Printers old, new, and recycled

Two extant books dated 1535 identify Wynkyn de Worde as their printer. We cannot be certain that they were unfinished on the morning of 1 January, because anticipatory dating was always common in December. Nor can we be sure that de Worde was still alive when the last forme of each book came off the press, because they might only have been started before he died. But his will was not proved until 19 January, so it is quite possible that he survived a few days into the new year. And thus ended the longest and most prolific printing career of the age. His house at the sign of the Sun passed to his executors, John Byddell and James Gaver – probably in equal shares, although their subsequent careers seem to have remained separate. Byddell closed down his short-lived establishment beside Fleet Bridge and came back to run his former master's printing house in his own name; Gaver took out letters of denization on 2 March, but the only book known to have borne his name is a variant of a Stanbridge grammar printed by John Herford. And yet in the subsidy roll for April 1537 the two were jointly assessed at £120 as the ‘executours to wylkyn de worde’, then consecutively assessed at £50 each in 1541 and £30 each in 1544. The loss of a printer of de Worde's stature left a large space to be filled, and the next seven years saw one retired printer return to the fray, one provincial printer relocate to London, and no fewer than thirteen new master printers set up in the metropolitan area. The result was not, however, the creation of fifteen additional printing houses, because four of the newcomers merely took over existing presses and five ended their brief careers before 1542. A rather more important statistic is that two of those fifteen printers were aliens, at least six (and perhaps nine) were freemen of other London companies, while only four are known to have been Stationers.