
Initially, immigrant businesses offered employment to local Londoners who were able to adopt the new techniques for their own advancement. The recession of the early 1500s hit the capital hard. Foreigners were blamed for hunger and poverty. In 1517, provoked by a racist speech by Doctor Beal [Bele] at St Paul’s Cross, several hundred of hungry artisans and apprentices took to the streets in Stepney in search of foreigners and, in the process, killing many immigrants.
The riot is known as Evil May Day and has entered popular mythology as a gruesome occasion. The punishment meted out to the rioters was ferocious. Fifteen Londoners were hung, drawn and quartered for their part in the anti-alien fury. The surviving prisoners were charged with the offence of ‘breaking the peace of Christendom’, another capital crime. This harsh treatment was an attempt by the authorities to stamp out extreme hostilities against immigrants. Yet, xenophobia persisted. The landscape of sixteenth century urban history is dotted with outbursts of anti-alien sentiment.
The first major arrival of refugees during the reign of Elizabeth I coincided with a period of considerable instability. An economic slump, an unsettled religious situation and the hostility of Catholic nations, made Elizabeth’s seat of power unsteady. In 1558, she appointed William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, as her Secretary of State. By 1572 he was named Lord High Treasurer and became chief Royal advisor.
Cecil was a prominent defender of the concept of asylum. He sympathised with Continental migrants as fellow Protestants, but also sensed that the settling of skilled workers could be useful to develop the nation’s backward economy. In his policy making there was an attempt to balance the protection of natural born subjects with the aspirations of refugees and immigrants.
Religious instability was one of the concerns about the mass arrival of aliens. Protestantism was more readily embraced in the South and East of England (Essex and Kent stood in the vanguard) than elsewhere in the country. London became the centre where all books and pamphlets from the Continent were smuggled to (by 1518 Martin Luther tracts were easily available in the City — printing had become a formidable power) and where all heretics and ‘evangelical brethren’ gathered. It was feared that an increasing number of foreigners would constitute a possible ‘fifth column’ in the struggle against the Catholic Church. From the beginning, asylum has been accompanied by varying degrees of xenophobia and resentment.
There was also disquiet about the non-integration of refugees. Settling in ‘foreign quarters’ and being supported by their (stranger) churches, it was feared that refugees barely needed to accommodate themselves to the local way of life. The inability of Dutch or Flemish characters to speak English became a standard joke in Tudor comedy.
The feeling that strangers deliberately excluded Englishmen from their business relations was one of the grievances behind the simmering agitation of native craftsmen. In 1570 thirty immigrants from the Low Countries made enquiries if they could settle in Rye (Sussex). Seeking advice from the Privy Council, local authorities received a directive that reads like a summary of sixteenth century immigration policy. These were the criteria for settlement laid down in this document: refugee settlements had to be composed of Protestants; immigrants must possess skills that would benefit the economy and teach those skills to local citizens; the number of strangers had to be controlled; in order to minimise local hostility, settlers had to be distributed around the country in groups of limited size. If the first requirement was not fulfilled, the others did not matter. In 1574, some 1.500 strangers in London who could not show Protestant credentials were ordered to leave.
The era is typified by a dichotomy of attitudes. Many Elizabethans, whatever their ‘class’ or position, did not trust immigrants whilst others supported the concept of limited asylum. Guildford-born George Abbot, later Archbishop of Canterbury, commented in one of his morning lectures in Oxford (1572) upon the many conspiracies in London ‘intended against outlandish folks’. He was ashamed of the fact that they were treated ‘no better than French dogs’. Godly people, he insisted, treat ‘aliens as brethren’.
Grievances were mainly of an economic nature. In September 1571, the ‘Citizens of London’ sent a petition to the Queen outlining seven complaints directed against foreigners, six of which dealt with alien merchants. Early migration shows that where immigrants sprang from an economically progressive background, they contributed to the extension of technical enterprise. The stranger from a developed community proved a unique vehicle for economic enterprise able to manage the affairs of its hosts as he was not bound to their ethical standards or business conventions.
When Daniel Defoe somewhat unkindly said that the Englishman had invented nothing and improved everything, he may have been hinting at the nation’s ability to ignore ideas in the abstract, but quickly adopt new propositions when practical exposition was provided. Many of the skills and techniques brought in from the Continent became part of the socio-industrial fabric of the nation. Entrepreneurial activity and economic prosperity were kick-started by immigrants.

This is the first chapter of European Londoners. If you like it: you can get the complete book for free, as a PDF. Mail p.dijstelberge@me.com

In Praise of Print on Paper: Authors, Publishers, Private Presses, Booksellers, Typographers, Bibliophiles, Bibliomaniacs, Librarians & Auctioneers

Much has been made in recent years about the rise of the eBook and the imminent “death” of the printed book. Such discussions remain both fashionable and fruitless. As long as people read, the shape or form of the book is irrelevant. 

The electronic book has been a blessing in disguise for those who vigorously defend the value and beauty of the printed book. The application of new technologies in producing texts allows for fewer, but better-produced books in print. 

The concept of the small high-quality Press has returned and with it a renewed interest in typography, paper, illustration and design. Fine printing is re-conquering a place in the battle for public attention and affection. Photography did not kill off portrait painting as it was once feared; neither will the eBook condemn the printed text to the dustbin of history.

There is and there has always been ample space for different forms of presentation. Printing is a proper Palace of Variety. The blogs presented here are a celebratory toast to the book’s wellbeing – not an obituary.

Jaap Harskamp, November 2024 (Ely, Cambridgesire) For his New York blogs, see: Jaap Harskamp, Author at New York Almanack

Get a free digital copy of the author’s latest book: European Londoners, Contact: p.dijstelberge@me.com 

Black pencil sketch of Gustave Flaubert by his brother Achille, around 1829.

Gustave Flaubert began to test his ability as a writer during his school years. On February 12, 1837, he published a novella called Bibliomania in the pink pages of the Rouen literary journal Le Colibri. His fantasy exercise in the spirit of E. T. A. Hoffmann (an author Flaubert admired and read at a young age) about a bookseller’s obsessive love of books was inspired by a trial account published on October 23, 1836, in the Parisian La Gazette des Tribunaux. The article was not signed and attributed to an unnamed correspondent in Barcelona. 

Flaubert’s fictional version of the report would not reappear in print again until 1910 with the publication of the first volume of his Oeuvres de jeunesse inédites, three decades after his death.

Legend of Don Vincente

Don Vincente was a monk in the Cistercian Poblet Monastery near Tarragona in Catalonia. A man with a passion for books, he acted as keeper of the cloister’s valuable library. During a political disturbance in 1834 the religious house was attacked with the loss of priceless treasures as well as rare books. Rumors circulated that Vincente had collaborated with the plunderers in order to secure precious books for himself. 

Shortly after the shocking event he left the Order, traveled to Barcelona, and opened a bookshop with a remarkable stock of rare books although he hardly ever sold an important item. When he had a chance to buy a precious book, he was with great reluctance obliged to sell an item from his stock.

His sole passion was to own rare publications. As he was never seen reading a book, some clients questioned whether Don Vincente could read at all. 

In 1836, a highly collectable copy of Furs e ordinacions de Valencia (“Edicts and Ordinances for Valencia”) printed in 1482 by Lambert Palmart, Spain’s first printer, came up for auction in Barcelona. The announcement caused a stir and some booksellers formed a consortium in order to outbid the “hoarder” Don Vincente. They knew that if this unique gem would find a place in his collection, it was lost to forever and never shared with others. Antiquarian bookseller Augustino Patxot acted on the group’s behalf.

In spite of Vincente’s frenzied bidding in the salesroom, he was beaten by his competitor in what felt like a deadly duel. The loser flew in a threatening rage and refused to accept the customary “reales de consolacion” (an amount of money the highest bidder had to pay the next highest). Three days later, Patxot’s shop was ablaze. His corpse was recovered under the debris of burnt books. 

The fatal fire was assumed to be an accident as the owner’s body was found clutching his pipe. He had likely fallen asleep whilst smoking. In the immediate aftermath, nine other bodies were found around Barcelona, although there were no clear traces of robbery or theft. There was no apparent connection between the victims apart from their passion for books. Don Vincente may have felt safe – but coincidence intervened.

During a police inspection of his premises, an officer noticed the copy of Furs e orinacions on one of Vincente’s shelves. As the sale of this famous book had reached the news, further investigations were carried out. Various titles were identified that had been removed from the private libraries of the dead men. Vincente was arrested. 

After first claiming to be innocent, Don Vincente finally admitted to theft and murder on the understanding that his personal library would be protected and remain intact. Before the judge he justified his criminal acts in the following terms: “Men are mortal. Sooner or later, God calls them back to him. But good books need to be conserved.” 

In court, the biggest blow was dealt to him when his lawyer claimed that his client’s ownership of Furs e orinacions was circumstantial as there was another copy unearthed recently and offered for sale in a French bookseller’s catalogue. Horrified by this news, Vincente lost his cool and composure. Until the hour of his execution he was repeatedly heard muttering the words “My copy is not unique.” 

Thomas Frognall Dibdin, The Bibliomania; or, Book-Madness, London 1809.

Monomania

In the early nineteenth century, book collecting became a competitive obsession among British gentlemen in particular. The bloody end of the French Revolution saw an influx of collectibles arrive on the market as private libraries were emptied. The phenomenon was labeled “bibliomania,” a term coined in 1809 by the physician and author John Ferriar in a poem dedicated to the book collector Richard Heber (co-founder in 1812 of the Roxburghe Club of bibliophiles).

That same year, cleric and bibliographer Thomas Frognell Dibdin published The Bibliomania; or Book Madness, a satire of those afflicted with this “neurosis.” He was probably the first to medicalize the condition. He listed a number of “symptoms” displayed by bibliomaniacs, including an obsession with uncut copies, books printed on vellum, morocco bindings, black letter books, first editions, illustrated copies, and works condemned or suppressed by the authorities.

Coined around 1810 by the French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Dominique Esquirrol, the concept of “monomania” pointed at the presence of an expansive fixed idea in which the mind was deranged in some facets. It was treated as a form of partial insanity, conceived as single mental obsession in an otherwise sound mind. Bibliomania was seen as specific manifestation of this phenomenon.

Scientific research into mental aberration attracted Romantic artists and novelists who questioned Enlightenment rationality. They examined the influence of mental states and shared the belief that a face most accurately revealed character, especially in madness and at the moment of death. Théodore Géricault’s painting “Monomane de l’envie” (Monomaniac of envy) was created in 1822 as part of his series of ten portraits on the mentally ill. The “Portraits of the Insane” had been commissioned by Étienne-Jean Georget, a doctor at the Salpêtrière hospital and asylum in Paris.

Monomania was a condition that intrigued many writers who created tales in which the narrator and protagonist would suffer some form of the malady and become fixated on an idea, an object, an urge or a person, often to the point of mental destruction or criminality. French authors were quick to utilize the concept. 

Balzac made it a driving theme in his novels Eugénie Grandet (1833) and Père Goriot (1835) and Eugène Scribe’s one act comedy Une monomanie performed in Paris in 1832 used the disorder as an excuse for a character to fake their own suicide. Flaubert’s cheating heroine Madame Bovary suffers from this condition in the form of an incessant guilt and fear of discovery.

Diffusion of the Legend

Shortly after its publication, an abridged version of the article from the Gazette des Tribunaux was reproduced by the Parisian illustrated magazine Le Voleur (“The Thief”). In an age of pervasive plagiarism, this journal was notorious for lifting stories from other publications without any form of credit. The editors took pride in “pillaging” whatever they fancied from newspapers and journals that were published in the capital (according to their editorial in its first issue of April 5, 1828). Young Flaubert would have enjoyed consulting its sensational and irreverent contents.

No historical evidence of Don Vincente or a court case against him has ever been found; his crime did not appear in local newspapers at the time; there was no monk by the name of Fra Vincente at Poblet at the time of its closure. The anonymous article in La Gazette des Tribunaux was fiction and possibly intended as a morality tale rather than an actual story of bibliomania.

The history nevertheless reached far at the time and was cited as a true tale in France and elsewhere in Europe (while remaining virtually unknown in Spain). In 1837 Scottish surgeon Robert Macnish quoted the case in an extensive appendix to his Introduction to Phrenology as an extraordinary example of “Homicidal Monomania” which was understood in scientific terms as an abrupt “lesion” of the will capable of driving an otherwise sane person to murder.

Gustave Flaubert, Bibliomanie; publ. by Jean-Cyrille Godefroy. Paris1982.(Traversée du XIXe siècle)

Flaubert’s Version

In his first ever published narrative, Flaubert drew upon this fertile story. He could have consulted either of the two articles that circulated at the time to create a fictionalized version of Don Vincente’s story. He introduced him as the bookseller Giacomo, a taciturn and sombre character driven by a single passion: books. It was a wild fire that “burned within him, used up his days, devoured his existence” and pushed him to the edge of insanity.

It must have tickled the aspiring author’s rich sense of irony to encounter an individual who had killed to own a unique book, only to be presented with an auction catalogue in which another copy was offered for sale.

The concept of monomania was current in medical and artistic discourse during Flaubert’s formative years. The youngster was prone to the tendency himself. His intense hatred of bourgeois mentality that erupts time and again in his novels and letters, would become a monomania with him. He sought refuge in writing and, young as he was, he may well have identified with the figure of Don Vincente.

Every post we do a little advertising for a great and moving book, written by my friend, the eminent scholar and writer Jaap Harskamp. This book, European Londoners will be published here in installments. But you can get a digital copy for free if you mail to p.dijstelberge@me.com. There is a beautiful printed version that you can order too, if you, like us, love books!

A shibboleth is a linguistic identity marker. It is a phrase (or custom) that acts as a test of belonging to a particular social group or class. Its functions as a password and excludes those that do not ‘belong’. A person whose way of speaking violates a shibboleth is identified as an outsider. 

The book of Judges (chapter 12: 1-15) describes the battle between two Semitic tribes in which the Ephraimites are defeated by the Gileadites. The victorious soldiers set up a blockade across the Jordan River to prevent fleeing enemies to get back to their territory. The sentries asked each person who wanted to cross the river to say the word shibboleth. The Ephraimites, who had no sh sound in their language, pronounced the word with an s. They were thereby unmasked and killed. In ethnic conflicts language is all too often is a tool for persecution and brutality. 

The word ‘mob’ is derived from the Latin phrase ‘mobile vulgus’ (the fickle crowd). It had its origin at the period of the Exclusion Crisis when the nation became divided into party and faction, Whig versus Tory. Elections for parliament and other public meetings inevitably resulted in fights and disturbances. Initially the word the ‘mobile’ circulated to describe rioters. It was soon shortened to ‘mob’. Over the following decades, Londoners started to use the ‘slang’ neologism to describe urban disorder. 

The connotation of ‘political’ unrest may be a relatively recent one, but rioting had long been a facet of urban life. Londoners were used to social havoc in the metropolis. The first manifestation of mob violence was caused by the imposition of the poll tax in 1381. The revolt took place in the dark aftermath of the Black Death epidemic of the late 1340s which had devastating socio-economic consequences both in rural and urban parts of the country. 

Rioters rebelled against the landowning classes and Richard II’s government. Laying siege to the Tower of London, they murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Treasurer of England and numerous lawyers and Royal servants. The Peasant’s Revolt began in Essex in May 1381. Unrest spread quickly through the county and then into Kent. In June Wat Tyler joined the uprising in Maidstone and assumed leadership of the Kentish rebels. He marched his men into London and left a trail of destruction behind him. His men burned Savoy Palace, home of the hated John of Gaunt (Ghent), fourth son of Edward III and Philippa of Hainault, who took his name from the Duke of Brabant, his godfather and one of Edward’s allies in the Low Countries. 

Bringing the riot to an end proved difficult and the rebellion appeared to be out of control. A horde of drunken men went in search of immigrants and a massacre took place in the neighbourhood of St Martin’s Vintry. The riot turned into a lynch party long before the word ‘lynching’ was entered into the dictionary. The spirit of rebellion lasted all summer. 

The violence in London was related by the anonymous author of the Anonimalle Chronicle 1333 to 1381 in the following record: ‘whoever could catch any Fleming or other aliens of any nation, might cut off their heads … they went to the church of St Martin’s in the Vintry, and found therein thirty-five Flemings, whom they dragged outside and beheaded in the streets. On that day there were beheaded 140 or 160 persons. Then they took their way to the places of Lombards and other aliens, and broke into their houses, and robbed them of all their goods that they could discover’.

Jack Straw was a leading figure in the London riots who was later executed for his involvement. In The Nun’s Priest’s Tale Geoffrey Chaucer (whose father lived locally) refers to the massacre of Flemings by Straw’s gang:

Jack Straw and all his followers in their brawl | Were never half so shrill, for all their noise, | When they were murdering those Flemish boys.

One of the victims was the wine merchant and land-owning financier Richard Lyons. He owed a large house in Thames Street, a narrow riverside street in Vintry, which contained grand residences of courtiers and merchants. The street represented authority and foreign influence. Of Flemish descent, Lyons was killed in Cheapside on June 13, 1381, and his head was carried around the city on a pole. 

One of the victims was the wine merchant and land-owning financier Richard Lyons. He owed a large house in Thames Street, a narrow riverside street in Vintry, which contained grand residences of courtiers and merchants. The street represented authority and foreign influence. Of Flemish descent, Lyons was killed in Cheapside on June 13, 1381, and his head was carried around the city on a pole. 

Dozens of Flemings were dragged from their dwellings and the sanctuary of city churches, beheaded and their bodies left to rot. Nobody was spared during that violent outburst, except those who could plainly pronounce the shibboleth ‘bread and cheese’. If their speech sounded anything like ‘brot and cawse’, off went their heads, as a sure mark they were Flemish. 

Jean Froissart was born in 1337 at Valenciennes, Hainault, which was then part of the Low Countries. Around 1360 he was employed by Philippa of Hainault, Queen Consort of Edward III, as court poet and historian. In his Chronicles he described Wat Tyler’s rebellion and the violence against immigrants. 

A lavishly illustrated edition of his account was commissioned by Louis of Gruuthuuse, a nobleman within the Burgundian court and bibliophile from Bruges, who was awarded the title of Earl of Winchester by Edward IV in 1472. The four volumes contain 112 splendid miniatures, including images of Richard II meeting the rebels and the murder of Wat Tyler, in the style of Flemish illuminator Loiset Liédet. The London cityscape figures splendidly in the background of both scenes. It is a bitter irony that one of the bloodiest moments in London’s history of xenophobia helped to bring about what is arguably the capital’s most superbly illustrated book.

This is a chapter from European Londoners. Get a free digital copy from the complete book. Mail: p.dijstelberge@me.com and we will send you one!

William Caxton was the first person to publish a book in English. He realised the intellectual and commercial potentials of the new printing technology while working as a merchant in the Low Countries and Germany. Around 1475, he set up his own press in London.
Born in Kent in the early 1420s, William was sent to London as a teenager and apprenticed to Robert Large, a successful merchant. He was soon trading in the Low Countries where he lived for thirty years. For four of those years, under the patronage of Edward IV, he acted as Governor of the Merchant Adventurers at Bruges, protecting economic interests of the English government and his fellow merchants.
Bruges at the time was the commercial centre of Northern Europe, with traders coming from as far as the Middle East. Caxton sold English woollen cloth and bought foreign luxury goods for import to England. In his official capacity he negotiated trade agreement with the city’s rulers, the Dukes of Burgundy.
In 1471, Caxton moved to Cologne. A university city and emerging trading centre, it was the printing headquarters of north-west Germany. Working in the office of Johann Schilling, he acquired first-hand knowledge of how books were produced. For his first Cologne imprints, Caxton used type that had been created by Johan Veldener in the ‘learned’ Gothic-style handwriting that was in general use at universities.

Caxton was a translator and publisher rather than a printer. While still in Bruges, he had made a start on an English translation of Raoul Le Fèvre’s Recueil des Histoires de Troye, a set of stories on the Trojan Wars. In 1472 he returned to Bruges where he presented the finished manuscript to the Duchess of Burgundy. Three years later he set up his own press and soon after published the first printed book in English entitled Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye in a type designed by local craftsmen to match the handwriting of the manuscripts.
In 1476 he returned to London, bringing with him the type needed to set up his own printing press at Westminster. The venture proved an instant success. Caxton published around a hundred books, several of them his own translations of French originals. Wynkyn de Worde, working as an apprentice to Johannes Veldener in Cologne, met William Caxton on his visit to the city in 1471 and joined him in Bruges. When Caxton installed his printing press near Westminster Abbey, Wynke accompanied him. During the latter’s career as a printer his name appears in a number of variant forms, but his Christian name was most likely Wynkyn, whilst Worde indicates his family’s origin in Woerden in the Netherlands. On Caxton’s death in 1492 Wynkyn took over the business.

Using his former employer’s device, fonts and woodcuts, he rapidly expanded the publishing house. In 1500 he moved the business to St Bride’s, Fleet Street, to exploit the mercantile patronage of the City. Located close to a tavern named the Swan, he used the imprimateur ‘emprynted at the sign of the Swan in Fletestrete’.
Wynkyn turned away from printing the Court material Caxton favoured and concentrated on religious and educational works instead. Collaborating with many of outstanding grammarians of his day, he acted as their publisher. He also maintained contacts with the Low Countries and fellow immigrants. He was associated with the York printer Hugo Goes and employed a number of men with Dutch sounding names such as Robert Maas and others.
Book historians tend to present Caxton as a literary scholar, whilst considering Wynkyn as a mere artisan. With the wide variety of books he published (some 800 in total) in mind and the vision he showed in expanding the business, this seems a rather crude simplification.
Considering the fact that England had fallen behind in developing the new technology, it is not surprising that printers from the Continent filled the gap in the market. William de Machlinia was born in Malines (Mechelen) in the Low Countries. Having settled in London, he assisted John Lettou (the name is an old form of Lithuania, but whether the printer came from there is not known).
In 1481, Lettou and Machlinia printed the first book on English property law. Written by Thomas Littleton, it was entitled Treatise on Tenures. The work was written in a peculiar dialect compounded of Norman French and phrases in English known as ‘law French’. Although Edward III had laid down by statute that viva voce proceedings in court should not take place in French, a language that was ‘much unknown in the realm’, the practice however lingered on for some considerable time. It became officially prohibited by a statute passed during the Commonwealth of 1650.

Between 1483 and 1490 Machlinia issued at least twenty-four books as a sole printer, none of those are dated, though some contain his name and place of printing, i.e. London (Fleet Bridge and Holborn). He was responsible for the printing of Pope Innocent III’s bull, granting dispensation for the marriage of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York in March 1486.
The very first book with an attempt at a title-page is the Sermo ad populum predicabilis by Arnold Therhoernen. The sermon was printed at Cologne in 1470, but a full title-page was not generally adopted till half a century later. Around 1482, Machlinia printed the first book in England that contains a title-page. Written by Canutus, Bishop of Aarhaus, its title reads as A passing gode lityll boke necessarye & helpefull agenst the Pestilence. It is interesting to note how quickly the art of printing was promoted by the authorities to highlight matters of social concern. London printing almost immediately became a tool in the fight against the plague.
Machlinia either retired or died around 1490 and his business seems to have been taken over by Richard Pynson (a native of Normandy), who used Machlinia’s woodcut borders and other materials. Thanks to the presence of the printing industry, the taverns of Fleet Street became central to London’s literary and intellectual life. The street itself and the surrounding area long maintained the link between journalistic writing, printing and drinking. One of the most famous of the pubs where both ‘hack and inky’ – journalist and printer – used to drink was the Printer’s Devil (slang for a printer’s apprentice) at Fetter Street.
Fleet Street remained the home of British national newspapers until the 1980s and continues to be used as a metonym for the press in the country. The link with the Continent was there from beginning to end. Having moved to Fleet Street in 1939, the Reuters agency was the last major British news office to leave the area for Canary Wharf in 2005. Reuters was founded in 1851 by Kassel-born Julius de Reuter, a German Jewish immigrant.