Jonah Bowyer was at the Rose, in Ludgate Street, in and about the year 1706, when he published the Lord Bishop of Oxford's 'Sermons preached before the Queen' at St. Paul's in May of that year; and it was either this Bowyer or William Bowyer--the two were not related--who established a bookselling department on the frozen Thames in 1716. William Johnston, who died at a very advanced age in 1804, was one of the most successful of Ludgate Hill booksellers, and his employées included George Robinson and Thomas Evans, each of whom became the founder of a very extensive business. George Conyers was at the Ring, Ludgate Hill, for some years during the last quarter of the seventeenth century, and prior to his removal to Little Britain. Conyers dealt chiefly in Grub Street compilations, which included cheap and handy guides to everything on earth, and it is likely that his shop was a literary or book-collecting resort. The most famous bibliopole who had a shop in Ludgate is perhaps William Hone, to whom the liberty of the press owes so much, and who removed here from his house at the corner of Ship Court, Old Bailey. Trübner and Co. left Ludgate Hill soon after they amalgamated with Kegan Paul, Trench and Co.
The Churchyard is, of course, the home of bookselling, but, as we have seen, as time went on, its children, so to speak, repudiated their birthplace. In the middle of the sixteenth century, for example, Fleet Street contained nearly as many bookshops as the parent locality. In addition to this, England's second printer, Wynkyn de Worde, abandoning the Westminster house of his master, William Caxton, took up his residence in Fleet Street in or about the year 1500. The sign of his shop was the Sun, 'agaynste the Condyte,' and as the Conduit stood at the lower end of Fleet Street, a little eastward of Shoe Lane, we get some idea of the exact locality. He was buried in St. Bride's Churchyard in 1534. W. Griffith was busy at the sign of the Falcon, near St. Dunstan's Church, printing booklets about current events with 'flowery' titles, and these books he sold at his second shop, designated the Griffin, 'a little above the Conduit,' in Fleet Street. William Powell, at the George, was publishing religious books of various sorts, and a 'Description of the Countrey of Aphrique,' a translation of a French book on Africa, which was perhaps the very first on a topic now pretty nearly threadbare. Richard Tottell was dwelling at the Hand and Star, between the two temple gates, and just within Temple Bar,[217:A] whence he sent forth books by a score and more distinguished men, and whose name is worthily linked with those of Littleton, More, Tusser, Grafton, Boccaccio, and many others. In 1577 Elizabeth granted the same individual the privilege of printing 'all kinds of "Law bookes," which was common to all printers, who selleth the same bookes at excessive prices, to the hindrance of a greate nomber of pore students.' Other Fleet Street booksellers were William Copland, who issued a number of books, T. and W. Powell, and Henry Wykes.