Bookbinders, and booksellers or _stationarii_, probably first plied their trade most prosperously in England at Oxford and Cambridge. By about 1180 quite a number of such tradesmen were living in Oxford; a single document transferring property in Cat Street bears the names of three illuminators, a bookbinder, a scribe, and two parchmenters.[489] Half a century later a bookbinder is mentioned in a deed as a former owner of property in the parish of St. Peter’s in the East; another bookbinder is witness to the deed (_c._ 1232-40).[490] After this bookbinders and others of the craft are frequently mentioned. Towards the end of the thirteenth century Schydyerd Street and Cat Street, the centre of University life, were the homes of many people engaged in bookmaking and selling; the former street especially was frequented by parchment makers and sellers. In this street, too, “a tenement called Bokbynder’s is mentioned in a charter of 1363-4; and although bookbinding may not have been carried on there at that date, the fact of the name having been attached to the place seems sufficient to justify the assumption that a binder or guild of binders had formerly been established there. In Cat Street a Tenementum Bokbyndere, owned by Osney Abbey, was rented in 1402 by Henry the lymner, at a somewhat later date by Richard the parchment-seller, and in 1453 by All Souls’ College.”[491]
Stationers had transcripts made, bought, sold and hired out books and received them in pawn. They acted as agents when books and other goods were sold; in 1389, for example, a stationer received twenty pence for his services in buying two books, one costing £4 and the other five marks.[492] They attended the fair at St. Giles near Oxford to sell books. This was not their only interest, for they dealt in goods of many kinds. They were in fact general tradesmen: sellers, valuers, and agents; liable to be called upon to have a book copied, to buy or sell a book, to set a value upon a pledge, to make an inventory and valuation of a scholar’s goods and chattels after his death. Their office was such an important one for the well-being of the scholars that it was found convenient to extend to them the privileges and protection of the University, and in return to exact an oath of fairdealing from them.[493]