t the end of the fifteenth. The predominant
feature of these Winchester bindings (of which a fine example from the
library of William Morris recently sold for L180), and of their
successors, is the employment of small stamps, from half an inch to an
inch in size, sometimes circular, more often square or pear-shaped, and
containing figures, grotesques, or purely conventional designs. A
circle, or two half-circles, formed by the repetition of one stamp,
within one or more rectangles formed by others, is perhaps the commonest
scheme of decoration, but it is the characteristic of these bindings, as
of the finest in gold tooling, that by the repetition of a few small
patterns an endless variety of designs could be built up. The British
Museum possesses a few good examples of this stamp-work, but the finest
collections of them are in the Cathedral libraries at Durham and
Hereford. Any one, however, who is interested in this work can easily
acquaint himself with it by consulting the unique collection of rubbings
carefully taken by Mr. Weale and deposited in the National Art Library
at the South Kensington Museum. In these rubbings, as in no other way,
the history of English binding can be studied from the earliest
Winchester books to the charming Oxford bindings executed by Thomas
Hunt, the English partner of the Cologne printer, Rood, about 1481.

During the first half of this period the English leather binders were
the finest in Europe; during the second, the Germans pressed them hard,
and when the large panel stamps, three or four inches square and more,
were introduced in Holland and France, the English adaptations of them
were distinctly inferior to the originals. The earliest English bindings
with gold tooling were, of course, also imitative. The use of gold
reached this country but slowly, as the first known English binding, in
which it occurs, is on a book printed in 1541, by which time the art had
been common in Italy for a generation. The English bindings found on
books bound for Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Mary I., all of which are
roughly assigned to Berthelet as the Royal binder, resemble the current
Italian designs of the day, with sufficient differences to make it
probable that they were produced by Englishmen. We know, however,
that until the close of the century there were occasional complaints
of the presence of foreign binders in London, and it is probable that
the Grolieresque bindings executed for Wotton w