Shakespeare in Print - Shakespeare’s Printer
#30 Thomas Milles, The Catalogue of Honor (1610)
Jaggard maintained working relationships with a number of authors, including Thomas Milles. Jaggard published nine books written by Milles, including the Catalogue of Honor, an important treatise on heraldry. This copy has been censored: a note on the illegitimate children of Charles Blount has been excised with a knife. Heraldry was important to Jaggard because he would later become embroiled in a controversy with the irascible Ralph Brooke. Jaggard published Brooke’s book of heraldry in 1619, but it was filled with errors. Brooke tried to blame Jaggard, and financed his own revised edition. Meanwhile Jaggard hired his friend Augustine Vincent to quickly produce a scathing critique of Brooke’s work, which was rushed into print in 1622 in order to save the printer’s reputation. The Shakespeare First Folio, in press at the same time, was far less important (not least because the aged printer, who had been blind for a decade, would not live to see it published). Isaac Jaggard, William’s son, gave Vincent a copy of the First Folio to express his gratitude.