{"id":176,"date":"2026-05-17T13:26:42","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T12:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/?p=176"},"modified":"2026-05-17T13:40:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T12:40:32","slug":"moxons-mechanick-exercises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/?p=176","title":{"rendered":"Moxon&#8217;s Mechanick Exercises"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m currently writing, albeit way behind schedule, about the printing house belonging to Nathaniel and Mary Holbeck in Foster Lane, near St. Paul&#8217;s. He is one of my <em>Sudden Deaths<\/em> victims which Ben has to investigate. At this point in the story Ben is suspicious of the wife and wants to look around the printing works for any sign that the victim might have been killed there, rather than in the street nearby, where his body was found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In order to make this at all realistic I have had to stop and re-read Moxon&#8217;s Mechanick Exercises, a book describing a number of crafts\/trades &#8211; the first to do so in English &#8211; published shortly after the events in the books. As recommended by @lsangha and Felicity Henderson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The important bit, from my point of view, is <em>Of the Office of a Master-Printer<\/em> which describes in detail what the &#8216;printing-house&#8217; should look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Moxon&#8217;s is available free at Project Gutenberg, Google Books or Internet Archive and is a great source for anyone interested in #EarlyModern.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently writing, albeit way behind schedule, about the printing house belonging to Nathaniel and Mary Holbeck in Foster Lane, near St. Paul&#8217;s. He is one of my Sudden Deaths victims which Ben has to investigate. At this point in the story Ben is suspicious of the wife and wants to look around the printing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daparsons.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}