Page:A Catalogue of the Birmingham Collection - 1918.pdf/16

x Many deeds referring to the history of these establishments are in the Library, and chief among them the two deeds relating to the foundation of St. John's Church, documents of almost unique interest, having few parallels in the ecclesiastical history of our country.

The invention of printing in the middle of the fifteenth century is a landmark of vital significance in the history of human life, and though it preceded the foundation of the Birmingham Public Library by four hundred years, the two events stand in the relation of cause and effect. In its earlier advances our city had no share. Birmingham with all its energies was a quiet and secluded place. It stood upon one only highroad, and that not an important one. It had no great house, no ecclesiastical foundation of any magnitude, no school of note, and was of no account as a military position. It was probably centuries after the invention of printing before it possessed a single printing press, yet it is intimately connected with one of the most important books ever issued from the press. John Rogers, a Deritend man, who presumably worshipped at St. John's and was educated at the school of the Deritend Gild, became the coadjutor of Tyndale in his translation of the Bible into English. After the treacherous arrest and execution of Tyndale, Rogers completed the preparation of the book, bore its cost, and under the assumed name of Matthew, published it at Antwerp in 1537. For a short time, this was the first really complete English Bible authorised by Government, and when the troublous days of Mary came, Rogers became the first martyr to fall by her persecutions. A fine copy of this notable book is among our treasures.

The first book known to have been printed with special reference to Birmingham is Nye's Almanack for 1642,

and Nye himself was in all probability a Birmingham man. In that year the Civil War broke out, and three separate tracts were published describing the assault on Birmingham by Prince Rupert and the partial destruction of the town.

Thomas Hall must also be mentioned as a man who wrote books in Birmingham but had them printed elsewhere. He was a militant puritan, well known in his day and somewhat of an extreme partisan, but a lover of learning. At one time he was lecturer at St. Martin's, and then Perpetual Curate of King's Norton, and in both places he diligently fostered the formation of public libraries. That which belonged to Kings Norton is now carefully preserved on the shelves of our library.

The date at which the art of printing actually began to be practised in our town cannot be definitely stated, but it was probably long before any book was produced here. In his Life of Johnson, Boswell remarks that "Warren was the first established bookseller in Birmingham," and adds that "there was [before his time] not even one in Birmingham, in which old Mr. Johnson used to open a shop every market day," to which Macaulay gratuitously adds that not a Bible or an almanack could be purchased in 1685, yet as already stated an almanack had been specially compiled for Birmingham nearly half a century before. From whom Boswell acquired his information it is impossible to say, but certainly it was not from Johnson, whose own uncle was a bookseller here for thirty years. These statements were not only false, but even absurd. The names of no less than seven booksellers in Birmingham before 1717 have been recorded in Mr. Joseph Hill's admirable work, The Book Makers of Old Birmingham. Thomas Hall's well known book The Font guarded with XX Arguments was printed in London for a Birmingham bookseller in 1652. Three of these booksellers appear in the old Church Books of the district as having provided Prayer Books, Psalm Books and Bibles. An excellent engraving of a Newcomen Engine is in the Boulton and Watt Collection in the Reference Library. This, from a copy in the Salt Library, Stafford, appears to have been printed and engraved by Henry Butler in New Street, 1719. One does not so much blame Boswell for his item of