Transcript

of

Printers of the Statutes in the Sixteenth Century, South Tawton, Devon

Devon & Cornwall Notes and Queries vol. VI, (January 1910 to October 1911), p 110.

by

Ethel Lega-Weekes

Prepared by Michael Steer

The note’s author seeks information on the Yetsweirt family, printers of common law books in the Tudor period, who held property in South Tawton. With regard to the Yetsweirts, J.H. Beale in his bibliography of early English law books (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P, 1926), pp. 209-10, states that a Jane Yetsweirt took over the printing business of her deceased husband Charles in 1595. This included taking over the patent (exclusive printing rights) for common law texts in England, which he had received through his father. Until her death in 1597 she used the patent to print a number of law texts including statutes, yearbooks, and treatises. The article, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Note 111. PRINTERS OF THE STATUTES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, SOUTH TAWTON, DEVON (II, S. I., 106, 238). - The following appeared in Notes & Queries for August 6th, 1910, and is here reproduced as it may interest our readers: - "I was interested in learning of the grant of Nicholas Yetsweirt in 1577 of a monopoly for printing the common law books; and I think that the contributors on this subject may be equally interested in the fact that on the Patent Roll of 9 Eliz., 1566-7 (pt. 5, m. 3), there is recorded a grant to one Nicholas Yetswirt (not improbably the same man) and to Bartholomew Brokesby of a number of rents in Devon, Somerset, and other Counties, mostly arising from ancient bequests, chantries, and guilds which by the Act of 1547 were vested in the Crown. These included a tenement in the Parish of South Tawton, Devon, which in 1530 had been given by John Frende, of South Tawton, weaver, towards the maintenance of a Priest for the Brotherhood of the Store of Jesus in the Parish Church, as appears from collation of this roll with another Record Office document (Court of Augmentations, Misc. Book, vol. cxxiii., pp. 245-6) and with an entry of 1535-6 in the old Churchwardens' accounts of South Tawton (fol. 91 D)."

The surname Yetsweirt has a Dutch sound, and at the same time it is curiously like that of "De Yadeworth" which I find in lists of residents of South Tawton on the Lay Subsidy Rolls of 1337 and "1340?" I should be glad if the descent of Frende's little property could be traced. 

                    Ethel Lega-Weekes.