Our Statute Books and Public Records do not throw any very important light on the early history of English letter-founding. Although a busy import trade in type appears to have been maintained by the earliest printers, and although as early as the days of De Worde, as we have seen, there were English printers who not only cast types for themselves, but are supposed to have supplied them to others, we search in vain for any definite reference to letter-founding in the decrees and proclamations which, prior to 1637, had for their object the regulation or repression of printing. It is true that the term printing was at that period wide enough to cover all its tributary arts, from paper making to book-selling. At the same time, it is noteworthy that, whereas in many of the early decrees paper-making, book-binding and book-selling are distinctly mentioned, letter-founding is invariably ignored. If any inference is to be drawn from this fact, it is that type was one of the latest of the printer's commodities to go into the public market. A printer's type was his own, and no one else's; and if occasionally one great printer was pleased to part with founts of his letter to his brother craftsmen, either by favour or for a consideration, it was not till late in the day—that is, not for about a century after the introduction of printing into England—that English-cast types became marketable ware in the country.