Henry Jaye

Henry Jaye
Died 1643
Nationality English
Other names Henry Gay, Hendrick Jaey
Occupation printer
Years active 1617–1639
Era handpress
Employer City of Mechelen
Notable work The Primer, or Office of the Blessed Virgin Marie (1615)
De Schadt-kiste der philosophen ende poeten (1621)
Religion Catholic
Criminal charge Slandering James I of England
Spouse(s) Catharina vande Zetten

Henry Jaye (died 1643) was an English Catholic exile in the Southern Netherlands. He became printer to the city of Mechelen.

Life

The earliest record of Jaye is in 1606, when the English ambassador in Brussels, Sir Thomas Edmondes, had him summoned before Jean Richardot in an attempt to have him punished by the authorities in the Low Countries for slandering James I of England. He had allegedly spoken "certain very lewd and infamous words against his Majesty", namely:[1]

A pockes of god of the kinge of Ingland yf you terme him kinge I hope to see him hanged, he is none of my prince nether doe I knowledge him to be my prince. Nether a trewe anoyntted Prince nor never was or shalbe.

In 1607 Jaye opened an account with the Plantin Office as a bookseller in Brussels. By 1609 he was married to Catharina vande Zetten, a daughter (or perhaps step-daughter) of Pieter Simons, and by November 1610 they were living in Mechelen, where their daughter was baptized in St Rumbold's Cathedral.[2]

His first known publication is The Lyf of the Mother Teresa of Jesus (1611) – the first English translation of the autobiography of Teresa of Avila, by Michael Walpole.[3] This was printed for him in Antwerp, but by 1612 he was operating his own press in Mechelen. In 1613 he printed the codification of the customary law of the city and lordship of Mechelen – Costumen, usancien ende styl van procederen der stadt, vryheyt ende jurisdictie van Mechelen, which he reprinted in 1633.

In 1619 he printed the statutes and procedures of the Great Council of Mechelen, the highest court of appeal in the Spanish Netherlands, Ordonnances, statuts, stil, et manière de procéder faictes, & décretées par le roy nostre sire, pour le grand conseil, and in the 1630s a number of sentences and decisions of the same court.

In 1620 a performance poetry competition was held in Mechelen between a number of chambers of rhetoric (civic drama guilds). Jaye printed the competing poems and rebuses under the title De Schadt-kiste der Philosophen ende Poeten.[4]

It is not clear when he was appointed printer to the city, but he was using that title on his imprints from the later 1630s. He died in 1643.

Device

One of his printing devices was a tower on a rocky island, with the motto Turris fortitudinis nomen domini (The name of the lord is a tower of strength).

Publications

References

  1. ↑ Paul Arblaster, Antwerp & the World (Leuven University Press, 2004), p. 54.
  2. ↑ D. M. Rogers, "Henry Jaye", Biographical Studies 1 (1951), pp. 86–111, 251–252.
  3. ↑ Jan Franz van Dijkhuizen, "Religious Meanings of Pain in Early Modern England", in The Sense of Suffering: Constructions of Physical Pain in Early Modern Culture, edited by Jan Frans van Dijkhuizen and Karl A. E. Enenkel (Intersections 12; Leiden and Boston, 2009), p. 194, note 12
  4. ↑ Marc Van Vaeck, "De Schadt-Kiste Der Philosophen Ende Poeten (Mechelen 1621): een blazoenfeest aan de vooravond van het einde van het Bestand", De zeventiende eeuw 8 (1992): 75–83
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