John Streater was a soldier, printer, and political pamphleteer. He was born in Lewes and apprenticed to the printer Robert Hoskins on 4 Aug 1635. Streater’s apprenticeship was disrupted by the breakout of the English Civil War and he left printing to join the parliamentary army, only returning when he was wounded in combat. Streater therefore did not gain the freedom of the Company until 1644. He quickly thereafter rejoined the parliamentary army and served three years in Ireland. In London once again in 1653, Streater turned pamphleteer to protest Cromwell’s dissolution of the Rump Parliament. Inspired by great republican thinkers, like John Milton and James Harrington, Streater’s polemical pamphlets saw him imprisoned for a period. From 1660, he focused on building up his printing house, having as many as five presses at one time and his appeal to serve parliament as printer saw him rewarded with an exemption from the 1662 Printing Act. Streater spent the Restoration period working with Richard Atkyns to secure a patent for printing law books in defiance of the Stationers’ Company monopoly. Years of hard work came to nought and Streater died in debtors’ prison in 1677. Both his widow Susan and son Joseph continued the printing business and proved further nuisances to the authorities.
Taylor was bound to bookseller Thomas Mathews on 2 March 1640 and freed 7 May 1649. Despite serving as Beadle for nearly twenty years (1674-1692), Taylor was a controversial figure in the Company. He was frequently reprimanded for rude and abusive behaviour, particularly to the Master. As Beadle, Taylor was heavily involved in the legal proceedings of the Company. In 1681, the practice of disfranchising the Beadle so that they might appear as a witness in legal cases involving the Company was introduced. He was also active in search and seizure duties. Plomer has Taylor still in business as late as 1700.
In 1603, King James VI & I issued letters patent to the Stationers’ Company for printing and publishing almanacks, psalters, primers, and some schoolbooks. These works were in perpetual demand and so formed the lucrative basis for a joint stock company, known as the English Stock.
The formation of the stock had two nominal purposes: to provide work for printers ostracised by former divisive printing monopolies, and to provide pensions for the Company’s poor members. Members of the Company were entitled to purchase shares, the number and value of which depended upon their rank within the Company. With a near guaranteed return year on year and often large dividend percentages, competition for stock shares were fierce. The limited number of shares, only 105 on the creation of the stock, meant only a fraction of the Company was sharing in these profits. Over the centuries, there were various challenges to the stock’s monopoly, with one of the more notable cases recorded in the archive coming from printer Thomas Carnan.
The Stock was dissolved in 1961. Partner shares were replaced with life annuities.
Although Thompson’s personal faith has never been confirmed, he is remembered as a major printer and publisher of Catholic texts in the seventeenth century. Born in Ireland in the 1640s, Thompson was apprenticed to Dublin bookseller, and former lord mayor, William Bladen. By 1668, he had moved to London and was freed of the Stationers’ Company in 1669. Between 1672 and 1678, Thompson partnered with fellow printer Thomas Ratcliffe, whose daughter, Mary Daniel he married (widow of Thomas Daniel). Together, Thompson and Ratcliffe engaged in the printing of dissenting religious works, which practice Thompson continued after leaving Ratcliffe for new premises in Fetter Lane. Mary Thompson, a professed Catholic, was notedly active in these aspects of the business too. Thompson’s career was marked by a string of conflicts, imprisonments and examinations for printing Catholic devotional texts and tracts. In 1680, he was even arrested for treason, though the charges were later dropped. Leading Tory publisher, With his newssheet, the True Domestick Intelligence, he became known as the leading Tory publisher of the age. The Thompsons experienced a reversal of fortunes following the accession of James II and though Thompson died in 1687, first his widow, and then his stepdaughter and her husband, Mary and David Edwards, continued the printing business.
Tonson served his apprenticeship to stationer Thomas Basset and was freed 7 January 1678. During the early years of his career, he published works jointly with his brother Richard Tonson. Jacob Tonson’s first major publishing success was John Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel (1681). He soon bought up the rights to Dryden’s earlier works and became his exclusive publisher. Other major writers published by Tonson include Aphra Behn and the Earl of Rochester. Tonson and Dryden collaborated on a highly successful series of anthologies, including Ovid’s Epistles (1680) and Plutarch’s Lives, but also poetry miscellanies which featured Dryden’s own poems alongside budding new writers, such as the young Alexander Pope from 1709. Tonson’s impeccable eye for literary quality was demonstrated again when he purchased the rights for Milton’s Paradise Lost. In 1686, he was promoted to Company liveryman. Publishing work aside, Tonson was engaged in political affairs and was a founding member of the Kit-Cat Club, a famed but exclusive group of Whig politicians. His nephew, Jacob Tonson the younger, worked at and inherited the Tonson business.
Apprenticed first to William Middleton (d. 1547), and subsequently to William Powell, Tottell was made free of the Stationers' Company on 19 January 1552. In 1553, he acquired a printing privilege (exclusive right to print) for common law books, which was subsequently extended for his lifetime. Tottell's name appeared on the charter of incorporation granted to the Stationers' Company in 1557. In that year, he printed a collection of early Tudor court poetry entitled 'Songes and Sonettes'. Now better known as 'Tottell's Miscellany', it was reprinted at least eight times before 1600, and was one of the titles whose publication rights were yielded by Tottell to the company in 1584 to contribute to the Company's charitable obligation to its poorer members. He translated his business success into extensive land acquisition, buying land in Middlesex, Buckinghamshire and Pembrokeshire.
Jacqueline and Thomas Vautrollier arrived in London as Huguenot refugees from France. They set up as printers in London in the 1560s. Jacqueline played an active role in the Vautrollier printing business. When her husband Thomas was working in Edinburgh, she ran their printing house back in London. Despite the Vautrolliers not being free of the Stationers’ Company through special permissions and patents, even after Thomas’s death, they maintained a steady flow of publications. In 1588, the widowed Jacqueline is reported to have printed a Greek New Testament and Martin Luther’s Commentarie on Galatians. In 1589, Vautrollier married her husband’s former apprentice, Richard Field. She was therefore likely involved in the impressive line of works known to be produced by Field at this time, including the poems of William Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser.
Vautrollier arrived in London as one of the many Huguenot exiles fleeing France in the late sixteenth century. He received his letters of denization in 1562 and was later admitted to the Stationers’ Company in 1564 as a ‘brother’, rather than a freeman (reflecting his status as a foreigner). Vautrollier occupied a particular niche in the English book trade, offering translations of French books, and his printing exhibiting the sophisticated French style yet to reach England. His Protestant leanings were evident in his printing work, with publications including the writings of noted theologians such as Martin Luther and Edmund Bunny. Vautrollier secured patents in 1573 and 1574 for various Latin texts, including works by Cicero, Ovid, and Beza. He fled London for Scotland briefly in the 1580s, after printing the writings of Giordano Bruno induced the wrath of the Privy Council. Here, he supplied books to the young James VI. Vautrollier returned to London in 1585 and died in 1587, leaving the printing business to his wife Jacqueline, who had managed their printing affairs in London during Thomas’s time in Scotland.
Wolfe was born and trained in the book trade in the Netherlands. He came to England around 1533, using his former European contacts to bring continental publications to the English market. Wolfe had powerful connections at court, including Thomas Cranmer and Anne Boleyn, the latter of whom intervened to have him admitted a freeman of the Stationer’s Company in 1536. His early printing exploits included schoolbooks and the writings of John Leland. In 1547, he was appointed King’s Printer in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew to the new King Edward VI and also acted as King’s bookseller and stationer. Edward’s reign saw the pinnacle of Wolfe’s business as he expanded into publishing vernacular evangelical works, particularly those of his patron Thomas Cranmer. Wolfe successfully weathered the reign of the Catholic Mary I and under Elizabeth his presses returned to constant work. His name appeared seventh in the Stationers’ Company’s letters of incorporation and he served four times as Master of the Company in 1559, 1564, 1567, and 1572.