Old velum scrap

[Suttonrog]

For those who asked what the bible was like inside - here is the title page.

Spelling has changed a little since then.

Hope it is readable at this resolution.

Rog

[alpinecottage]

That's just fantastic - I like the "most profitable annotations upon all the harde places"...and the printers address !

[Lydart]

I wonder if 'Powles Churchyard at the Sign of the Tigers Head' could still be located in London somewhere ?

[Suttonrog]

And here is Genesis, Chapter 3.

Verse 8 is the "breeches" quote with all the  "most profitable annotations upon all the harde places" in the margins.

Rog

I think Powles Churchyard was near St Pauls and would have gone in the great fire

[slam]

I think the name at the top may be Johanna rather than Johannus.  It’s in Latin, and I think it’s part of a will. 

I think the first five words at the start of the third line may translate roughly as ‘ten pounds of lawful English money’.  The words at the beginning of the fourth line look like reference to a date, the somethingth (..imo) day(die)  of October(Octob[r]i) perhaps?  And about the middle of that line is what appears to be ‘Jacobi anno regni’ which doesn’t make any sense actually, since if it’s a reference to King James it can’t be earlier than 1603, but it all looks far earlier. 

The two words at the end of the fourth line look like a reference to a place - ‘Apud’ which I think roughly means ‘at’ and then a place name ending in ‘..mpton’

The third,fourth and fifth words on the last legible line look like ‘in vitae suae’, ‘in his/her life’. If not a will then a legal document of some sort.  Great fun, very intriguing.

[slam]

I hadn't seen the new images when I posted.  As someone just wrote, Paul's Churchyard was the area around old St Paul's, the building that went in the Great Fire and was replaced by Wren's church.  Paul's churchyard was the centre of the bookselling and publishing trades in Elizabethan times.  The church itself was used more like a business centre than a place of worship, and was a popular meeting place.  They even put job ads up on the doors I believe.

[slam]

If you can get access to the Dictionary of National Biography there's an entry on Christopher Barker, the publisher.  He came from Yorkshire near Doncaster, b. 1528/9, died 1599.  Here's a bit about his interest in bible printing (which was very lucrative work);

"... Barker's real interest as a publisher lay in the potentially lucrative royal printing patents...The most coveted patent was for the Bible, but the queen's printer Richard Jugge had an effective monopoly on English bibles as long as his patron Archbishop Matthew Parker was in power. Three weeks after Parker died on 17 May 1575, the Stationers' Company effectively ended Jugge's Bible monopoly and gave other stationers permission to print the officially sanctioned Bishops' Bible. At the same time Barker shrewdly went to the privy council and obtained a patent for the Geneva Bible, which had never been printed in England under Parker but which had been printed overseas by a fellow draper, Rowland Hall. However, Barker promised Jugge that he would not print anything ‘hurtfull or prejudiciall’ to Jugge's rights (Stationers' Company, liber A, fol. 27).

Barker quickly published an edition of the Geneva New Testament later in 1575, printed by Thomas Vautrollier since Barker had no press of his own yet. By early 1576 Barker had obtained a press and printed a new revision of the Geneva New Testament by Laurence Tomson, based on Theodore Beza's Latin translation. Tomson dedicated the translation to his employer, Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's secretary of state, and there is considerable evidence that Walsingham was Barker's patron as well. The Tomson New Testament contains a device prominently featuring the tiger's head from Walsingham's crest, which Barker was to use in many later books, and Walsingham's coat of arms also appears several times in the volume. Furthermore, in 1576 Barker leased a new shop in Paternoster Row at the sign of the Tiger's Head, where he sold his editions of the Tomson New Testament and the complete Geneva Bible. This property, which adjoined Barker's original shop on Pissing Alley, had previously been occupied by the draper–stationers Nicholas England and John Wight, and Barker occupied it until his retirement in 1588."

Glad he moved business premises.  I must say 'at the Sign of the Tiger's Head' looks a lot better on a bible title-page than 'at Pissing Alley'.

[PrueM]

It was common practice right up to the early 20th century to reinforce bindings with scraps of parchment or paper, sometimes old, sometimes contemporary.  The script on this bit looks earlier than Elizabethan - I'm thinking 14th century, but I'm no expert!

Very nice, Rog!

Prue

[Lydart]

You never know, the scrap may turn out to be more valuable than the Bible !   

Prue ... how should it be preserved if its (maybe) 14th century ??   Obviously NOT laminated !