VAUTROLLIER (THOMAS I), printer, bookseller and bookbinder in London and Edinburgh, 1562-87; London: Blackfriars. Thomas Vautrollier and his wife Jacqueline { VAUTROLLIER, Jacqueline (mar. FIELD) ( - 1614) ‹ LBT 03274 › }, or Jaklin, were Huguenot fugitives from France, who settled in England and took out letters of denization on March 9th, 1562 [Worman, Alien Members, pp. 67-8]. Vautrollier was admitted a brother of the Company of Stationers on October 2nd, 1564 [Arber, i. 279]. In 1567 he was joined with John Desserans { DESSERANS, John ‹ LBT 30669 › } as agent for Christopher Plantin. His first book entry in the Registers was made during the year ending July 22nd, 1570 [Arber, i. 417]. On April 18th, 1573, Vautrollier received letters patent permitting him to print Lodowick Lloyd's Plutarch [? The Pilgrimage of Princes], and on the 22nd of the same month another grant was made to him to print Aldus Manutius' Latin phrases and Sylva's Cosmographia for ten years. Further, on June 19th, 1574, letters patent were granted him to print certain Latin books including Beza's Novum Testamentum and the works of Ovid and Cicero for a period of ten years, and he was allowed six workmen, French or Dutch, for that period. [Arber, ii. 746, 886.] Referring to these patents, Christopher Barker { BARKER, Christopher (1529 - 1599) ‹ LBT 06871 › } in a report made in 1582, declared that Vautrollier "doth yet, neither great good nor great harme withal" [Arber, i. 144]. In 1579 Richard Field { FIELD, Richard (bap. 1561 - 1624) ‹ LBT 06931 › } of Stratford on Avon was put over to Vautrollier for six years to learn the art of printing. Vautrollier was importing books into Scotland at least as early as April, 1580 [see Dickson and Edmond, p. 379], and in July of that year the General Assembly recommended that the question of granting him a license to print be considered [ib. 378], but no immediate action was taken in the matter, and it was not till 1584, when he fled to Scotland in order to avoid imprisonment for printing the writings of Giordano Bruno, that he set up a press in Edinburgh [Dickson and Edmond, p. 381]. He seems however to have kept his bookselling business there under the charge of his servant John Cowper, for on April 4th, 1582, a complaint was laid before the Town Council against Vautrollier and Cowper, for retailing books and binding them within the burgh, they being unfreemen [Dickson and Edmond, p. 349]. In answer to this charge Cowper appeared before the Council, and as Vautrollier did not appear it may be assumed that he was not in Edinburgh at that time. In a document supposed to belong to 1583, he was returned as having two presses in London [Arber, i. 248]. Vautrollier returned to London in 1586, and died in July, 1587, his will being dated the 10th and proved in the Court of the Commissary of London on the 22nd of that month. Vautrollier left four sons, Simeon, Manasses { VAUTROLLIER, Manasses ‹ LBT 30773 › }, Thomas { VAUTROLLER, Thomas ‹ LBT 07982 › } and James. To his son Manasses he bequeathed the printing press which he had brought back from Scotland, "furnished with all her appurtenances, that is to saye, with fower chassis, and three Frisketts, two timpanes and a copper plate." The residue he left to his wife Jacqueline and his four children. This will settles once for all, that Vautrollier had no daughter and that Richard Field the apprentice married his widow, and thus secured a good business [Plomer, Wills, p. 27]. As a printer Thomas Vautrollier ranks above most of his contemporaries, both for the beauty of his types and the excellence of his press work. His device was an anchor held by a hand issuing from clouds, with two sprigs of laurel and the motto "Anchora Spei," the whole enclosed in an oval frame. It is found in various sizes and was afterwards used by his successor.
