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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Stephens was apprenticed to London Stationer and printer Thomas Ratcliffe on 5 April 1658. He completed his apprenticeship in 1666 and worked briefly as a journeyman printer. Stephens was elected to the Livery of the Stationers’ Company in 1682 to general outrage, in a move by the Stationers’ Company to manipulate Lord Mayor elections. He rose to notoriety as a 'Messenger of the Press', simultaneously serving the office of Secretary of State and enforcing the rights of the Stationers' Company to search and seizure. Midnight raids upon the premises of his colleagues, earned him the nickname of 'Robin Hog'. Stephens was known for his corruption, violence, and taking bribes. Stephens also served the Company as an all-round handyman. He was performing search and seizure duties from 1677, and first appeared with the title of Messenger in 1679. He was active as Messenger of the Press between 1679 and 1684, and again between 1689 and 1712.
Born in Leicestershire, Starkey served his apprenticeship to the bookseller John Sawywell from 1646 to 1655. He quickly established himself in a shop on Fleet Street, where he gained a reputation for publishing and selling the writings of controversial political theorists, such as George Lawson, James Harrington, and John Milton. Starkey’s single most significant publication was the first printed translation of Machiavelli’s Works in 1675. It has been suggested that Starkey himself was the translator, though it is more often attributed to Henry Neville (another of Starkey’s authors). His bookshop by Temple Bar was watched by authorities from as early as 1675, initially for Starkey’s alarming knowledge and news of parliamentary affairs, but by 1679 it had become meeting place for the Green Ribbon Club. In the fallout following the Rye House Plot, Starkey fled to Amsterdam, where he communed with radical thinkers again, including John Locke. In 1688, he assisted the Dutch campaign by publishing Williamite propaganda. Once returned to England, Starkey was chosen as an Assistant for the Stationers’ Company, but refused to take his seat when he was placed in the lowest place, which though appropriate as the newest Assistant, did not reflect his many years in the trade. He died shortly afterwards with the matter unresolved.
One of three daughters of the printers Andrew Sowle and Jane Sowle who went into the book trade, Tace Sowle inherited the management of the family printing house and her father’s post as printer to the Society of Friends. She was freed of the Stationers’ Company by patrimony in 1695. Tace Sowle’s tenure as head of the Sowle press was the most active and prolific period of the Sowle press. John Dunton also noted her skill as a compositor. Tace eventually married in 1706 but took precautions to retain her independence and family’s control of the press. She adopted the compound surname Sowle Raylton and appointed her mother, Jane Sowle, as nominal head of the Sowle press. Tace outlived her husband by over twenty years. She died in 1749 and was buried at Bunhill Fields. For fifty-eight years she was the important Quaker printer in Britain.
Andrew Sowle was the most prolific printer of Quaker works in late seventeenth-century England. Three of his daughters went on to become Quaker printers too, in both London and Pennsylvania. Sowle served his apprenticeship to the widow Ruth Raworth 1646-1653. Although Sowle’s name does not appear in any imprints until 1680, he was printing for the Society of Friends from at least 1672. Sowle faced imprisonment and persecution as both a Quaker and an illicit printer. Undeterred, he printed over eighty works for the Society of Friends, including the writings of George Fox, Robert Barclay, George Whitehead, Isaac Pennington, and William Penn. He died at home in Shoreditch in 1695, leaving his printing business to his wife and daughter Tace.
Scott was apprenticed to bookseller Daniel Frere in 1649 before then being turned over to William Wells in 1651. He attained the freedom of the Stationers’ Company in 1656. From 1661, for the duration of his career, Scott held shop at the Prince’s Arms in Little Britain. He was elected a liveryman in 1664. Scott’s publishing endeavours were done in partnership with the Wells family. However, he is best known as a bookseller, boasting clients such as Samuel Pepys, Robert Hooke and John Cosin. Scott was particularly noted for importing and personally retrieving scholarly Latin books from continental Europe for his customers. In 1681, the King saw that he was appointed to the Court of Assistants. Scott fined for all Company offices, including Master. He was the London agent of the Oxford University Press and Bodleian Library, to whom he arranged the sale of materials.
Sawbridge was born in Hilmorton, near Rugby. He served his apprenticeship to bookseller Edward Brewster 1638-1645, and shortly after attaining the freedom, married his master’s daughter, Hannah. On the death of Edward Brewster, Sawbridge succeeded him as Treasurer of the English Stock (1647). He was made a partner in the King’s Printing House after the Restoration. Sawbridge built immense wealth through investing in both the King’s Printing House and Company Stock and his estate was worth over £10,000 at the time of his death. His tenure as Treasurer was blighted slightly by a scandal involving the Cambridge printing house. In 1668, Sawbridge acted as executor for the resident printer at Cambridge, John Field’s, will, and disguised the fact he had bought Field’s printing materials and leasehold of the Cambridge printing house. He could not succeed to the Cambridge printing house and retain the Treasurership and so arranged for the printer John Hayes to manage the Cambridge printing house. His secret was not discovered until 1679, resulting in stricter auditing of accounts. Even then, it was not until 1690 that the University Printer became an English Stock employee rather than a Sawbridge servant.