An Essay in the History of Gold-Tooled
Bindings by Herbert P. Horne
London 1894
designed with the same purity of taste, nor worked with the same accomplishment, as that upon
the bindings executed for Grolier but, even at this estimate, they are the finest which were
produced in England, during the reign of Elizabeth. These books of Thomas Wotton are
commonly bound in brown leather, decorated with a fillet, elaborately interlaced, and painted,
and finished with arabesque gold-tooling, which is sometimes azured, and sometimes worked in
outline, and painted: occasionally there is a further addition of some medallions, or busts. A copy
of a translation into French, by Estienne Dolet, of the Quaestiones Tusculanae of Cicero, Lyons,
1543, in the Museum, is bound in this manner with a painted fillet and gold-tooling [CO 19. b.
30.]. The legend, THOMAE WOTTONI ET AMICORVM, is tooled across the central compartment of
the covers: while upon another volume in type same collection, a copy of Pliny's Historia Mundi,
Lyons, 1548, his arms take the place of the inscription [CO 19. g. 2.]. Among the illustrations to
the Catalogue of Bindings, exhibited at the Burlington Fine Arts Club, is figured a third example,
equally fine with the two in the British Museum: it is tooled in blind, with a fillet and busts
stained in black [Case L, No. 43.J This collector died in 1587.
Earlier in the century, Henry Fitzalan, Earl of
Arundel, had commenced the formation of his library, when the recent suppression of the
monasteries enabled him to readily obtain many books of value i and at the death of Cranmer,
he acquired a considerable portion of the Archbishop's library. His collection was bequeathed by
him to his son-in-law, Lord Lumley, tutor to Henry, Prince of Wales, by whom they were
purchased upon the death of their owner, in 1609. It is to be regretted, that Henry caused this
splendid library to be rebound, and tooled with his own arms and devices: a few volumes,
however, escaped i and among the books of the Old Royal Library, is a copy of the Vulgate,
printed at Venice in 1544, and retaining a contemporary binding, apparently of foreign
workmanship, which bears the device of the white horse, the badge of the Earl of Arundel, upon
either cover [CO 27. f. 5.].
Of the library of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, little is known i but many fine bindings, stamped
with his arms, or his crest of the bear and ragged staff, are still in existence. Two books in the
British Museum i the one, the Symposium of Plato, Paris, 1543 [CO 18. d.] i the other, the Works
of Clemens Alexandrinus, also in Greek, Florence, 1550 [G. 11,780.] j bear this crest in an oval, in
the centre of either board, in one case accompanied with his initials R. D., and with azured
corner-stamps at the angles of the panels j while the remaining portions of the field are
elegantly tooled in gold, in the Lyonese manner. I have already described a book, bound for
Lord Burghley, and tooled with his name, and that of his second wife: but his bindings are more
generally stamped with his arms.