‘A New Kind of Printing’: Cutting and Pasting a Book for a King at Little Gidding

Abstract

This article describes the harmonized gospel made by the Ferrar family at Little Gidding for King Charles I, c. 1635. This book, one of several of its kind, was made by cutting out printed materials and assembling the pieces into a single, illustrated narrative of the four gospels. The king’s book is particularly complex, employing three complementary methods of displaying the harmonized gospel accounts. As with the Ferrars’ other gospel books, it uses images not only of gospel scenes but also of typologically-related Old Testament scenes. The article pays particular attention to the textual materials used in the book. First, it identifies the particular editions used, which include a Cambridge gospel harmony and, surprisingly, an Edinburgh New Testament printed by Robert Young in 1633, the year of Charles's Scottish coronation, suggesting that a courtier or the king himself may have played a part in supplying that edition to the Ferrars. Second, it relates the layout and apparatus of these editions to those of the Little Gidding books, noting that while the Ferrars dismantled one layout to make a new one, their books in important ways take up the textual work of the original editions while adding the meditative affect (and political danger) of Roman Catholic images.