A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898. Henry Robert Plomer
2*, but a shade smaller, and easily distinguishable by the lowercase 'w,' which is entirely different in character from that used in the earlier fount. With this he printed on the 14th July 1489, the Faytts of Armes and Chivalry, and between that date and the day of his death three romances, the Foure Sons of Aymon, Blanchardin, and Eneydos; the second editions of Reynard the Fox, the Book of Courtesy, the Mirror of the World, and the Directorium Sacerdotum, and the third edition of the Dictes and Sayinges. To the same period belong the editions of the Art and Craft to Know Well to Die, the Ars Moriendi, and the Vitas Patrum.
But in addition to type 6, which Blades believed to be the last used by Caxton, there is evidence of his having possessed two other founts during the latter part of his life. With one of them, type No. 7 (see E. G. Duff, Early English Printing), somewhat resembling types Nos. 3 and 5, he printed two editions of the Indulgence of Johannes de Gigliis in 1489, and it was also used for the sidenotes to the Speculum Vitæ Christi, printed in 1494 by Wynkyn de Worde. Type No. 8 was also a black letter of the same character, smaller than No. 3, and distinguished from any other of Caxton's founts by the short, rounded, and tailless letter 'y' and the set of capitals with dots. He used it in the Liber Festivalis, the Ars Moriendi, and the Fifteen Oes, his only extant book printed with borders, and it was afterwards used by Wynkyn de Worde.
Caxton died in the year 1491, after a long, busy, and useful life. His record is indeed a noble one. After spending the greater part of his life in following the trade to which he was apprenticed, with all its active and onerous duties, he, at the time of life when most men begin to think of rest and quiet, set to work to learn the art of printing books. Nor was he content with this, but he devoted all the time that he could spare to editing and translating for his press, and according to Wynkyn de Worde it was 'at the laste daye of his lyff' that he finished the version of the Lives of the Fathers, which De Worde issued in 1495. His work as an editor and translator shows him to have been a man of extensive reading, fairly acquainted with the French and Dutch languages, and to have possessed not only an earnest purpose, but with it a quiet sense of humour, that crops up like ore in a vein of rock in many of his prologues.
Of his private life we know nothing, but the 'Mawde Caxston' who figures in the churchwarden's accounts of St. Margaret's is generally believed to have been his wife. His will has not yet been discovered, though it very likely exists among the uncalendared documents at Westminster Abbey, from which Mr. Scott has already gleaned a few records relating to him, though none of biographical interest. We know, however, from the parish accounts of St. Margaret's, Westminster, that he left to that church fifteen copies of the Golden Legend, twelve of which were sold at prices varying between 6s. 8d. and 5s. 4d.
Caxton used only one device, a simple square block with his initials W. C. cut upon it, and certain hieroglyphics said to stand for the figures 74, with a border at the top and bottom. It was probably of English workmanship, as those found in the books of foreign printers were much more finely cut. This block, which Caxton did not begin to use until 1487, afterwards passed to his successor, who made it the basis of several elaborate variations.
Upon the death of Caxton in 1491, his business came into the hands of his chief workman, Wynkyn de Worde. From the letters of naturalisation which this printer took out in 1496, we learn that he was a native of Lorraine. It was suggested by Herbert that he was one of Caxton's original workmen, and came with him to England, and this has recently been confirmed by the discovery of a document among the records at Westminster, proving that his wife rented a house from the Abbey as early as 1480. In any case there is little doubt that Wynkyn de Worde had been in intimate association with Caxton during the greater part of his career as a printer, and when Caxton died he seems to have taken over the whole business just as it stood, continuing to live at the Red Pale until 1500, and to use the types which Caxton had been using in his latest books. This fact led Blades to ascribe several books to Caxton which were probably not printed until after his death. These are The Chastising of Gods Children, The Book of Courtesye, and the Treatise of Love, printed with type No. 6; but, in addition to these, two other books, probably in the press at the time of Caxton's death, were issued from the Westminster office without a printer's name, but printed in a type resembling type 4*. These are an edition of the Golden Legend and the Life of St. Catherine of Sienna. Wynkyn de Worde's name is found for the first time in the Liber Festivalis, printed in 1493. In the following year was issued Walter Hylton's Scala Perfectionis, and a reprint of Bonaventura's Speculum Vite Christi, the sidenotes to which were printed in Caxton's type No. 7, which de Worde does not seem to have used in any other book. Besides this, there was the Sarum Horæ, no doubt a reprint of Caxton's edition now lost. He used for these books Caxton's type No. 8, with the tailless 'y' and the dotted capitals. Speaking of this type in his Early Printed Books, Mr. E. G. Duff points out its close resemblance to that used by the Paris printers P. Levet and Jean Higman in 1490, and argues that it was either obtained from them or from the type-cutter who cut their founts.[1]
To the year 1495 belongs the Vitas Patrum, the book of which Caxton had finished the translation on the day of his death, and beside this, there were reprints of the Polychronicon and the Directorium Sacerdotum. The reprint of the Boke of St. Albans, which was issued in 1496, is noticeable as being printed in the type which De Worde obtained from Godfried van Os, the Gouda printer. This broad square set letter is not found in any other book of De Worde's, though he continued to use a set of initial letters which he obtained from the same printer for many years.
Among other books printed in 1496, were Dives and Pauper, a folio, and several quartos such as the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, the Meditations of St. Bernard, and the Liber Festialis. In 1497 we find the Chronicles of England, and in 1498 an edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a second edition of the Morte d'Arthur, and another of the Golden Legend, in fact nearly all De Worde's dated books up to 1500 were reprints of works issued by Caxton. But amongst the undated books we notice many new works, such as Lydgate's Assembly of Gods, and Sege of Thebes, Skelton's Bowghe of Court, The Three Kings of Cologne, and several school books.
In 1499 De Worde printed the Liber Equivocorum of Joannes de Garlandia, using for it a very small Black Letter making nine and a half lines to the inch, probably obtained from Paris. This type was generally kept for scholastic books, and in addition to the book above noted, Wynkyn de Worde printed with it, in the same year or the year following, an Ortus Vocabulorum. From the time when he succeeded to Caxton's business down to the year 1500, in which he left Westminster and settled in Fleet Street, De Worde printed at least a hundred books, the bulk of them undated.
As will be seen, several printers from the Low Countries seem to have come to England soon after Caxton. The year after he settled at Westminster, a book was printed at Oxford without printer's name, and with a misprint of the date, that has set bibliographers by the ears ever since. This book was the Exposicio sancti Jeromini us simbolum apostolorum, and the colophon ran, 'Impressa Oxonie et finita anno domini M.cccc.lxviij., xvij. die decembris.' The facts that two other books that are dated 1479 (the Aegidius de originali peccato and Sextus ethicorum Aristotelis) have many points in common with the Exposicio, that the Exposicio has been found bound with other books of 1478, and that the dropping of an x from the date in a colophon is not an uncommon misprint, have led to the conclusion that the Exposicio was printed in 1478 and not 1468. The printer of these first Oxford books is believed to have been Theodoric Rood of Cologne, whose name appeared in the colophon to the De Anima of Aristotle, printed at Oxford in 1481. This was followed in 1482 by a Commentary on the Lamentation of Jeremiah, by John Lattebury, and later editions of these two books are distinguished by a handsome woodcut border printed round the first page of the text.
About 1483 Rood took as a partner Thomas Hunt, a stationer of Oxford, and together they issued John Anwykyll's Latin Grammar,