Untitled - Monoskop

PENALTIES AND LAWSUITS
complaining that Guillaume Eustace had none the less printed these Coutumes,
and asking that Eustace should be fined and his edition confiscated according
to the provisions of the grant. The Parlement appointed certain commis-
sioners from among its number to report on a possible
settlement between the
parties. On 5 September 1516 it gave judgement, after considering the requete
and the report of its commissioners. Eustace was to bring to the court within
three days whatever he had so far printed of the Coutumes of Troy es, and was to
be compelled to obey if necessary by seizure of his possessions and other due
the reasonable means. And he was forbidden to print or to sell any of these
Coutumes for the duration of Petit's privilege and until the court had otherwise
determined. 1 The immediate reason no doubt prompted Petit to get the
original privilege and to defend it so vigorously: the bailliage of Troyes covered
a large and important area, stretching from Provins in the west to Bar-sur-
Aube in the east. Within this territory, an up-to-date edition of the Coutumes
stood a good chance of being bought by every lawyer, landowner and
municipality. But there was more at stake than this particular market. Petit
held privileges for other Coutumes, and could not risk the precedent being
established that other publishers could thus defy him. Indeed he said of
Guillaume Eustace in his requete that Eustace was 'coutumier de ce fait', that
is, an habitual offender in this respect, and it appears therefore that he feared
further outrages from Eustace if he did not make a stand.
Did Eustace incur the full rigour of the threatened penalties for infringing
Petit's privilege? He was certainly compelled to bring all the copies that he
had printed to the Parlement, and was forbidden to print or sell any until
Petit's privilege had expired and until the court should decide otherwise. This
was in itself a serious loss. Whether the copies were actually destroyed is not
clear. It is possible that the agreement imposed on the parties by the
Parlement, mentioned in the judgement, provided for them being held until
the privilege had expired and then sold by Eustace on terms favourable to
Petit. There are some later examples of such settlements. For example in 1547
the Paris University bookseller Jean Foucher, a former apprentice or journeyman
of Jean Petit, printed an edition of Bude, De ['institution du prince, for which
Nicolas Paris, a merchant printer of Troyes, had obtained a privilege; the
dispute ended with an agreement between the two men, before a notary, to
divide between them the 1,200 copies which Foucher had printed. 2 But there
appears to be no trace of any copies of the Coutumes of Troyes printed by
Eustace.
Jean Petit was also a party, with a Rouen bookseller called Louis Bouvet, in
a later case, in 1527, concerning a privilege, before the Parlement of Rouen. 3
This time, it was the grant itself which was contested. For when Petit and
1 V AN x i A f. . 1518, 3O7 Cf. Maugis, Histoire du Parlement, 11, p. 314.
2
Parent, Les metiers du livre, p. 148, quoting M.C. LXXIII. 10, 22.9.1547.
:1 See above, p. 57.
'97