Edward Cave and the Norwich Post

Edward Cave provides a curious example of an eighteenth century 'self made man'. With little formal education and less financial resources he made a successful career combining literature, politics and commerce. Although a notable printer of his day and the friend of many influential men, he will be remembered mainly as the founder of the Gentleman's Magazine which introduced a completely new literary form. Precise details of Cave's early years remain a mystery, although his close friend Samuel Johnson was able to sketch a brief outline when writing the publisher's obituary.¹. Cave seems to have spent a certain period in Norwich running one of the earliest provincial newspapers, but the exact date and the name of the newspaper are not given. The present article deals only with his stay in Norwich, a period in his life which might be thought quite insignificant compared with his later career. However in the absence of definite facts some basically wrong assumptions have been made which have now been perpetuated in at least a dozen reputable published sources. It is therefore worthwhile to try and examine the available evidence and if possible clear up this point.

Samuel Johnson tells us that after a variety of incidents the young Cave was 'bound apprentice to Mr Collins, a printer of some reputation, and a deputy alderman (of London)'. This was Freeman Collins, a successful man in his trade and a warden of the Company of Stationers. Later in his narrative Johnson reports that Cave 'having in only two years attained so much skill in his art, and gained so much the confidence of his master, that he was sent without any superintendent to conduct a printing house at Norwich and publish a weekly paper. In this undertaking he met with some opposition, which produced a public controversy, and procured young Cave reputation as a writer. His master died before his apprenticeship expired; and he was not able to bear the perverseness of his mistress, he quitted her house upon a stipulated allowance and married a young widow with whom he lived at Bow'. This is the only contemporary account of the story and has been used as the basis of almost all subsequent accounts; there is no evidence to doubt the accuracy of any part of it.

The most common interpretation of the story². is that for a period after 1714 Cave managed the Norwich Courant, a paper known to have been produced by the Collins family from an address in Norwich 'near the Red Well'. There are no known copies of the Courant surviving, but issues seen by John Chambers in the early nineteenth century³ suggest that it was founded in 1714 or shortly before; no commentator has ever suggested that it might have been founded any earlier. Chambers also notes that the paper bore the imprint of S. Collins and later that of John Collins and H. Collins.

Land tax returns for the 'Red Well' printing office (St Andrew's parish)⁴. list Freeman Collins only until Easter 1713, thereafter recording 'widow Collins'. Similarly, whilst there are several books bearing his Norwich imprint between 1710 and 1713 nothing is known of a later date; there also survives a poem, Aethiops, printed in Norwich in 1713 bearing the name of his widow Susanna.⁵ Collins seems to have died in the middle of 1713, in all probability before the Norwich Courant was even founded. Without being able to offer absolute proof, it is difficult to see how

Collins could have sent Cave to Norwich to manage this paper. Even in the unlikely event that Freeman Collins founded the Courant in 1713 shortly before he died, Gave could not have been in charge for more than a few weeks before his master's death, certainly not long enough to 'procure him reputation as a writer'. It is possible that Cave worked on the Courant for a short period before he was no longer 'able to bear the perverseness of his mistress', but it is not at all likely that this was the newspaper to which Johnson refers.

An alternative version of this story is that Cave worked for the colourful local printer Henry Crossgrove who produced the Norwich Gazette. The main source of this story is the memoirs of Luke Hansard, written in the early nineteenth century.⁶ Hansard had been an apprentice to a Norwich printer, Stephen White, from about 1764 until 1772. He described his former master as having been 'brought up in the house of Cosgrove (sic), a house of credit and business, publishing a weekly paper, and doing the literary business of the City; an office, which Cave, the celebrated planner of the Gentleman's Magazine superintended'.

Hansard's autobiography abounds in inaccuracies (as is inevitable when an old man records his boyhood). It is also impossible that his former master (who was active until 1783) could have been working in Norwich at the same time as Cave. Hansard's account must therefore have been at least third-hand, and whilst it is difficult to completely dismiss such a clear and unambiguous statement, this account can be nothing like so reliable as Samuel Johnson's. The Crossgrove/Cave theory gained another champion in J. B. Williams in 1914⁷' who offered no evidence but who pointed out that in later years Crossgrove regularly advertised the Gentleman's Magazine, and that it was very unlikely that a deputy alderman (Freeman Collins) would have left London to commence business in Norwich. (However Cave advertised his magazine in all Norwich newspapers and a large number of others in the provinces. )

It is also difficult to disprove this theory, and yet it seems most unlikely. The apprenticeship registers of the Stationers Company prove that Cave was apprenticed to Collins, and the imprints of a large number of books show that Collins did have a printing business in Norwich. It is hardly likely that Collins would have sent Cave to Norwich to work for one of his competitors. Secondly, the vast majority of Crossgrove's newspapers for this period are extant, and having seen copies of all known survivors the writer of this article could find absolutely no evidence to suggest that the Gazette was ever written by anybody else but the highly individual Henry Crossgrove. There is certainly no trace of the public controversy that procured the young Cave his reputation.

If Johnson is correct, and yet the young Cave was sent to Norwich to conduct neither the Courant nor the Gazette, it must be asked which paper he did print. The answer depends on pinning down the date of his arrival in Norwich, a point upon which Johnson is quite clear; Cave was sent to the City two years after the beginning of his apprenticeship. Surprisingly no-one interested in Cave has ever attempted to find the date of his apprenticeship, which is given in the Stationers Company registers. Cave was officially apprenticed to Collins on the 6th February 1708/9, and allowing for a brief trial period before this date and the rather general nature of Johnson's statement, it is probably safe to say that he came to Norwich in the first half of 1711.

The connection of Freeman Collins with the City of Norwich came about through one of his earlier apprentices, a man named Francis Burges. Burges served Collins from 1692 until December 1699;⁸ he then moved to Norwich and set up a printing office (possibly with Collins' financial assistance) 'near the Red Well'. From the autumn of 1701 until his death in 1706 he printed the Norwich Post which is usually accepted as having been the earliest provincial paper in England. Despite heavy competition, his widow, Elizabeth Burges, continued to print the paper from the same address until her own death in August 1708. Thereafter the paper was printed by an unknown 'administrator of E. Burges' until at least July 1712, probably later.⁹

Very shortly after the death of Elizabeth Burges, Collins obtained control of the 'Red Well' printing office, and is listed as having paid parish overseers' rates from Easter 1709. By 11th February 1709/10 Henry Crossgrove was referring in the Norwich Gazette to a pamphlet from 'the printing office of Deputy Collins'. There is however no evidence (other than imprints of books) to show if Collins actually lived or worked in Norwich himself at this time, and in this respect J. B. Williams may have been correct. Freeman Collins probably continued his London business at the same time, and certainly his widow was still managing a business in London until 1724, long after she had severed all connection with Norwich. Even Crossgrove's wording seems to imply that Collins was not the actual printer in his office.

One is led to the hypothesis that Collins had some stake in the Norwich printing office of the Burges family and the Norwich Post, both of which came to him after the couple had died. Whilst continuing his business in London he used his most trusted employees to run the Norwich office and continue the paper. Edward Cave was one of these who probably was in charge of the Post from 1711 until his master's death in 1713. He may have continued to work on the Norwich Courant (after the demise of the Norwich Post) under Susanna Collins, but very soon left her employment. In place of Cave she entrusted the management of the Norwich office to her sons, John and H(?), and if Chambers is accurate they made an abysmal mess of the whole thing.

David Stoker

FOOTNOTES

1. Gentleman's Magazine February 1754.

2. Notably Dictionary of National Biography, C. L. Carson The first magazine (1938), G. A. Cranfield The development of the provincial newspaper (1962), R. M. Wiles Freshest advices (1965), T. Fawcett ‘Early Norwich newspapers’ (Notes and Queries October 1972).

3. J. Chambers A general history of the County of Norfolk (2 vols. 1829).

4. Land and window tax papers 1710-1797 (Norfolk & Norwich Record Office, Case 23).

5. For example C. Buchanan Unity and unaminity printed by Fr. Collins, Norwich 1710, J. Knott A new method of Arithmetick printed by Freeman Collins, Norwich 1713. Both of these (and the poem Aethiops s are in the Colman collection, Norwich Public Libraries.

6. J. C. Trewin and E. M. King Printer to the house, (1952).

7. J. B. Williams 'Henry Crossgrove jacobite journalist and printer', (The Library 1914).

8. Apprenticeship and Freemen's Registers (Stationers' Hall).

9. T. Fawcett 'Early Norwich newspapers', (Notes and Queries October 1972).