Richard Arnold (died ca. 1521), was an English antiquary and chronicler.
Arnold was a citizen of London, dwelling in the parish of St Magnus, London Bridge. It would appear from his own book that he was a merchant trading with Flanders. He was an executor of the will of John Amell the elder, citizen and cutler of London, which was drawn up in 1473, and he is there described as a haberdasher. He was in the habit, for purposes of business, of paying visits to Flanders, and was in 1488 confined in the Castle of Sluys on suspicion of being a spy. He was apparently hard pressed by creditors at one period of his life, and sought shelter in the sanctuary at Westminster. He had a wife named Alice and a son Nicholas. The date of his death is uncertain. Francis Douce, who fully investigated the matter, concluded that he died shortly after the publication of the last edition of his book, in 1520-1.
Arnold's work is a book dealing with London antiquities. [1] It contains the chief charters granted to the city, accounts of its customs, and notes on a variety of topics chiefly but not entirely connected with commerce. Thomas Hearne called it a chronicle; but its only claim to that title rests on its opening section, which gives, with occasional historical notes, a list of the names of the 'Balyfs, Gustos, Mayers, and Sherefs' of London between 1189 and 1502. The greater part of this list was evidently borrowed direct from a manuscript now in the Cottonian Library at the British Museum. Arnold himself gives the book no name; Douce, its latest editor, christens it the 'Customs of London.' Its best known feature is its introduction of the 'Ballade of ye Nottebrowne Mayde,(The Nut-Brown Maid) which occurs, without any explanation, between an account of the tolls payable by English merchants sending merchandise to Antwerp, and a statement of the differences between English and Flemish currencies. No earlier version of the ballad is known, and according to Capel, Warton, Douce, and Collier, it is probable that it had been composed only a few years before Arnold transcribed and printed it. Hearne, however, assigns it to the time of Henry V, and Thomas Percy to the early part of Henry VII's reign. Its authorship is unknown; but Douce assumes that it was translated from an old German ballad by some Englishman whom Arnold met at Antwerp. It was frequently reprinted separately in the sixteenth century, and enjoyed very great popularity for many years; interest in it was revived by its republication in the 'Muse's Mercury' for June 1707, [2] where it was first seen by Matthew Prior, who paraphrased it in his 'Henry and Emma' about 1718.
From typographical evidence it is clear that Arnold's book was first published at Antwerp in 1502 by John Doesborowe, who published other English books. This edition is without date, place, or printer's name. A second edition, in which the list of the mayors and sheriffs is brought down to 1520 — doubtless the date of publication — is ascribed by typographical experts to Peter Treveris, the first printer who set up a press at Southwark. It is also without date, place, or printer's name. A third edition, with introduction by Francis Douce, appeared in 1811. Copies of the two original editions, which are now of excessive rarity, are in the British Library, and other copies may be found at the Huntington Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and other archives. A copy is freely available from the Internet Archive. [3]
In the history of printing, an incunable or incunabulum, is a book, pamphlet, or broadside that was printed in the earliest stages of printing in Europe, up to the year 1500. Incunabula were produced before the printing press became widespread on the continent and are distinct from manuscripts, which are documents written by hand. Some authorities include block books from the same time period as incunabula, whereas others limit the term to works printed using movable type.
John Baskerville was an English businessman, in areas including japanning and papier-mâché, but he is best remembered as a printer and type designer. He was also responsible for inventing "wove paper", which was considerably smoother than "laid paper", allowing for more sharper printing results.
Thomas Hearne or Hearn was an English diarist and prolific antiquary, particularly remembered for his published editions of many medieval English chronicles and other important historical texts.
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in the 15th century.
John Rastell was an English printer, author, member of parliament, and barrister.
Christophe Plantin was a French Renaissance humanist and book printer and publisher who resided and worked in Antwerp.
Francis Douce was a British antiquary and museum curator.
Robert Fabyan was a London draper, Sheriff and Alderman, and author of Fabyan's Chronicle.
A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch.
The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry is a collection of ballads and popular songs collected by Bishop Thomas Percy and published in 1765.
Richard Pynson was one of the first printers of English books. Born in Normandy, he moved to London, where he became one of the leading printers of the generation following William Caxton. His books were printed to a high standard of craftsmanship, and his Morton Missal (1500) is regarded as among the finest books printed in England in the period.
Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, also known as Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor, is an English folk ballad.
"The Broomfield Hill", "The Broomfield Wager" "The Merry Broomfield", "The Green Broomfield", "A Wager, a Wager", or "The West Country Wager" (Child 43, Roud 34) is a traditional English folk ballad.
"The Nut-Brown Maid" is a ballad that made its first printed appearance in The Customs of London, also known as Arnold's Chronicle, published in 1502 by the chronicler Richard Arnold. The editor of the 1811 edition of the chronicle suggested it might be based on a German ballad. An alternative explanation is that the poem may be based on the exploits of Henry Clifford (1454-1523), the tenth Baron Clifford, and his wife Anne St John. Like the knight in the ballad, Clifford was said to have spent part of his early life as an outlaw.
Dirk Martens was a printer and editor in the County of Flanders. He published over fifty books by Erasmus and the very first edition of Thomas More's Utopia. He was the first to print Greek and Hebrew characters in the Netherlands. In 1856 a statue of Martens was erected on the main square of the town of his birth, Aalst.
Henri Estienne also known as Henricus Stephanus, was a 16th-century Parisian printer. Born in Paris in 1460 or 1470, he is the son of Geoffroy d'Estienne and Laure de Montolivet. His brother Raimond d'Estienne became the heir of the Estienne family, while Henri was disinherited by his father in 1482 "for having devoted himself to printing", the profession of printer then being the cause of losing your title. Estienne established the Estienne printing firm in 1502 from his wife's deceased husband's Higman Press. After his death in 1520, his wife married his colleague Simon de Colines who took control of the Estienne Press until his son Robert Estienne assumed control of the press in 1526.
Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten or Michel Hillenius, was a Flemish printer, publisher, bookseller and bookbinder. His printing press put out publications in a wide range of genres, including imperial ordinances, almanacs, devotional literature, anthologies of customs, textbooks, etc. He also printed humanistic writings by Erasmus, Adrianus Barlandus and Jacobus Latomus as well as the first Dutch-language version of the story of Till Eulenspiegel. His multiple editions of the Bible in Dutch translation were among the first to be published. Michiel Hillen van Hoochstraten is regarded as the most important publisher active in Antwerp in the first half of the sixteenth century.
The Merry Muses of Caledonia is a collection of bawdy songs said to have been collected or written by Robert Burns, the 18th-century Scottish poet.
Illustrations of Northern Antiquities (1814), or to give its full title Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, from the Earlier Teutonic and Scandinavian Romances; Being an Abstract of the Book of Heroes, and Nibelungen Lay; with Translations of Metrical Tales, from the Old German, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic Languages; with Notes and Dissertations, was a pioneering work of comparative literature which provided translations and abstracts of various works written in medieval Germany and Scandinavia. Its three authors were Henry Weber, who précised the Nibelungenlied and Heldenbuch; Robert Jamieson, who translated Danish and other ballads, stressing their close connection with Scottish ballads; and Walter Scott, who provided an abstract of Eyrbyggja saga. It significantly extended British readers' access to early Germanic literature.
Richard Hill's Commonplace Book, or Oxford, Balliol College MS 354, is a manuscript collection of late-medieval English poems and other miscellaneous items compiled between 1503 and 1536 by the London merchant Richard Hill. It is an important source of 15th-century and early 16th-century lyrics, preserving such well-known works as "The Boar's Head Carol", "The Corpus Christi Carol" and "The Nut-Brown Maid". It also presents some interesting sidelights on commercial life in early Tudor England.
Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
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