1594, and the brothers Rogier, are noted as leading goldsmiths who, besides executing many fine jewels, frequently made loans of money to the Queen Regent, and seem to have experienced great difficulty in securing full payment.  Corneille Rogier set the jewels worn at her marriage by Anne d’Autriche, wife of Louis XIII.  Two brothers, each bearing the name Pierre Courtois, are also noted in old records.  One of them, at the time of his death, in 1611, occupied two apartments with two shops in the Louvre; the shop of the other had the sign “Aux Trois Roys”, probably referring to the “Three Kings of the East”, the Magi of the Gospel, very appropriate patrons for goldsmiths.[24]

[Footnote 24:  Germain Bapst, “Histoire des Joyaux de la Couronne de France”, Paris, 1889, pp. 175, 176, 300, 304.]

Thierry Badouer, a German goldsmith-jeweller, received from the French court, in 1572, an order for 250,000 crowns’ worth of jewels to be distributed as gifts at the approaching marriage of Henri de Navarre with Marguerite de Valois.  He faithfully executed his part of the task and brought the jewels with him to Paris, but before he had been able to deliver them to the Royal Treasury they were stolen from him during the confusion of the St. Bartholomew Massacre.  Eventually, in the reign of Henri IV, his widow was partly reimbursed for the loss, receiving one-quarter of the amount of her claim.[25] After the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, and as a result of it, many Protestants and Catholics left France for Hanau, Germany, where to this day they carry on the jeweller’s art; and from this beginning Hanau became a jeweller’s centre.

[Footnote 25:  Op. cit., p. 289.]

The best reproduction of the First Folio of 1623 is the photographic facsimile, made in 1902, of the copy formerly owned by the Duke of Devonshire and now in the possession of Henry E. Huntington, of New York.[26] The original Folio, prepared by the managers of Shakespeare’s company, John Heminge and Henry Condell, bears the imprint of Isaac Jaggard and Edward Blount, the printing house being conducted by William Jaggard and his son Isaac.  It is believed that an edition of five hundred copies was issued, at one pound per copy.  That the publication was essentially a commercial venture, although it may also have been a labor of love for some of the editors, is brought out clearly and quaintly in the preface addressed to “The great Variety of Readers”, and signed by Heminge and Condell.  This reads that the book was printed at the charges of W. Jaggard, Ed. Blount, I. Southweeke, and W. Apsley, 1623.  The following passage from the preface is well worth quoting, its spirit is so delightfully modern: