The Paper Makers of the Age
By
Lochithea ©April, 2009

Mrs. Constance Mary Fearon Pott, in her Francis Bacon and his Secret Society, began tracing the origins and their similarities of emblems and in particular to the emblem of the double AA on title pages in Bacon’s time, at various libraries. Even though her research brought fruit for publication, she still remained with some unanswered questions that will be challenged in this article.

The following research has been based on Pott’s questionnaire, and answered, where possible, below.

Pott’s Question 1:
Which were the very earliest paper-mills in England?

“Paper,” observed Fuller (Worthies, Vol. I., p. 224, ed. Nuttall) “is entered as a manufacture of Cambridgeshire because there are mills nigh Sturbridge fair, where paper was made in the memory of our fathers. Pity the making thereof is disused, considering the vast sums yearly expended in our land for paper out of Italy, France, and Germany, which might be lessened were it made in our nation.”

Paper manufactures early became a very flourishing product in France, and the paper-makers in that country soon excelled their neighbours in the art, and were therefore enabled to export considerable quantities, which increased so much yearly, that in 1658 two million francs in value was exported to Holland alone; and it provided Spain, England, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, but chiefly Holland, and the Levant, with paper for printing and waiting; and as to the 1800’s twenty-five thousand reams were annually exported to Switzerland and Germany.

But at this time the art of paper-making had arrived at a great degree of perfection in England and Holland, whereby the export from France was so much reduced, that, of four hundred paper-mills in two provinces, three hundred were discontinued. (Joel Munsell. Chronology of the Origin and Progress of Paper and Paper-Making, Ed. 5, 1876).

In 1558, Churchyard’s Spark of Friendship was first printed this year, and mentions the paper-mill of Spilman, which is often quoted as the first paper-mill in England under the date of 1588.

In 1562, a work printed in this year mentions a paper-mill at Fen Ditton, near Cambridge, England.

Around 1588, Nicholas, in his Progresses of Queen Elizabeth., gives a poem with the following title “A Description and Playne Discourse of Paper, and the whole Benefits that Paper brings, with Rehearsall, and setting foorth in Verse a Paper-myll built near Darthforth, by a high Germaine, called Master Spilman, Jeweller to the Queene’s Majestie.” This is supposed to have been the second paper-mill in England, and is often mentioned as the first. It was erected by a German named Spielman, or Spilman, in reward of which he received from Elizabeth the honour of Knighthood in 1591. A document in the Land Revenue Records of England, reads: “Fenclifton, Co. Cambridge; lease of a water mill called paper-mills, late of the bishopric of Ely, to John George, dated 14th July, 34th Eliz.” This is evidence of a third paper mill in England at this time.

Master Spilman, 1 Jeweller to the Queen’s Majesty 2
By
Thomas Churchyard
(Then) he that made for us a paper-mill,
Is worthy well of love and world’s good will,
And though his name be Spill-man, by degree,
Yet Help-man now, he shall be called by me.
Six hundred men are set at work by him,
That else might starve, or seek abroad their bread;
Who now live well, and go full brave and trim,
And who may boast they are with paper fed.
A high Germaine he is, as may be proved,
In Lyndoam Bodenze, borne and bred,
And for this mill, may here be truly loved,
And praised, too, for deep device of head.

Shakespeare, in 2 Henry VI., (the plot of which is laid at least a century previously), refers to a paper-mill. In fact, he introduces it as an additional weight to the charge which Jack Cade brings against Lord Saye.

An earlier trace of the manufacture in England occurs in a book printed in 1493. (De Proprietalibus Rerum, Wynken de Wordes, edition 1493) And then by Caxton, about the year 1490, in which it is said of John Tate: “Which late hath in England do make thy paper thine. That now in our English this book is printed in.” His mill was situate at or near Stevenage, in Hertfordshire; and that it was considered worthy of notice is evident from an entry made in Henry VII’s Household Book, on May 25, 1498: “For a reward given at the paper mill, 16s. 3d.” And again in 1499: “Given in reward to Tate of the mill, 6s. 3d.”

Tate died in 1514. Still, it appears far less probable that Shakespeare alluded to Tate’s mill (although established at a period corresponding in many respects with that of occurrences referred to in connection) than to that of Sir John Spielman.

We may conclude that the very earliest paper-mills in England went far back as 1490, 1493, and 1498.


1 Also spelt Spielmann

2 Notes & Queries, No. 59, 1850

Pott’s Question 2:
To whom did they belong?

John Tate is the most probable owner of these early English paper-mills (1490 and 1498) as seen from Henry VII’s Household Book above-mentioned.

Pott’s Question 3:
What were the watermarks on the paper produced there?

Our search has brought up the Chronology of paper making.

Pott’s Question 4:
Which was the first printed book for which the paper was made in England?

As to the origin of the various book sizes must always remain more or less shrouded in obscurity, so to the first printed book for which the paper was made in England. But it may be added that the first quarto is supposed to date from 1465; the octavo format appeared in 1470; the 12mo in 1472, and Jensen published the first 32mo in Venice in 1473. It is claimed that Aldus was the first to use the octavo format for his Virgil in 1500.

With reference to any particular time or place the first printed book for which the paper was made in England, all researches into existing records contribute little. The greater bulk of the books published in England from 1576 to 1626 are known only to book collectors and second-hand booksellers, and their contents remain unexplored. Few of them have been reprinted and copies of the original editions are rare.

In 1576 to an Englishman to whom “education had not given more languages than nature tongues” there were no channels through which he could obtain a general knowledge of the antiquities, the histories and geography of other countries or of his own, the customs of their people, their art, and what then passed for science. There were translations of only a few of the classics available. France, Italy and Spain were better supplied. But in 1626 all this was altered, and from books printed in English more knowledge and information could be obtained than from the combined Literatures of those countries.

In the Proheme to a little volume, entitled Of that Knowledge which maketh a Wise Man A Disputation Platonike (1536), Sir Thomas Eliot states that in writing The Governor, he intended to augment our English tongue, “whereby men should as well express more abundantly the thing that they conceived in their hearts (wherefore language was ordained) having words apt for the purpose; as also interpreted out of Greek, Latin, or any other tongue into English, as sufficiently, as out of any one of the said tongues into another.” The Members of the Pléiade adopted the same method in advancing the French language to a condition capable of expressing the highest emotions and thoughts. Now, either intentionally or as a natural consequence, the production of this literature in England had a similar effect on the English language. In 1576 it may be described as barbaric. Before 1626 and the plays of Shakespeare and The Authorized Version of the Bible had been produced, examples which Professor Saintsbury says “will ever be the twin monuments, not merely of their own period, but of the perfection of English, the complete expressions of the literary capacities of the languages.” There are other circumstances, which suggest a superintending direction in the production of these books. The movement of the work from printer to printer: Henry Bynneman, George Bishop and Richard Field were at first employed, then Adam Islip and George Eld became active, and at the end of the period William Jaggard and John Haviland were the chief producers.

The oldest manuscript in England written upon cotton paper, is in the Bodleian collection of the British Museum, having this date. >>See Chronology of Paper

Pott’s Question 5:
From what foreign mills did our English printers import paper?

The Moors, who were the paper-makers of Spain, having been expelled by the Spaniards, the latter, acquainted with water mills improved the manufacture so as to produce a paper from cotton nearly equal to that made of linen rags. It is not known when cotton paper was introduced into England, but it appears that its use continued until the latter part of the fourteenth century, when it was gradually supplanted by linen paper, which began to be used in 1342.

Harold Bayley, in his A New Light on Renaissance is of interest: “The history of early papermaking is believed to have been introduced into Europe either from the East by returning Crusaders, or from the Moors, perhaps through Spain or Sicily, who were strongholds of the heretical sects known as the Albigenses.”

The word “Albigenses” is a term applied loosely to the various pre-Reformation reformers whose strongholds stretched from Northern Spain across the southern provinces of France to Lombardy and Tuscany. In Spain and France they were known as Albigenses from Albi the name of one of their prominent towns. In the Alpine provinces they were called Waldenses, from Peter Waldo, one of their most conspicuous members.

Bayley briefly explains the production of a watermark: “A watermark is a device produced by fastening the desired design in strong wire on to the bottom of the mould. The pulp takes the impress of this projecting wire and the result remains visible in the finished sheet.”

Pott’s Question 6:
At what date did the papers with the hand and the pot receive the distinctive additions which, for want of a better name, was termed Baconian?

The pitcher or pot is impressed not only on the private letters of Francis and Anthony Bacon or perhaps it is safer to say, of the Bacon family and their confidential correspondents, but on the pages of nearly every English edition of works acknowledged as “Bacon’s” published before the eighteenth century.

There are certain accessories to the Baconian pitchers, one at least being always present. Sometimes there are two handles distinctly formed, as SS; often on the body of the pot are letters they maybe initials, as A B, and F B, often found in the correspondence of the brothers; or S S, Sanctum Sanctorum, etc.; R C, Rosy Cross; F or F F, Frater or Fratres; G G, Grand Geometrician God, according to Freemason books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries paper marks were used throughout the works which were the products of the Renaissance.

The Baconian pots have been found first in a book 1579–80, and not later than 1680 a period of one hundred years. They, like the rest of the marks, increase in size from about one inch to seven inches.

With Ben Jonson (1616) there are at least fifteen different forms of the pot, two of which are sometimes in one play. In Selderi’s History of Tithes (1618) the variations are as frequent. In Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) there are at least thirty half-pitchers, no two of which seem to be alike. “Again”, continues Pott, “we have not succeeded in finding any form of mark precisely repeated in books of different titles, editions, or dates.”

In letters in Baconian correspondence, written in rapid succession by the same person, the marks are found different, and on the other hand, different persons writing, the one from England and the other from abroad, occasionally used paper with precisely similar marks. It would seem that, in such cases, paper had been furnished to these correspondents from some private mill.

Pott’s Question 7:
In what books may we see the very latest examples of the candlesticks, the grapes, and the pot in the paper?

“One of the most important and interesting phases in connection with printers’ marks,” says Mr. W. Roberts, the most recent writer on this subject, “is undoubtedly the motif of the pictorial embellishments. Both the precise origin and the object of many marks are now lost to us.” He also adds, “We do not propose offering any kind of explanation for these singular marks.”

Not only do we find printers using a variety of designs in the same books, but identical emblems were used by different printers and it is recorded throughout the history of printing, that a trademark is the immediate jewel of a craftsman’s soul, and it is difficult to reconcile the employment in common of certain marks with the theory that they were “nothing more or less” than trade devices. Arrangements seem to have been made for systematic circuits. “Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased,” said Francis Bacon, and this was a popular motto frequently employed by other authors of the day.

In 1539, a favorite paper-mark of this time was the jug or pot, and is supposed to have originated the term pot paper. Thefool's cap was of a later date, and has given place in England to the figure of Britannia. In 1540, Henry VIII., of England, in the wildness of his hatred of the Pope, used for his correspondence a paper of which the water-mark was a hog with a mitre. Was it intentional of Sir Nicholas Bacon, in 1574 to create and register his family motto with the boar, that would tie Henry VIII's legacy with Francis Bacon's royal birth?

See more in the Chronology of paper making.