Note 48 — Chapter II · LATER MANUSCRIPT HERBALS AND THE EARLY PRINTED HERBALS

Robert Wyer was one of the most famous printers of the early sixteenth century. He came of a Buckinghamshire family and was probably a near relation of John Wyer, also a printer who lived in Fleet Street, for both of them used the device of St. John the Evangelist. He served his apprenticeship to Richard Pynson, whose printing press was in the rentals of Norwich House near the site of the present Villiers Street, and on Pynson’s death succeeded to the business. In both his editions of the herbal there is his well-known device of St. John the Evangelist bareheaded and dressed in a flowing robe, sitting under a tree on an island and writing on a scroll spread over his right knee. At his right hand is an eagle with outstretched wings holding an inkwell in its beak, and in the background are the towers and spires of a great city.