Meet the Chillesters: The Printed Counterfeit in Early Modern London

An early modern printed book is a facade, a public surface that may be radically at odds with the reality that lies beneath it. This essay explores two books by an obscure father-and-son duo, James and Henry Chillester, in which all is not as it seems. The first, a translation of a French mirror for princes by Pierre Boaistuau, turns out to be based on a purloined manuscript stolen from its true translator after his death by way of his wife. The second, a verse and prose miscellany entitled Youths Witte, or The Witte of Grene Youth, was probably also a literary forgery. Unpicking the web of unsuspected agents behind these books affords us a rich insight into the mechanisms of textual production in the period, illuminating the relationship between print, the city and the Elizabethan administration. The Chillesters’ publications also show how translation could be linked to forms of personal and political untrustworthiness—to spying, informing, theft and imposture.