A Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers who Were at Work in England, Scotland and Ireland from 1641 to 1667/Mearne (Samuel)
MEARNE (SAMUEL), bookseller and bookbinder in London; Little Britain, 1655-83. The first heard of Samuel Mearne is in 1655, when in company with Cornelius Bee, q.v., and W. Minshew, he was granted a pass to go to Holland [Domestic State Papers, 1655, p. 598]. In 1659 he entered a book in the Registers of the Stationers' Company entitled Meditations in Three Centuries, by the Rev. Henry Tabb, so that he was clearly in business as a bookseller at this time. He was appointed a searcher under the Company of Stationers at the Restoration, and an interesting series of papers dealing with this part of his work will be found in the Hist. MSS. Commn. Report 9 [Appendix, p. 72 et seq.] Mearne also held a share in the King's Printing Office. [Library, N.S., October, 1901, p. 373.] At the desire of Charles II he purchased the collection of pamphlets made by the bookseller George Thomason, but does not appear to have been paid for them, and they were subsequently sold by his successors to King George III. It is, however, chiefly as a bookbinder that Samuel Mearne is remembered. In 1660 he received a patent as bookbinder to Charles II for life at an annual fee of £6 per annum, and several of his accounts for binding books are preserved among the Wardrobe accounts at the Public Record Office. From these it appears that he generally bound his books in red or black Turkey leather. He executed some very choice bindings, the best known being those described as the "cottage" design. Samuel Mearne died in 1683, and his will is in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. [C. Davenport, Samuel Mearne, Binder to K. Charles II. Publications of the Caxton Club. Chicago, 1906.]