Legal Printing in London
An essay by Lotte Hellinga
The first book printed in London, dated 1480, is a work of great learning, a Latin commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle, financed by the draper William Wilcock: Antonius Andreae, Quaestiones super XII libros Metaphysicae Aristotelis [JRL R85580 (4 leaves only), ISTC ia00581000]. Wilcock was apparently planning to compete with the import trade, much as at the same time was happening in Oxford. He financed in the following year the publication of one other equally scholarly work, but then abandoned the idea even faster than the printers at Oxford.
The printer of these two books (and of a few letters of indulgence) went in London by the name of Johannes Lettou. He may be the same Johannes who worked in the previous years in Rome, mainly for the papal Curia. His small books include several orations [JRL 2864.24, .30, and .48, ISTC ih00129000, ir00028450, im00825500]. In Rome, he used the same printing type that later appeared in London, but the printer’s name that appears in the books in Rome is ‘Johannes Bulle de Bremen’. He may have been an itinerant printer who was not able to set up an independent printing house, either in Rome or in London, but we cannot be entirely sure if the two forms of imprint were indeed used by the same man. Apart from the colophons in the books Johannes Lettou printed in London, we also know his name from a register of aliens, in which he is recorded as head of a household of German printers living in the City in what is now Lower Thames Street.
A member of this household was William de Machlinia, with whom Lettou formed a partnership in about 1481–2. Their first publication was the Abbreviamentum statutorum [JRL 15394.1, ISTC ia00003000], a handbook for lawyers that contained summaries of the laws of the land, alphabetically arranged by subject. The partners published in the following years at least five books of the common law. They include two editions of Sir Thomas Littleton, Tenores novelli, in 1482–3 and 1484 [JRL 15394.2 and JRL 14705, ISTC il00232000, il00233000]. Their final joint publication was a full edition of the parliamentary statutes from the reign of Edward II, Nova statuta, during the printing of which Lettou is thought to have died [JRL 14582, ISTC is00702000]. William de Machlinia continued the business alone for another few years. His publications included an edition of the statutes promulgated by the only parliament of Richard III in 1484–5, which may be understood to be an early use of the printing press for an official publication [JRL 15839, ISTC is00704000].
With the publication of the five works between 1481 and 1485, the two printers and the lawyers of the Inns of Court in London had found a shared interest. The literature supporting the English common law was written in the specialist language developed from Norman French, which is called Law French. Typesetting text in this language, and managing the abbreviations peculiar to it, required specialist skills. In addition, the cooperation of lawyers for selecting and providing manuscripts for texts to be published and for proofreading was essential, and at least one court case is documented in which printers and lawyers disputed the execution of arrangements, which should have been of mutual benefit.
The Abbreviamentum statutorum and several of the books that followed were printed with a poor casting of the small version of Caxton’s Flemish type, in combination with a contrasting type for headlines that he had also obtained from Flanders. Only the two printing enterprises in Oxford escaped Caxton’s influence in the early years of printing in England.
There was an old tradition for legal books, manuscript and print, to be richly decorated. Lettou and De Machlinia made a gesture for honouring this tradition, for many copies of their books are decorated with red and blue initials, all drawn by the same well-intentioned but unskilled hand.
In or around 1486 De Machlinia disappeared. Subsequently a succession of printers settled, one after the other, in the vicinity of the law-courts and the Inns of Court, in Fleet Street and in Holborn. They found reliable income from other sources, notably schools and the church, but printing law books remained a substantial part of the gradually expanding printing industry in the City of London.
