John Reynes (
fl.
''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...
1527–1545) was a stationer, bookseller, publisher and bookbinder in London in the 16th century. He was born Jan Rijens at
Wageningen
Wageningen () is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality and a historic city in the central Netherlands, in the province of Gelderland. It is famous for Wageningen University, which specialises in life sciences. The municipality had a ...
,
Gueldres
The Duchy of Guelders (; ; ) is a historical duchy, previously county, of the Holy Roman Empire, located in the Low Countries.
Geography
The duchy was named after the town of Geldern (''Gelder'') in present-day Germany. Though the present pr ...
, in the
Low Countries
The Low Countries (; ), historically also known as the Netherlands (), is a coastal lowland region in Northwestern Europe forming the lower Drainage basin, basin of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and consisting today of the three modern "Bene ...
, and was granted letters of denization on 7 June 1510.
Reynes's name first appears in the
colophon of an edition of
Ralph Higden
Ranulf Higden or Higdon (–1363 or 1364) was an English chronicler and a Benedictine monk who wrote the ''Polychronicon'', a Late Medieval magnum opus. Higden resided at the monastery of St. Werburgh in Chester after taking his monastic vow a ...
's ''Polycronycon'', issued in 1527, and he continued to publish books at intervals up to 1544. He is better known as a bookbinder and a number of stamped bindings are in existence which bear his device. They have, as a rule, on one side a stamp containing the emblems of the passion, and the inscription ''Redemptoris mundi arma'', and on the other a stamp divided into two compartments containing the arms of England and the
Tudor rose. His other stamps, about six in number, are rarer.
John Cawood, the printer, who was master of the Company of Stationers in 1557, was apprenticed to Reynes, and put up a window in his memory in Stationers' Hall.
References
16th-century English businesspeople
1544 deaths
Bookbinders
Year of birth unknown
English booksellers
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