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The Golden Compasses (1969-1972)

The Golden Compasses

(1969-1972)–Leon Voet–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

The History of the House of Plantin-Moretus


Vorige Volgende

Chapter 14
An Unruly Republic

Plantin did not often have much to say about his workmen.1. In the New Year's greeting for 1576 to his father-in-law, Jan Moretus commented in humorous vein on the capacities - and incapacities - of the firm's workers.2. Plantin's entries in the wages accounts about the departure or dismissal of pressmen and compositors give actual instances of the men's behaviour and attitudes.3. The most informative of all, however, are the ordinances, with their codification of the most common offences and their prescribed fines for them, and the ‘complaints books’ in which the men could commit their woes to paper; these show that reality sometimes exceeded the anticipations of those who drafted the rules of the officina.4. Most of the ordinances preserved, and all the complaints books, date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Things were as turbulent under the Moretuses as in the time of Plantin.

The ordinance of 1555-56 gives a fairly complete picture of the

most prevalent offences. Wrongdoing was atoned for with jugs of ale, or occasionally by payment of fines; for certain offences a slipper was applied to the transgressor's backside.1. In 1563, at the beginning of the second phase of his printing career, Plantin was much more experienced. In the rules for that year all fines were expressed in terms of money, and corporal punishment and jugs of ale disappeared. The use of beer and other alcoholic drinks in the shop was henceforth strictly regulated.2. Another sort of experience finds expression in the rule: ‘First, it is forbidden for anyone who wishes to work or daily spend time in our aforesaid printing office to engage in disputation either in opposing or defending any matter concerning religion.’ How important the master thought it to avoid such arguments is shown by the penalty of 6 st. (only a little less than an average day's earnings) he imposed for breach of this rule. Calvinism was then making its presence felt in the Netherlands, provoking sharp reactions from the authorities. Plantin had had personal experience of what the consequences could be; when he drew up this rule he had only been back a few months from exile in Paris. Disorder and brawling carried a penalty of only 3 st.

The 1567 ordinance (Ord. B) repeated word for word the provisions for order and discipline in the workshop laid down in 1563. The 1570-71 ordinance (Ord. C), really an addendum to that of 1567, introduced new provisions mainly intended to increase all penalties for misbehaviour, because of the rising cost of living, to 6 St., except for the fine for being drunk on the premises which went up to 10 st. There was no more mention of religious arguments: Alva's reign of terror had stilled all disputatious tongues.

There is not much in the way of clauses concerning discipline and order in the later ordinances of the Moretuses, except that sometimes, in 1715 for example, arguments and wagers on religious or political

topics are singled out again.1. It was no longer necessary to include detailed provisions in the regulations issued by the master and governing the working of the officina: the men themselves has assumed responsibility for these matters2. and dealt with them in their own ordinances as need arose.3. Although interesting in themselves, all these ordinances and regulations are essentially general and legalistic. For a better idea of what everyday life in the firm was really like, what the questions were on which those concerned with keeping the peace had to give judgments, it is necessary to look at the complaints books. The entries scrawled by unlettered workmen are often difficult to decipher, but they make entertaining reading.4.

The Plantin-Moretus Museum today has that sort of sober tranquillity that makes visitors involuntarily lower their voices. But it was not always like this. In the time of Plantin and the Moretuses it was a place where men worked, grumbled, quarrelled and swore hard, and sometimes even fought; a turbulent, vital place. On occasion these unruly workers were in open conflict with the masters of the Golden Compasses, at least with its founder. In a couple of letters written in November 1572 to de Çayas, secretary to Philip ii, Plantin related that his men, seeing he was busy with orders for the king and eager for a share of the profits, had risen against him.5. He had responded by turning them out and pretending to close down his business for good, which brought the ringleaders back in a humbler frame of mind.

This incident is often quoted as an example of strike and lock-out in

the Renaissance period.1. It was not actually a strike: Plantin only stated that his men had combined against him2. and sabotaged the work through their unruliness, not that they had downed tools and walked out, or sat down. However, Plantin's response did amount to what would now be called a lock-out. Strikes did occur in the sixteenth century and there are plenty of instances that can be quoted for Antwerp.3. Lock-outs by employers were much rarer and Plantin's action could be taken as one of the first - always assuming that this was in fact what he did. The author, however, believes that Plantin was trying to pull the wool over de Çayas's eyes.4. The facts of the matter were not as they were told to de Çayas. Plantin had dismissed his workmen for the reason that he intended to close down because of the political situation and his own financial difficulties. Being bound by contract to Philip n to supply missals and breviaries, such an action would have been tantamount to high treason in Spanish eyes. When Plantin, the worst of the danger having passed, decided to stay in business, he had to be careful to conceal what had really been taking place. So the story of his men's ‘rebellion’ and the lock-out of summer and autumn of 1572 were no more than a camouflage. However, in his first letter to de Çayas, Plantin referred to similar troubles that had arisen during the printing of the Polyglot Bible and cited Arias Montanus as a witness. This episode in the relations between master and men appears more likely to have been true; it seems reasonable to suppose that this was Plantin's inspiration when he found he had to concoct an explanation for the closing down of the press in 1572.

Plantin's phrasing of his account of the earlier dispute is very careful. He implies that when the labour troubles arose in 1572 he thought of applying the same remedy as on the previous occasion, implying that he had then too resorted to the lock-out. But there is something rather forced in his manner of presentation.1. If when the Polyglot Bible was being printed actual conflicts had arisen between Plantin and his workmen, then this would have led to protests on their part and possibly sabotage, which Plantin would have countered with the help of Arias Montanus and the law in the shape of the Antwerp magistrates, who at that time regularly supported employers against the workers. But that the men would have gone on strike and the master of the Golden Compasses retaliated with a lock-out is no more likely at the time of the Polyglot Bible period than in 1572. What can be accepted is that the social peace in the firm in those years was seriously disturbed by the demands of the men, organized in their chapel, a kind of trade union.

The chapel2.

The guild system outlasted the Middle Ages. In the Netherlands of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, capital and labour were still formally united in the ‘ambachten’. But there was a difference now: capital had gained the upper hand and the masters saw to it that their sons were specially favoured. Ever greater obstacles were placed in the path of ordinary journeymen seeking to rise to mastership, and it was the masters who had the last word in the guilds. However, in theory at least, masters and journeymen stayed together in the same companies in these centuries. But there were

exceptions, particularly in the new capitalist industries, among them printing and publishing.

The situation was not everywhere the same. In Germany medieval tradition leavened the new printing industry and master printers and journeymen sat round the same tables with their Steine in the same Gesellschaften. In England, in 1557, by royal decree, the Stationers' Company was set up. It was rather in the nature of a club for the master printers, but journeymen were represented and could on occasion make their opinions heard. Things were quite different in France and the Netherlands, where the guild system was not extended to the printing trade until quite late, and then only partially and in a few centres. In France the Parisian booksellers and printers did not form themselves into a guild until 1608. It took even longer in the Netherlands - with the exception of Antwerp. Individual Antwerp printers had already been entering the guild of St. Luke, to which the practitioners of the other artistic professions belonged. In 1557 registration in this guild was made compulsory for all Antwerp printers and booksellers. They objected, but had to comply.

It is significant that this happened in the same year as the Stationers' Company was established in England: Philip ii was perhaps influenced by the example of his wife, Mary Tudor, or it may have been the other way about. In both cases the aim was clearly better government supervision of printing and book production. The resistance of the Antwerp printers and the negative attitude of their fellows in other Netherlands and French centres is understandable. One of the chief aims and in practice the only real advantage of the guilds and companies was the fact that they could control entry to the crafts, and therefore their practice, in favour of the established masters and their successors. The printers' guilds could not offer any such advantage at first. In the Netherlands and France a man became a printer or bookseller by royal patent. An agency of the central government and not a local association decided who could enter the profession and on what conditions. To them membership of a guild meant paying out a lot of money to no real advantage. Later, however, in the seventeenth century, when the economic situation became more difficult, French

and Netherlands printers and booksellers began to form themselves into guilds for mutual assistance and protection against other corporations, and were able to persuade the authorities to make royal patents dependent on membership of a guild. The Antwerp printers who had rebelled in 1557 became in the course of time the most zealous defenders of the guild of St. Luke. When in the second half of the eighteenth century, during the reign of Maria Theresia, attempts were made to free the artistic crafts from the strait-jacket of the guild system, the Antwerp printers resisted to the utmost of their capacity. They remained loyal to the guild of St. Luke until the end of its existence and the arrival of the French revolutionary armies.1.

Plantin and all his successors until the end of the eighteenth century were entered in the ledgers of the guild. However, in the Antwerp guild of St. Luke, as in the other printers' guilds in the Low Countries, the journeymen were excluded from the start from what was a preserve of the masters. The journeymen formed their own associations, but their right to negotiate with other parties was never recognized in law and their territorial basis was not the town but the workshop. They existed only through the goodwill of their employers.

Moxon in his Mechanick Exercises (1683-84) was the first to discuss in any detail these associations of journeymen, which he referred to as chapels, asserting that they had existed for many years in England. In France the chapelles were not mentioned until the eighteenth century, and then the references are not very informative.2. For the Netherlands there is only one known source: the documents of the Plantinian house. These are extensive and enable the working of the institution to be traced in detail. The series of papers starts in 1555-56, more than a century before Moxon's work. The file on the Plantinian chapel consequently has a far more than local significance and scope, and makes a most important contribution to the social

history of the book trade of Western Europe, particularly in the Netherlands, France and England.

It has been seen that the ordinance of 1555-56 (Ord. G) laid down very general guide-lines for the relationship of master, compositors, pressmen, and apprentices and prescribed penalties for breaches of the rules: the slipper and pints of beer. One of the clauses stated that the compositor who did not pick up any type he had dropped should receive a beating with a slipper, or could be exempted from this corporal punishment on payment of 1 st. ‘for the benefit of the chapel’. Another provision in the same ordinance laid down that the master, on penalty of a jug of beer, should maintain all the customs of the press ‘for the benefit of the chapel’. These clauses clearly imply that there had been a chapel of journeymen in the Plantinian house right from its beginning. This chapel received the fines paid by transgressors and the bonuses and other extras paid by the master on certain feast- days and other special occasions, as established by custom.1. Later entry to the Plantinian chapel was dependent on payment of a fee. The 1555-56 rules did not state this explicitly, but they decreed that any newcomer to the firm, even if he were a proof-reader or shop boy and not directly involved in the printing craft, must pay a bienvenue. If these people had to pay up, then it may be assumed that the journeymen had to do as well. In this ordinance, some of the provisions are justified by reference to practice elsewhere. For example, the apprentices had to wait on the journeymen or else be beaten ‘as is the custom in all other countries’. Shop boys and proof readers had to pay their bienvenues ‘as is everywhere the custom’. This means that the chapel in its 1555-56 form was not something invented by Plantin, nor had it been forced on a young inexperienced employer by the men, but was an institution already in existence in other places. The name had probably been taken over along with the list of quite carefully defined ‘customs’. It is worthy of note that

whereas Plantin always referred to the ‘compagnie des imprimeurs’ in his wages accounts, the ordinances compiled for the men only used the term ‘chapel’. This must have been the current term, used by Plantin's men and their fellows in the other printing offices of Western Europe.

Although the 1555-56 ordinance was the first to mention the journeymen's association, it gives no clue to the origin of the name. Various technical terms used then and later in the Plantinian chapel were French (bienvenue, proficiat) and these and other French words were current in the English chapels. This may mean that the institution originated in France. The author believes that there was a connexion with the confrérie of the Paris journeymen printers, which in those years had gone to ground in a chapel of St.-Jean-de-Latran in the university quarter, and which, disguised as a religious confraternity, carried on a fierce struggle with the masters for better wages. This confrérie was at the time the only organized and effective trade union in the West European printing trade and its example must have evoked a response far and wide.1. Whatever the real position may have been in Paris, the Plantinian chapel was certainly not a religious brotherhood and the only connexion with religion consisted -later - of decorating the statue of the Virgin in the printing press and obligatory attendance at the annual Mass in honour of St. Luke, patron of the Antwerp printers.

In 1563, when he started printing again after his return from Paris, Plantin prepared a new ordinance (Ord. A). This time the term chapel is not used, but a well-organized compagnie des imprimeurs can be discerned between the lines. Thus disputes were to be dealt with by the master and three or four ‘delegated journeymen’.2. This can only mean journeymen chosen by their mates to lead the chapel. The various extras and bonuses set out in 1555-56 were beginning to get on Plantin's nerves. They were so multifarious that he could not help forgetting one or another of them, in which case a jug of beer

was demanded of him. He therefore decided that they should be replaced by a statutary sum to be paid at stipulated times: 2 fl. per working press every three months. The practice of having a new member pay an entry fee was now stated explicitly and - probably because of arguments - carefully defined. The newcomer paid this fee in two stages: a modest bienvenue on arrival, comprising a drinkgeld (money for drinks) of 8 st. for the journeymen and 2 st. for the poor box. After a month, if the master and his workmates found him acceptable and reliable, he had to dig deeper into his pockets for what was termed the proficiat: 30 st. for the poor box and 5 st. for each journeyman. The same ordinance divided fines and bonuses from the master between.the poor box and a box for gratuities.

A new set of regulations, probably issued in 1567 (Ord. B), repeated the text of the preceding almost in its entirety, except for a few changes concerning the chapel (the term was in use once more) and its operation. The staff had greatly increased. The men were leaving their presses and type-cases too often for round-table conferences. Plantin ordered that no more such assemblies were to be held without his prior knowledge, and meetings of the whole staff were absolutely forbidden, except for the election of stewards or ‘judges’ responsible for the application of the rules. The ‘delegated journeymen’ of 1563 had now acquired an official name. Plantin also stressed that all the journeymen must obey their elected leaders.

An addendum to these regulations (Ord.C) was compiled a few years later. It itemized a number of offences not included in previous regulations, together with the appropriate fines. The opportunity was taken to legislate for another matter of direct concern to the chapel. Each month, or at least every three months, a ‘receiver’ must be chosen to take care of the contents of the gratuity and poor boxes. As in the case of the stewards it may be assumed that the office of treasurer had existed before this, but his office was now more carefully defined, perhaps because there had been differences of opinion within the chapel.

This addendum was followed by a new ordinance, the last and the most remarkable of Plantin's time (Ord. D). At first sight it seems

the work of a young and very green employer: general guide-lines concerning standards of conduct in the workshop without any sanctions to back up all this wise counsel. Closer reading, however, shows these regulations to be an offensive against the chapel. Time and time again Plantin emphasizes that he and he alone (or his deputy) will settle disputes and pass judgment in cases of breaches of the rules. The men received an increase in bonuses: the 2 fl. per working press paid every three months was augmented by 6 st. per journeyman paid on particular feast days (Wayzgoose, Shrove Tuesday, and Plough Monday) and the price of one copy of each work printed. However, these patronal bonuses went into the sick fund, and this box the master kept in his office. The journeymen could have the key of the box or make a record of income and expenditure, but they could not get at the money itself without knocking on their employer's door. There was no further mention of the gratuity box. It seems to have gone, and so do the stewards and the receiver.

These regulations were compiled in the years 1570 to 1572, when the journeymen of the Officina Plantiniana ‘combined’ against their master.1. Without formally abolishing the chapel, Plantin simply ignored it, setting aside its privileges. Henceforth the master was again in complete control. How long Plantin maintained this position cannot be said. The political troubles that threatened the existence of the press itself in the succeeding years pushed the struggle for better pay and the other social conflicts rather into the background.

 

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, and probably during the later years of Plantin's life, the chapel re-emerged, once more in possession of the sick fund and of the gratuity money, and with more rights and privileges than in Plantin's earlier years. At least from the beginning of the seventeenth century, pressmen and compositors associated in the chapel formed a truly self-governing body in which the employer seldom figured, except to pay his dues. He retained the right of supervision and if he found particular abuses too reprehensible

(particularly if they were likely to jeopardize the quality of the work done), he still intervened by drafting a general ordinance.1. But for all practical purposes it was the chapel itself that, at least from 1609 on, exercised all legislative powers.2.

Thus from the beginning the journeymen of the Plantin press were organized in a sort of trade union, formally recognized by the master. Every journeyman was obliged to join and this form of closed shop was similarly recognized, at least until the break in the years 1570-72. Plantin and his workmen were not originators in this: they copied existing models. Many details of government and organization, rates of fines and bonuses may have varied, but chapels operating on these same general lines must have been quite normal phenomena, if not in all printing shops, then in the medium-sized and large ones in the Netherlands, France, and England.

These chapels could be dangerous, as Plantin himself discovered. Yet they must have offered the employers some real advantages, important enough for Plantin to set up one along with his first printing presses. This he supported with his authority until the conflict of 1570-72. After that the chapel was revived, more powerful than before. The importance of the chapel lay in the working conditions of the time. The workers were a troublesome breed and the operation of the piece-rate system and the exaggerated tempo of work, forced up by this, did nothing to make them more amenable. To maintain order and tranquillity and ensure good work, regulations had to be framed and sanctioned by penalties. Drafting them presented no special difficulties, only their application. Employers could be like policemen, keeping a watchful eye for trouble and arbitrating in disputes. This is undoubtedly what they did in smaller firms, but in large enterprises like the Officina Plantiniana the master did not have the time to do this. The chapel provided a solution. The unpleasant

task of maintaining and applying the rules was delegated to the association of journeymen, who were induced to accept this responsibility by the money from the fines. The chapel applied the rules and investigated breaches of them much more zealously than the employer because it was to their financial advantage to do so.

Thanks to the records kept by the chapel itself, much more detailed information is available about its internal structure and operation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than is vouchsafed by the general ordinances of Plantin's period. The chapel appears to have consisted of all ‘free’ journeymen, that is to say all the workmen except the apprentices and the journeymen not yet free. The latter were newly recruited hands who had not yet worked in the press for one year and six weeks. After that period they were declared free in a quaint ceremony at which the beer flowed copiously (naturally at the expense of those being made free). A special song was sung - it has been preserved in printed form.1. The newly free journeyman was then beaten with a slipper and half drowned in a baptismal ceremony. Every newcomer was obliged to go through this process or else leave the press. Once free and a member of the chapel, he had nothing further to pay, except in special cases of a family nature,2. but when the bonuses, fines and entry fees were shared out, he could draw his portion like his associates in cash or beer.3. This initiation ceremony was in fact a development of the proficiat of Plantin's time. The period had been increased from one month to one year and six weeks. Financially it had become much more of an imposition: it entailed a fee of 18 fl. and an expenditure of 12 st. on beer and 2 st. on bread before the ceremony, and 3 fl. on beer afterwards.4.

Understandably, newcomers did not think much of this ceremony, but they had to submit to it or leave the firm. One seventeenth-century newcomer thought he had found a means of avoiding the proficiat. The exact circumstances are not very clear as only one relevant document has been found: the free journeymen's petition to the master in which they strenuously opposed the claims of the man in question, one G. Spierinck.1. This petition seems to imply that being made free of the Plantinian chapel also guaranteed membership of chapels in Germany, Holland, Spain, and elsewhere. Spierinck reversed this premise, arguing that as he had already been ‘freed’ in Spain, he should be regarded as free of the Plantinian chapel. The free journeymen contested this in arguments that sound fairly convincing. When Spierinck had joined the firm he had acknowledged that he was not free and agreed to do the traditional probationary year. Moreover, the journeymen continued, everybody knew that there was no such ‘freedom’ for printers' journeymen in Spain. The petition enlarged on this point and then considered the possibility of reaching, through the good offices of the master, an agreement with the Spanish printers. It is hard to say what exactly these statements about international ‘freedom’ imply. They may be part of the folk-lore of the Plantinian chapel, but they might also point to some sort of international freemasonry among printers' journeymen. The decision in this case has not been preserved, but G. Spierinck was entered in the wages accounts from 27th February 1638 until 29th November 1642.2. Presumably he had to yield and find the money for the expensive ceremony.

Every association has to have a committee; in those days it was called the wet (the law) in the Netherlands. The ‘law’ in Plantin's time consisted of three or four stewards and one treasurer.3. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it became much larger,4. comprising the prince or captain (or chairman as he would now be called),

seven ‘aldermen’ (equivalent to the stewards of Plantin's day), two proctors who kept order, one secretary, and one or two treasurers. This was a total of twelve or thirteen men, roughly a third of the staff. The committee was elected every year. As the members could not be re-elected in the year following their year of office, this meant that every free journeyman found himself on the committee every second or third year willy nilly. He could be exempted, but had to pay for this.1. The new committee was installed on the last day of April; it cannot have been coincidental that the equivalent ceremony for the Antwerp City Council took place on the same day. The jugs of beer had their usual honoured place in the accompanying solemnities. To avoid complications, the wives of the electors or those elected were strictly forbidden to attend the meeting; only for the most urgent of reasons were they allowed to speak to their lords and masters - outside, at the door.

The committee was parliament, police, and tribunal within its small world. In its parliamentary capacity it prepared new regulations or amended old ones. As police force it received complaints. The secretary wrote these down in the complaints books already mentioned. As a tribunal, the committee judged complaints and offences. This normally took place at the regular three-monthly meetings. Anyone considering himself to have been injured or insulted could ask for an emergency meeting, but he had to be very sure of his case. If he was found to be in the wrong or his case rejected, then he had to pay the costs of the meeting: the jug of beer and the cake to which the committee members were entitled for every sitting. Also in their function as tribunal the committee imposed fines and penalties. It was the duty of the secretary formally to announce judgments on the following day. Stepping into the middle of the workshop he would order ‘All presses still’, after which he would read out the list of offenders and the punishment awarded them. There was no escape.

If the fine could not be met out of the offender's share of the general fund, then the master was asked to deduct the amount from the man's weekly wage.

The Plantinian press ceased to function as a large-scale enterprise in about 1765. After that it did little more than stagnate with a much reduced staff. Probably this also meant the end of the chapel. Documentary evidence for it ceases in 1757.1.

The sick fund2.

Illness or incapacity to work were the worst calamities that could befall the workers of those days. To counter this danger funds were set up in many of the craft guilds, intended to ameliorate the hardship of members in need.3. The printing trade was not included in the guild system at first, so the workers had to make their own arrangements within each officina. This is what the Plantinian men did. The sick fund they organized appeared for the first time in the 1563 rules. Article 21 stated that one sixth of the fines money was to go to the ‘poor box’ for the assistance of sick or disabled journeymen, or even to ‘itinerant poor’.4. This article was not repeated in the revised rules of 1567. Probably the income from fines was not great enough to

guarantee regular payments of sick money. The system of assistance was accordingly reorganized. Henceforward each journeyman was obliged to contribute one Brabant oortje (⅓ st.) a week to the ‘general fund of the chapel to attend as needful to any unforeseen matters that might arise and also to help and support any foreign journeymen in so far as they may desire this of us’.1. The penalty for not complying was 1 st.

The money went into the general chapel fund, but was probably earmarked for these contingencies. It has been seen that this sick fund was mentioned in the 1570-72 rules, and was retained, whereas the box for the gratuities disappeared with Plantin's virtual abolition of the chapel at this time. Plantin promised to increase the contributions to this fund, presumably to compensate for his drastic action.2. It has also been seen that the cash-box itself was kept in the master's office under lock and key and that the journeymen could have the key or, if they chose, keep a record of incomes and outgoings. Employer and employees together decided on expenditure: besides the help to journeymen or former journeymen of the firm, assistance to travelling journeymen also was considered.

Probably at the end of Plantin's time, and at least from 1609, concord between master and journeymen had been achieved. The chapel again assumed responsibility for law and order in the printing shop and got its gratuity box back. However, in 1653 the sick fund seems still to have been kept in the master's office. The 1567 ordinance, establishing compulsory weekly contributions, supplemented by the rules of 1570-72, presumably governed the sick benefit system until 1653.

That year brought another important reorganization. The relevant regulation is headed ‘Establishment and fund for the solace and assistance of journeymen of the Plantinian press’.3. Henceforth it was

called the ‘great fund’, and distinguished from the ‘little fund’ which probably corresponded with the earlier gratuity fund. Although this ‘great fund’ was not new, its rules had now been systematized and a scale of payments had been carefully worked out.1. The basic principle remained as in Plantin's day - the journeymen had to make a regular contribution to the treasurer, now fixed at 4 st. per month. It was also stated that the proof-readers, type-founders, and collators might join. This put the sick fund on to an autonomous footing like the chapel - but still governed by the ‘law’ of the chapel. In 1570-72 Plantin had allotted the sick fund a series of irregular payments. The master was to continue to make his contribution to the great fund, but it was now standardized at 1 fl. 10 st. per working press per quarter.2. Occasionally the master put in something extra.3. In one of the documents concerning the sick fund Balthasar ii Moretus was lauded as the ‘praiseworthy author and founder of this fund’, so he had either initiated the reorganization or enthusiastically supported the enterprise of his workmen. The fund apparently enjoyed further benevolence on his part: 24 fl. in 1662 ‘with which he favoured the fund when he regained his health after a long sickness’; 7 fl. 4 st. in 1663 on the occasion of his safe return from a journey to Paris; 25 fl. in 1665 ‘in gratitude for the happy conclusion of the journey made by his son in Italy’; 30 fl. in 1668 when his son Joannes Jacobus left for Malines to begin his noviciate with the Jesuits; 30 fl. in 1672 ‘for a favour on the occasion of Susanna Clara, his eldest daughter's becoming a nun’; 30 fl. in 1673 ‘as a favour when his eldest son was married’. When he died in 1674 he left the fund a legacy of 150 fl., a fact that was entered in the books with the appropriate emotion.

To be able to benefit from the fund, journeymen must have contributed for at least one year. If one of them was very ill, so

that he had to have medicines or stay in bed, he was paid 30 st. per week for as long as the illness lasted and until he was able to go out and about again. The assistance was reduced to 15 st. if the man was able to go out but was not yet able to resume work. If the 30 st. was insufficient this could be increased if a majority of the contributors so voted. In the case of epidemics that compelled the sick man and his whole family to stay indoors, the amount was raised to 3 fl. If a journeyman died the fund gave his family 10 fl. towards the costs of the funeral. In addition the fund paid for a mass to be sung and all journeymen had to be present, with a 3 st. penalty for non-attendance. In 1681 these scales were adjusted slightly. There was by this time enough money in the fund for the seriously sick to be paid 48 st. instead of 30 st., and 24 st. instead of 10 st. to sufferers from gout or calculus. However, an increase in the number of sick, and years of supporting a few gouty journeymen compelled the committee to return to the old scales in 1706.

The sick fund survived the disappearance of the chapel about the middle of the 18th century, when the Plantinian press ceased to function as a large-scale concern. The work of the fund can be traced until 1808.1.


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