386 OX THE PAPER MANUFACTURE. 



charter ■which, had been written upon cotton paper in the year 1100, and 

 another which was dated twelve years afterwards. The fibre of the 

 cotton paper of this period would seem to have been too soft for advan- 

 tageous use, and we consequently find that it was superseded either at the 

 end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth century by paper 

 made from linen. A very much earlier period than that just named has 

 been ascribed by some writers to the introduction of linen as a paper- 

 making material. Preferring, however, the evidence of some very old 

 documents preserved in the libraries of some of the German Uni- 

 versities, the early part of the thirteenth century is as near as history will 

 carry us. 



Many countries have contended for the honour of having been fore- 

 most in the van of the paper manufacture from rags. China, Persia, 

 Egypt, Italy, and Spain are the principal claimants. Of the five coun- 

 tries named, Italy and Spain would seem to have the balance of testi- 

 mony on their side, although a learned ecclesiastic, the Abbot Andrez, 

 writing in the eighteenth century, endeavours to accommodate them all 

 by beginning in China with unregistered antiquity, and ending in Ger- 

 many in the year 1312. Of Italy, however, we know most from authentic 

 data, as it is certain that paper mills dating from 1564 still exist at 

 Fabriano, in Umbria, as well as at Colle, in Tuscany. As regards the 

 establishment of the first paper mill in this country, there is really no 

 reliable evidence. It has been customary to ascribe the honour to a 

 German named Spielman, who, it is stated, erected a mill at Dartford 

 in the year 1588. Mr. Charles Cowan, in the last edition of the ' Ency- 

 clopaedia Britannica' — article, Paper — adopts this version. Mr. Herring, 

 in his book on ' Paper and Paper-making,' after stating that the erec- 

 tion of the first paper mill in this country is commonly attributed to 

 Spielman, says : — " It is, however, quite certain that paper mills were 

 in existence here long before Spielman's time." Shakespeare, in the 

 second part of his play of Henry the Sixth, the plot of which appears 

 laid at least a century previously, refers to a paper mill. In fact, he 

 introduces it as an additional weight to the charge which Jack Cade is 

 made to bring against Lord Say : — " Thou hast most traitorously cor- 

 rupted," says he, "the youth of the realm, in erecting a grammar school ; 

 and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score 

 and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used, and, contrary to the 

 King, his Crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper mill ;" and Mr. 

 Macintosh, in his ' Popular Outlines of the Press,' gives his award in 

 favour of John Tate, whose mill was situated in Hertfordshire ; but to 

 whomsoever the honour — for such it undoubtedly is — belongs, it is per- 

 fectly clear that until the commencement of the last century, paper- 

 making in this country did not advance with very rapid strides. Fuller, 

 the quaint author of ' The Worthies of England,' enumerates paper 

 among the manufactures of the county of Cambridge, not as being prac- 

 tised in his time, but " because there are mills nigh Sturbridge-fair where 



