_Caxton's Printing-office_ (Vol. ii., p. 122.).--The abbot of
Westminster who allowed William Caxton to set up his press in the
almonry within the abbey of Westminster, was probably John Esteney, who
became abbot in the year 1475, and died in 1498. If the date mentioned
by Stow for the introduction of printing into England by Caxton, viz.
1471, could be shown to be that in which he commenced his printing at
Westminster, Abbot Milling (who resigned the abbacy for the bishopric of
Hereford in 1475) would claim the honour of having been his first
patron: but the earliest ascertained date for his printing at
Westminster is 1477. In the _Gentleman's Magazine_ for April, 1846, I
made this remark:
"There can, we think, be no doubt that the device used by
Caxton, and afterwards by Wynkyn de Worde, (W. 4.7 C.) was
intended for the figures 74, (though Dibdin, p. cxxvii, seems
incredulous in the matter), and that its allusion was to the
year 1474 which may very probably have been that in which his
press was set up in Westminster."
Will the Editor of "NOTES AND QUERIES" now allow me to modify this
suggestion? The figures "4" and "7" are interlaced, it is true, but the
"4" decidedly precedes the other figure, and is followed by a point (.).
I thinly it not improbable that this cypher, therefore, is so far
enigmatic, that the figure "4" may stand for _fourteen hundred_ (the
century), and that the "7" is intended to read doubled, as
_seventy-seven_. In that case, the device, and such historical evidence
as we possess, combine in assigning the year 1477 for the time of the
erection of Caxton's press at Westminster, in the time of Abbot Esteney.
If _The Game and Play of the Chesse_ was printed at Westminster, it
would still be 1474. In the paragraph quoted by ARUN (Vol. ii., p. 122.)
from Mr. C. Knight's _Life of Caxton_, Stow is surely incorrectly
charged with naming Abbot Islip in this matter. Islip's name has been
introduced by the error of some subsequent writer; and this is perhaps
attributable to the extraordinary inadvertence of Dart, the historian of
the abbey, who in his _Lives of the Abbots of Westminster_ has
altogether omitted Esteney,--a circumstance which may have misled any
one hastily consulting his book.