Explore "The Printers, Stationers and Bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535" by E. Gordon Duff on Textopian.
Though in regard to books printed for the English market France is most important in numerical strength, it ranks far below the Low Countries in point of interest. The productions of Paris and Rouen consisted almost entirely of liturgical books and a few dictionaries and grammars. From Antwerp on the other hand from the time of Gerard Leeu in the fifteenth century onwards there was an almost unbroken output of books in the English language. Leeu began with reprints of some of Caxton's books, Adrian van Berghen, the printer of _Arnold's Chronicle_, followed, then came Jan van Doesborch with his many curious little English books, and then, most interesting of all, the various editions of the English _Testament_ and the multitude of controversial works caused by the religious dissensions in England.
Of Gerard Leeu, "an exceedingly pleasant person" as Erasmus called him, and his English books, I gave some account in an earlier Lecture; so I must begin the account of the sixteenth century with Adrian van Berghen, Adryan of Barrowe as he calls himself in his English imprints. He apparently began to print about the close of the fifteenth century, living in a shop with the sign of the Great Golden Mortar in the Market; in 1507 he had moved to the Corn Market behind the Town Hall, and at a later date he settled in a house by the Cammerpoort Bridge with the sign of the Golden Missal. In 1535 like many another stationer he got into trouble in religious matters and was accused of keeping and selling Lutheran books, of which a number had been found in his house. In vain he protested that he knew nothing about them and that they had been secretly put there by some enemy, for after a lengthy trial he was found guilty and on January 3, 1536, was sentenced to leave the state of Antwerp within three days, and perform a pilgrimage to, of all places in the world, Nicosia in Cyprus. Nothing further is known of him. But Adrian of Barrowe will ever be had in grateful remembrance as the printer of _Arnold's Chronicle_, for in this he first published to the world the beautiful ballad of the "Nut-browne Maid."