Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 307
a moment be supposed that no marks similar to those we assign
to the Netherlands occur in books printed in Germany ; but,
taking it as a general rule, the paper there used for printing
was, no doubt, confined to the manufactories of the country.
These remarks do not touch the matter of English books and
paper-marks; nor do they explain the appearance, simultaneously,
or at different periods, of the same marks in different
countries, and sometimes with the names of different papermakers.
*
If the paper used for printing books was usually made in the
country where the books were printed (and this seems to be the
most natural and reasonable arrangement), tben we must inquire
at what English mill was the paper manufactured which
was to be the means of transmitting to a world then plunged in
darkness and ignorance the myriad-minded and many-sided
literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries'?
As in everything else connected with printing, the inquirer is
at once met with difficulties and rebuffs. Authors contradict
each other. Experts in the trade plead ignorance, or decline to
give information, and once more we arc obliged to perceive how
jealously everything connected with these matters is guarded
and screened from public notice by the Freemasons. The following
is extracted from the little book by R. Herring, which we
have already quoted:
" With reference to any particular time or place at which this
inestimable invention was first adopted in England, all researches
into existing records contribute little to our assistance,
i The first paper-mill erected here is commonly attributed
to Sir John Spielman, a German, who established one in 1588,
at Dartford, for which the honour of knighthood was afterwards
conferred upon him by Queen Elizabeth, who was also pleased
to grant him a license ' for the sole gathering, for ten years, of
all rags, etc., necessary for the making of such paper.' It is,
however, quite certain that paper mills were in existence here
l The editor of the Paper-Mills Directory, in his Art of Paper-making,
(1874), says distinctly that the first paper mill in England "appeared in 1498;
the second, Spielman's, sixty years later," 1558; a third at Fen Ditton, near
Cambridge, " it it was not erected just before."