A Roman face on an English body: the typography of Plowden’s Commentaries

Figures & data

Figure 1. Examples of text in ‘blackletter’ (Anthony Fogassa) and ‘roman’ (Anthonio Fogassa), sampled from fol 21 of Plowden. Image kindly provided by the University of Aberdeen, Museums and Special Collections (licenced under CC By 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Figure 2. Verso page of Folio 21 from Plowden’s Commentaries (Richard Tottel 1571). The first printed common law decision appears in roman font, about three-quarters of the way down the page. It is indicated by the marginal ‘Iudicium’, and begins with the words ‘Concessum est’. Image kindly provided by the University of Aberdeen, Museums and Special Collections (licenced under CC By 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Figure 3. Excerpt from Plowden’s Commentaries (Richard Tottel 1571), folio 21, verso. Image kindly provided by the University of Aberdeen, Museums and Special Collections (licenced under CC By 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Figure 4. Simplified diagram of printing type, showing ‘face’ and ‘body’. Image created by the author.

Figure 5. The Rolu specimen of Pierre Haultin’s english roman type, from Dreyfus.⁷⁴ Image is in the public domain.

Table 1. Comparing Plowden's letters with Haultin and Garamond. The Plowden letters show more similarity to Haultin than Garamond: note the ‘dog-eared' serifs on the M, the ‘steep-tailed' R, the ‘double-serifed' T, and the ‘big-bowled’ P, all of which are not reflected in the Garamond letters. The Haultin letters are the same as in Figure 5 and are in the public domain. The Garamond letters are reproduced from Dreyfus⁷⁸ under fair use. The letters from Plowden were taken from images kindly provided by the University of Aberdeen, Museums and Special Collections (licenced under CC By 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Haultin	Plowden	Garamond
From Rolu specimen (‘Monarcha’)	From fol 21 of Plowden (‘Modeye’)	From Plantin 1567 (‘Mater’)
From Rolu specimen (‘Romanus’)	From fol 21 of Plowden (‘Recognitio’)	From Plantin 1585 (‘Romanae’)
From Rolu specimen (‘Terra’)	From fol 1 of Plowden (‘SANCTI’)	From Plantin 1585 (‘Theophrastum’)
From Rolu specimen (‘Populus’)	From fol 21 of Plowden (‘Petri’)	From Plantin 1585 (first ‘Plutum’)

Figure 6. The humanist axis of the printed iudicium in Renyger v Fogassa. Produced by the author from an image kindly provided by the University of Aberdeen, Museums and Special Collections (licenced under CC By 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).