Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/76

64 where and how he could, so that misprints crept in and were not rectified, while the whole production steadily deteriorated with every fresh edition.

Anyone would naturally suppose that after Ponder had held up Thomas Braddyl to the censure of the world as a 'land-pirate,' there could have been no possible business transactions between the two men, but the documents just found at the Record Office prove that this was not the case. They consist of Ponder's Bill of Complaint, Thomas Braddyl's reply, and the depositions of three booksellers called on Ponder's behalf in a suit which he began against Braddyl in the Court of Chancery in 1697.

Ponder begins by saying that in the year 1688, being a freeman of the Company of Stationers, and by his rights as a freeman being the sole possessor of the copyright in John Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress,' which was duly entered in the Hall Book to his use, he employed Thomas Braddyl to print an edition of ten thousand copies at the rate of four shillings and sixpence a ream, and to account to him for the proceeds and profits arising from it. He declares that Braddyl took upon himself to print twenty thousand copies, and never paid him any profit or proceeds thereof. Further, Ponder declares that the printer, without any authority from him, sold nine thousand five hundred copies to Awnsham Churchill and Nicholas Boddington. In addition to this edition of the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' Ponder further entrusted Braddyl with the printing of five thousand of the Second Part of that work at the same rate, that being 'the usual and known rate then allowed to other printers,'