BOUND BY JOHN BATEMAN?
[BOOK OF COMMON ORDER.]
[The CL Psalms of David in Metre, with the Prose. For the Use of Kirk of Scotland …]
[Middelburgh, Richard Schilders, 1602.]
8vo, pp. [16], 75, 74-225, [1], 466, [6], 126, wanting the title-page and the first leaf of the calendar (A1-2), and the final leaf (h8); ‘The Psalmes of David in Metre’ and ‘The Catechisme or Maner to Teach Children the Christian Religion’ (STC 4388) have separate title-pages and pagination (woodcut device of the king at prayer to title of Psalms, woodcut device of a printer’s workshop to title of Catechism); rather shaken, bound in contemporary calf, covers tooled with an elaborate central cartouche within a field of small acorns, the central oval containing the initials ‘CML’, cornucopia corner-pieces, gauffered edges, remains of clasps; rather worn and scraped, the gilding almost entirely absent, spine chipped and worn at head and foot, front joint cracked.
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[The CL Psalms of David in Metre, with the Prose. For the Use of Kirk of Scotland …]
A substantial fragment, the main text largely complete, of an attractive Dutch printing of the Scottish Book of Common Order. Originally drawn up by John Knox in Geneva for the use of the English-speaking congregations there, the liturgy known as the Book of Common Order quickly made its way back to Scotland where it was made official in 1562 and expanded into its lasting form in 1564. It was normally published, as here, alongside the Sternhold and Hopkins version of the metrical psalms, and a translation of Calvin’s Catechisme de l’Eglise de Genève; there were editions in Edinburgh, Geneva, and Middelburg in the sixteenth century, and a few in Aberdeen in the seventeenth.
There were strong links between the Scottish and Dutch churches throughout the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-centuries – both churches had more resolutely Calvinist tendencies than the Church of England. This was the second of two editions published in Middelburg, where Richard Schilders had established the first press in 1568, having formerly been a journeyman printer in exile in London. He printed numerous works for English Puritan refugees, who had a significant congregation in the city. The first Middelburg edition had appeared in 1594 (seven copies in ESTC, at least five lacking the title-page (or more), either through heavy use or perhaps as a ruse to avoid immediate detection on import into the British Isles). The 1602 edition is also uncommon, with only four copies in the US: Columbia, Folger, NYPL and Princeton Theological Seminary.
The royal bookbinder John Bateman (made free in 1580 and active until the late 1620s), probably worked for the so-called ‘MacDurnan Gospels Binder’ (d. 1580s?), and appears to have inherited his tools as well as his house style – ornate centre-pieces, surrounded by a field of small tools, and a variety of corner-pieces including cornucopias. The cornucopia tools here seem to derive from those used by the MacDurnan Gospels binder (K1 and K2 in Mirjam Foot’s essay ‘The MacDurnan Gospels Binder and John Bateman’, The Henry Davis Gift I), or from his French model, but are not identical. The other features are also strongly reminiscent of Bateman but we have been unable to find exactly corresponding tools.
STC 16589.
