Abraham Fleming: - Early Music Online - Royal Holloway, University ...

common and they made a good team. They had both worked with Tottell, Denham as his
apprentice until 1560 and Fleming later as his “learned corrector”. 228 They were both
fastidious workers: Denham printed precisely and used very clear type while Fleming was
very particular and exacting when proof-reading and correcting his work and that of others.
Denham had been involved in a syndicate production in 1583. On that occasion his fellow
investors had been the booksellers Brome, Chard and Maunsell. Together they had produced
The Commonplaces of Peter Martyr divided into foure principall parts, as collected and
translated by Anthony Marten. Denham had printed the book with Middleton and Fleming
provided the index. It was a difficult task: the British Library copy shows that, unusually for
a book printed by Denham, its many hundreds of pages were numbered erratically in places,
and some sections had no pagination at all. It is possible that the sheer difficulty of indexing
such a text was the reason Fleming was preferred. The finished index comprised 64 folio
sides, each side having four columns of index in a very small font. So, when it came to
indexing the thousands of pages in Holinshed’s Chronicles, Denham would have been able
to give the proof copy to Fleming with complete confidence in his ability. Both men were
thorough and exacting with high standards, exactly the qualities needed when preparing a
lavish and important text as long, involved and profitable as Holinshed’s Chronicles.
The first edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles was the product of a close-knit and long-
established team of financiers, printers and writers working out of neighbouring properties in
St Paul’s Churchyard, which had been the home of Wolfe when he instigated writing a
‘Cosmography’. The evidence shows that the second edition was no different in that respect.
The members of the syndicate were all well connected to each other. Two members, Bishop
and Harrison, were part of the original team. All except Denham were to be found in St
Paul’s Churchyard. Fleming was connected to most of the syndicate long before Holinshed’s
Chronicles was in production. He had established long and productive working relationships
with Newberie, Woodcocke and Denham in particular for whom he had demonstrated all the
228 Their relationships with Tottell is explained on pp. 64-6.
116