The Chepman and Myllar Press was the first printing press to be established in Scotland. [1]
The press was founded in 1508 in Edinburgh by Walter Chepman and Androw Myllar, both burgesses of the Scottish capital. The two partners operated under a charter of King James IV issued in 1507 which gave them a monopoly in printed books within Scotland. [2]
Very few products of the press are preserved today. Those that have survived largely intact are nine chapbooks of vernacular literature known collectively as The Chepman and Myllar Prints [3] and a Latin religious text known as The Aberdeen Breviary. [4] Fragments of two other publications also exist. These were editions of The Wallace and The Buke of the Howlat.
The press seems to have had a brief existence. The earliest surviving example of its work dates to 1508 [3] and the latest to 1510. [4]
Chepman and Myllar's press is also referred to as The Southgait Press.
Johannes Gutenberg developed printing with moveable type in Germany in the decade after 1440. The new technology spread rapidly.
Scots began to commission the printing of books in other countries. France, with its strong diplomatic and intellectual connection to Scotland, was favoured.
King James IV authorised the creation of a press in a proclamation of 15 September 1507. [2] He charged his "beloved servants" Chepman and Myllar to "acquire and bring home a press with all accessories and skilled men required to use it".
The King intended the press to publish books of laws, acts of parliament, histories and religious texts.
The King would determine "competitive prices" for the books.
Chepman and Myllar were awarded a monopoly in print within Scotland. The commissioning of imported printed books would be prohibited.
The charter then specifies a key purpose for the press: the production of liturgical books with a distinctive Scottish character. These were intended to replace the service books of the English Use of Salisbury which was the rite commonly used throughout Scotland at the time. Eventually the importation of books of the English rite would be outlawed.
The Aberdeen Breviary, compiled by the King's "traist counsalar" Bishop William Elphinstone of Aberdeen, is apparently an example of this policy. [1]
Androw Myllar was a bookseller who had supplied volumes to the King. [5] He had also published books, printed at Rouen in 1505 and 1506. [6] As such, he can be assumed to have had some knowledge of printing technology.
Walter Chepman was a prosperous textile merchant who had supplied goods to the Crown and also carried out clerical duties at the Royal Court. [5] [6] It might be supposed that he provided the bulk of the capital for the enterprise.
It is not known where or when Chepman and Myllar acquired their printing press and staff, but in the months following the Royal charter, they established themselves in the Southgait of Edinburgh, [7] now known as The Cowgate. Their earliest surviving publication dates to 4 April 1508. [3]
It not known when the press closed, but the latest surviving copies of the Aberdeen Breviary date to 1510. [4]
The Chepman and Myllar Prints are nine of Chepman and Myllar's chapbooks bound into a single volume alongside two other pamphlets from Scotland in the sixteenth century. This volume was acquired by the Advocates' Library of Edinburgh and is now held in the National Library of Scotland. [3]
The volume contains the following texts of Chepman and Myllar's press, all written in vernacular, either Scots or English.
The same volume contains two other Scottish booklets from the Sixteenth Century.
The prints have a page height of approximately 15 cm and include the woodcut devices of Myllar and Chepman. [3]
The National Library of Scotland speculates that these chapbooks may have been test-pieces for the press. Their sale would also have provided a source of income for the new enterprise. [3]
The Aberdeen Breviary or "Brevarium Aberdonense" is the largest surviving product of Chepman and Myllar's press. [4] [8]
Produced between 1509 and 1510, it is a substantial Latin text consisting of two volumes printed in black and red.
Breviaries are handbooks intended to guide priests in conducting Catholic religious ceremonies. They include a psalter and prayers to mark particular festivals and saints' days. The content of breviaries varied across Catholic Europe, with the English Salisbury or Sarum Rite dominant throughout the British Isles.
The Breviary was compiled by Bishop William Elphinstone of Aberdeen and aimed to give the rituals of the Scottish Church a character distinctive from that in England and its dependencies. More than seventy of the saints honoured by it are identified with Scotland. [9] As such, it forms part of the policy set out in the charter which established the press; [2]
Copies of the Aberdeen Breviary survive, in varying degrees of completeness, at Edinburgh University, Aberdeen University, The National Library of Scotland, The British Library and a private collection. [8]
Fragmentary remains of two further publications survive whose typeface matches that of the Chepman and Myllar press.
These were Blind Harry's The Wallace and Holland's The Buke of the Howlat . [10]
The fragments of The Wallace are preserved at Glasgow's Mitchell Library and Cambridge University Library. The fragment of The Howlat is kept at Cambridge. [10]
The Roman Breviary is a breviary of the Roman Rite in the Catholic Church. A liturgical book, it contains public or canonical prayers, hymns, the Psalms, readings, and notations for everyday use, especially by bishops, priests, and deacons in the Divine Office.
This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1510.
William Dunbar was a Scottish makar, or court poet, active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He was closely associated with the court of King James IV and produced a large body of work in Scots distinguished by its great variation in themes and literary styles. He was probably a native of East Lothian, as assumed from a satirical reference in The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie. His surname is also spelt Dumbar.
A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 12, 16, or 24 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. Printers provided chapbooks on credit to chapmen, who sold them both from door to door and at markets and fairs, then paying for the stock they sold. The tradition of chapbooks emerged during the 16th century as printed books were becoming affordable, with the medium ultimately reaching its height of popularity during the 17th and 18th centuries. Various ephemera and popular or folk literature were published as chapbooks, such as almanacs, children's literature, folklore, ballads, nursery rhymes, pamphlets, poetry, and political and religious tracts. The term chapbook remains in use by publishers to refer to short, inexpensive booklets.
Gilbert Hay or Sir Gilbert the Haye, Scottish poet and translator, was perhaps a kinsman of the house of Errol.
The Aberdeen Breviary is a 16th-century Scottish Catholic breviary. It was the first full-length book to be printed in Edinburgh, and in Scotland.
The Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie is the earliest surviving example of the Scottish version of the flyting genre in poetry. The genre takes the form of a contest, or "war of words", between two poets, each trying to outclass the other in vituperation and verbal pyrotechnics. It is not certain how the work was composed, but it is likely to have been publicly performed, probably in the style of a poetic joust by the two combatants, William Dunbar and Walter Kennedy, before the Court of James IV of Scotland.
The Eneados is a translation into Middle Scots of Virgil's Latin Aeneid, completed by the poet and clergyman Gavin Douglas in 1513.
The Actes and Deidis of the Illustre and Vallyeant Campioun Schir William Wallace, also known as The Wallace, is a long "romantic biographical" poem by the fifteenth-century Scottish makar of the name Blind Harry, probably at some time in the decade before 1488. As the title suggests, it commemorates and eulogises the life and actions of the Scottish freedom fighter William Wallace who lived a century and a half earlier. The poem is historically inaccurate, and mentions several events that never happened. For several hundred years following its publication, The Wallace was the second most popular book in Scotland after the Bible.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
The Complaint of the Black Knight is a poem by the English monk John Lydgate.
Androw Myllar was the first Scottish printer.
The Asloan Manuscript is an anthology of Scots prose and poetry dating to the early sixteenth century. It was compiled by the Edinburgh notary John Asloan.
Remonstrance to the King is a Scots poem of William Dunbar composed in the early sixteenth century. The Remonstrance is one of Dunbar's many appeals to his patron James IV of Scotland asking for personal advancement. In this particular case, the unseemly personal pleading is combined with more dignified subject matter; lavish praise and pointed criticism of the King's court is delivered in an open manner.
Walter Chepman was a Scottish merchant, notary and civil servant active in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Chepman served at the Scottish court during the reigns of James IV and James V. In partnership with Androw Myllar he established Scotland's first printing press in 1508. Chepman was also a significant patron of Saint Giles' Kirk in Edinburgh.
Robert Waldegrave or Walgrave, the son of Richard Waldegrave of Blockley, Worcestershire, was a 16th-century printer and publisher in England and Scotland. From 1578 to 1588 he printed numerous, mainly religious works in London, and from 1590 to 1603, more than 100 books in Scotland. In 1603, following King James I of England's accession to the English throne, he returned to England, but died later the same year.
Literature in early modern Scotland is literature written in Scotland or by Scottish writers between the Renaissance in the early sixteenth century and the beginnings of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution in mid-eighteenth century. By the beginning of this era Gaelic had been in geographical decline for three centuries and had begun to be a second class language, confined to the Highlands and Islands, but the tradition of Classic Gaelic Poetry survived. Middle Scots became the language of both the nobility and the majority population. The establishment of a printing press in 1507 made it easier to disseminate Scottish literature and was probably aimed at bolstering Scottish national identity.
Scots-language literature is literature, including poetry, prose and drama, written in the Scots language in its many forms and derivatives. Middle Scots became the dominant language of Scotland in the late Middle Ages. The first surviving major text in Scots literature is John Barbour's Brus (1375). Some ballads may date back to the thirteenth century, but were not recorded until the eighteenth century. In the early fifteenth century Scots historical works included Andrew of Wyntoun's verse Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland and Blind Harry's The Wallace. Much Middle Scots literature was produced by makars, poets with links to the royal court, which included James I, who wrote the extended poem The Kingis Quair. Writers such as William Dunbar, Robert Henryson, Walter Kennedy and Gavin Douglas have been seen as creating a golden age in Scottish poetry. In the late fifteenth century, Scots prose also began to develop as a genre. The first complete surviving work is John Ireland's The Meroure of Wyssdome (1490). There were also prose translations of French books of chivalry that survive from the 1450s. The landmark work in the reign of James IV was Gavin Douglas's version of Virgil's Aeneid.
St. Lesmo of Glen Tanar is the name given to a holy hermit who it is believed lived in Glen Tanar Aberdeenshire Scotland in the eighth century. He is recorded by Thomas Dempster as a "saint" in the seventeenth century. His claimed Saints’ Day is 9 December.
The 1604 Book of Common Prayer, often called the Jacobean prayer book or the Hampton Court Book, is the fourth version of the Book of Common Prayer as used by the Church of England. It was introduced during the early English reign of James I as a product of the Hampton Court Conference, a summit between episcopalian, Puritan, and Presbyterian factions. A modest revision of the 1559 prayer book, the Jacobean prayer book became the basis of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, a still-authorized liturgical book within the Church of England and global Anglicanism.