_The Publication Committee of the Caxton Club certifies that this
is one of an edition of two hundred and fifty-two copies printed on
American hand-made paper, of which two hundred and forty are for sale,
and three copies printed on Japanese vellum. The printing was done
from type which has been distributed._
_This is also one of one hundred and forty-eight copies into which has
been incorporated a leaf from an imperfect copy of the first edition
of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales," printed by William Caxton, and
formerly in Lord Ashburnham's library, having been purchased for this
purpose by the Caxton Club. The copies so treated comprise the three
Japanese vellum copies and one hundred and forty-five of the American
hand-made paper copies; all of the latter are for sale._
WILLIAM CAXTON
[Illustration: BINDING WITH CAXTON'S DIES
(Frontispiece, and see page 85)
]
WILLIAM CAXTON
BY
E. GORDON DUFF, M. A. OXON.
SANDARS READER IN BIBLIOGRAPHY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
THE CAXTON CLUB
MCMV
COPYRIGHT BY THE CAXTON CLUB
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND FIVE
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
PREFACE 11
I. CAXTON'S EARLY LIFE 13
II. CAXTON'S PRESS AT BRUGES 22
III. THE EARLY WESTMINSTER PRESS 33
IV. 1480-1483 47
V. 1483-1487 56
VI. 1487-1491 70
VII. CAXTON'S DEATH 86
APPENDIX 91
INDEX 99
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PLATE PAGE
BINDING WITH CAXTON'S DIES _Frontispiece_
[From the cover of a book in the library of
Corpus Christi College, Oxford.]
I. PROLOGUE FROM THE BARTHOLOMAEUS 22
This contains the verse relating to Caxton's first
learning to print.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
(ERRATUM: Read _Prologue_ for _Epilogue_ on Plate I.)
II. THE RECUYELL OF THE HISTORYES OF TROYE 28
Printed in Caxton's Type 1. Leaf 253,
the first of the third book.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
III. EPILOGUE TO BOETHIUS 36
Printed in Caxton's Type 3.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
IV. THE DICTES OR SAYENGIS OF THE PHILOSOPHRES 38
Printed in Caxton's Type 2.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
V. CAXTON'S ADVERTISEMENT 42
Printed in Caxton's Type 3. Intended as an
advertisement for the Pica or
Directorium ad usum Sarum.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
VI. THE MIRROUR OF THE WORLD 50
Printed in Caxton's Type 2*. The woodcuts in this
book are the first used in England.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
VII. THE MIRROUR OF THE WORLD 50
Printed in Caxton's Type 2*. This shows a diagram
with the explanations filled in in MS.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
VIII. THE GAME AND PLAYE OF THE CHESSE 52
Printed in Caxton's Type 2*. The wood-cut represents
the philosopher who invented the game.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
IX. LIBER FESTIVALIS 56
Printed in Caxton's Type 4*. The colophon to the
second part of the book entitled
"Quattuor Sermones."
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
X. CHAUCER'S CANTERBURY TALES 58
Printed in Caxton's Type 4*. This is the second
edition printed by Caxton, but the first with
illustrations.
[From the copy in the British Museum.]
XI. THE FABLES OF ESOPE 60
Printed in Caxton's Type 4*. These two cuts show
the ordinary type of work throughout the book.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
XII. THE FABLES OF ESOPE 60
The wood-cut here shewn is engraved in an entirely
different manner from the rest.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
XIII. THE FABLES OF ESOPE 62
Shewing the only ornamental initial letter
used by Caxton.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
XIV. THE IMAGE OF PITY 66
[From the unique wood-cut in the British Museum.]
XV. SPECULUM VITÆ CHRISTI 66
Printed in Caxton's Type 5. The wood-cut depicts
the visit of Christ to Mary and Martha.
[From the copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
XVI. CAXTON'S DEVICE 70
[From an example in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
XVII. LEGENDA AD USUM SARUM 70
Printed at Paris by W. Maynyal, probably for Caxton.
The book is known only from fragments.
[From a leaf in the University Library, Cambridge.]
XVIII. THE INDULGENCE OF 1489 72
Printed in Caxton's Type 7. This type is not
mentioned by Blades in his Life of Caxton.
[From a copy in the British Museum.]
XIX. THE BOKE OF ENEYDOS 76
Printed in Caxton's Type 6. This page gives
Caxton's curious story about the variations
in the English language.
[From the copy in the British Museum.]
XX. ARS MORIENDI 76
Printed in Caxton's Type 6 [text] and 8 [heading].
[From the unique copy in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford.]
XXI. SERVITIUM DE TRANSFIGURATIONE JESU CHRISTI 78
Printed in Caxton's Type 5.
[From the unique copy in the British Museum.]
XXII. THE CRUCIFIXION 78
Used by Caxton in the Fifteen Oes, and frequently
afterwards by Wynkyn de Worde.
[From an example in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.]
XXIII. THE LYF OF SAINT KATHERIN 80
Printed by W. de Worde with a modification of
Caxton's Type 4*. The large initials serve to
distinguish de Worde's work from Caxton's.
[From the copy in the British Museum.]
XXIV. AND XXV. THE METAMORPHOSES OF OVID 82
Two leaves, one with the colophon, from a
manuscript prepared by Caxton for the press,
and perhaps in his own hand.
[From the MS. in the Pepysian Library, Magdalene
College, Cambridge.]
PREFACE.
A life of Caxton must of necessity be little more than an account of
his work. As in the case of the great inventor Gutenberg, nothing but
a few documents are connected with his name. In those days of tedious
communication and imperfect learning, the new art was considered
as merely a means of mechanically producing manuscripts, which the
general public must have looked on with apathy. By the time that
its vast importance was fully perceived, the personal history of the
pioneers was lost.
Caxton, however, indulged now and then in little pieces of personal
expression in his prefaces, which, if they tell us little of his life,
throw a certain amount of pleasant light on his character.
In the present book I have tried to avoid as far as possible the
merely mechanical bibliographical detail, which has been relegated in
an abridged form to an appendix, and have confined myself to a more
general description of the books, especially of those not hitherto
correctly or fully described.
Since William Blades compiled his great work, _The Life and Typography
of William Caxton_, some discoveries have been made and some errors
corrected, but his book must always remain the main authority on the
subject, the solid foundation for the history of our first printer.
Where I have pointed out mistakes in his book or filled up omissions,
it is in no spirit of fault-finding, but rather the desire of a worker
in the same field to add a few stones to the great monument he has
built.
E. G. D.
CHAIN BRIDGE, BERWYN, May, 1902.
CHAPTER I.
CAXTON'S EARLY LIFE.
Amongst those men to whom belongs the honour of having introduced the
art of printing into the various countries of Europe, none holds a
more marked or a more important position than William Caxton. This is
not the place to discuss the vexed questions, when, where, or by
whom the art was really discovered; but the general opinion may be
accepted, that in Germany, before the year 1450, Gutenberg had thought
out the invention of movable type and the use of the printing-press,
and that before the end of the year 1454 a dated piece of printing had
been issued. From town to town down the waterways of Germany the
art spread, and the German printers passed from their own to other
countries,--to Italy, to Switzerland, and to France; but in none of
these countries did the press in any way reflect the native learning
or the popular literature. Germany produced nothing but theology or
law,--bibles, psalters, and works of Aquinas and Jerome, Clement or
Justinian. Italy, full of zeal for the new revival of letters, would
have nothing but classics; and as in Italy so in France, where the
press was at work under the shadow of the University.
Fortunately for England, the German printers never reached her shores,
nor had the new learning crossed the Channel when Caxton set up his
press at Westminster, so that, unique amongst the nations of Europe,
England's first printer was one of her own people, and the first
products of her press books in her own language. Many writers, such
as Gibbon and Isaac Disraeli, have seen fit to disparage the work
of Caxton, and have levelled sneers, tinged with their typical
inaccuracy, at the printer and his books. Gibbon laments that Caxton
"was reduced to comply with the vicious taste of his readers; to
gratify the nobles with treatises on heraldry, hawking, and the game
of chess [Caxton printed neither of the first two]; and to amuse the
popular credulity with romances of fabulous knights and legends of
more fabulous saints." "The world," he continues, "is not indebted
to England for one first edition of a classic author." Disraeli,
following Gibbon, writes: "As a printer without erudition, Caxton
would naturally accommodate himself to the tastes of his age, and it
was therefore a consequence that no great author appears among the
Caxtons." And again: "Caxton, mindful of his commercial interests and
the taste of his readers, left the glory of restoring the classical
writers of antiquity, which he could not read, to the learned printers
of Italy."
It is idle to argue with men of this attitude of mind. Of what
use would it have been to us, or profit to our printer, to reprint
editions of the classics which were pouring forth from foreign
presses, and even there, where most in demand, were becoming
unsaleable? Those who wanted classics could easily and did easily
obtain them from the foreign stationers. Caxton's work was infinitely
more valuable. He printed all the English poetry of any moment then in
existence. Chaucer he printed at the commencement of his career, and
issued a new edition when a purer text offered itself. Lidgate and
Gower soon followed. He printed the available English chronicles,
those of Brut and Higden, and the great romances, such as the History
of Jason and the Morte d'Arthur. While other printers employed their
presses on the dead languages he worked at the living. He gave to
the people the classics of their own land, and at a time when the
character of our literary tongue was being settled did more than any
other man before or since has done to establish the English language.
Caxton's personal history is unfortunately surrounded by considerable
obscurity. Apart from the glimpses which we catch here and there in
the curious and interesting prefaces which he added to many of the
books he printed, we know scarcely anything of him. Thus the story of
his life wants that variety of incident which appeals so forcibly to
human sympathy and communicates to a biography its chief and deepest
interest. The first fact of his life we learn from the preface of the
first book he printed. "I was born and lerned myn Englissh in Kente in
the Weeld where I doubte not is spoken as brode and rude Englissh as
is in ony place of Englond."
This is the only reference to his birthplace, and such as it is, is
remarkably vague, for the extent or limits of the Weald of Kent were
never clearly defined. William Lambarde, in his _Perambulation of
Kent_, writes thus of it: "For it is manifest by the auncient Saxon
chronicles, by Asserus Menevensis, Henrie of Huntingdon, and almost
all others of latter time, that beginning at Winchelsea in Sussex
it reacheth in length a hundred and twenty miles toward the West and
stretched thirty miles in breadth toward the North." The name Caxton,
Cauxton, or Causton, as it is variously spelt, was not an uncommon one
in England, but there was one family of that name specially connected
with that part of the country who owned the manor of Caustons, near
Hadlow, in the Weald of Kent. Though the property had passed into
other hands before the time of the printer's birth, some families of
the name remained in the neighbourhood, and one at least retained the
name of the old home, for there is still in existence a will dated
1490 of John Cawston of Hadlow Hall, Essex.
The Weald was largely inhabited by the descendants of the Flemish
families who had been induced by Edward III. to settle there and carry
on the manufacture of cloth. Privileged by the king, the trade rapidly
grew, and in the fifteenth century was one of great importance. This
mixture of Flemish blood may account in certain ways for the "brode
and rude Englissh," just as the Flemish trade influenced Caxton's
future career.
In the prologue to _Charles the Great_, Caxton thanks his parents for
having given him a good education, whereby he was enabled to earn an
honest living, but unfortunately does not tell us where the education
was obtained, though it would probably be at home, and not in London,
as some have suggested. After leaving school Caxton was apprenticed to
a London merchant of high position in the year 1438. This is the first
actual date in his life which we possess, and one from which it is
possible to arrive with some reasonable accuracy at his age.
Although then, as now, it was customary for a man to attain his
majority at the age of twenty-one, there was also a rule, at any rate
in the city of London, that none could attain his civic majority, or
be admitted to the freedom of the city, until he had reached the age
of twenty-four. The period for which a lad was bound apprentice was
based on this fact, for it was always so arranged that he should issue
from his apprenticeship on attaining his civic majority. The length
of servitude varied from seven to fourteen years, so it is easy to
calculate that the time of Caxton's birth must lie between the years
1421 and 1428. When we consider also that by 1449 he was not only out
of his apprenticeship, but evidently a man of means and position, we
are justified in supposing that he served the shortest time possible,
and was born in 1421 or very little later.
The master to whom he was bound, Robert Large, was one of the most
wealthy and important merchants in the city of London, and a leading
member of the Mercers' Company. In 1427 he was Warden of his Company,
in 1430 he was made a Sheriff of London, and in 1439-40 rose to
the highest dignity in the city, and became Lord Mayor. His house,
"sometime a Jew's synagogue, since a house of friars, then a
nobleman's house, after that a merchant's house, wherein mayoralties
have been kept, but now a wine tavern (1594)," stood at the north end
of the Old Jewry. Here Caxton had plenty of company,--Robert Large
and his wife, four sons, two daughters, two assistants, and eight
apprentices. Only three years, however, were passed with this
household, for Large did not long survive his mayoralty, dying on
the 4th of April, 1441. Amongst the many bequests in his will the
apprentices were not forgotten, and the youngest, William Caxton,
received a legacy of twenty marks.
On the death of Robert Large, in April, 1441, Caxton was still an
apprentice, and not released from his indentures. If no specific
transfer to a new master had been made under the will of the old,
the executors were bound to supply the apprentices with the means of
continuing their service. That Caxton served his full time we know
to have been the case, since he was admitted a few years later to the
Livery of the Mercers' Company, but it is clear that he did not remain
in England. In the prologue to the _Recuyell of the Historyes of
Troye_, written in 1471, he says: "I have contynued by the space
of xxx yere for the most part in the contres of Braband, Flandres,
Holand, and Zeland"; and this would infer that he finished his time of
apprenticeship abroad.
About 1445 or 1446 Caxton had served his time, and he became a
merchant trading on his own account, and apparently with considerable
success, a result naturally to be expected from his conspicuous
energy. By 1450 he was settled at Bruges, and there exists in the town
archives the report of a lawsuit in which he was concerned in that
year. Caxton and another merchant, John Selle, had become sureties
for the sum of £110 owed by John Granton, a merchant of the Staple of
Calais, to William Craes, another merchant. As Granton had left Bruges
without paying his debt, Craes had caused the arrest of the sureties.
These admitted their liability, but pleaded that Craes should wait the
return of Granton, who was a very rich man, and had perhaps already
repaid the debt. The verdict went against Caxton and his friend, who
were compelled to give security for the sum demanded; but it was also
decreed that should Granton, on his return to Bruges, be able to prove
that the money had been paid before his departure, the complainant
should be fined an amount double that of the sum claimed.
In 1453 Caxton paid a short visit to England in company with two
fellow-traders, when all three were admitted to the Livery of the
Mercers' Company.
For the next ten years we can only conjecture what Caxton's life may
have been, as no authentic information has been preserved. All that
can be said is, that he must have succeeded in his business and have
become prosperous and influential, for when the next reference to him
occurs, in the books of the Mercers' Company for 1463, he was acting
as governor of that powerful corporation, the Merchant Adventurers.
This Company, which had existed from very early times, had been formed
to protect the interests of merchants trading abroad, and though many
guilds were represented, the Mercers were so much the most important,
both in numbers and wealth, that they took the chief control, and
it was in their books that the transactions of the Adventurers were
entered.
In 1462 the Company obtained from Edward IV. a larger charter, and
in it a certain William Obray was appointed "Governor of the English
Merchants" at Bruges. This post, however, he did not fill for long,
for in the year following we find that his duties were being performed
by Caxton. Up to at least as late as May, 1469, he continued to
hold this high position. His work at this period must have been most
onerous, for the Duke of Burgundy set his face against the importation
of foreign goods, and decreed the exclusion of all English-made cloth
from his dominions. As a natural result, the Parliament of England
passed an act prohibiting the sale of Flemish goods at home, so that
the trade of the foreign merchants was for a time paralyzed. With the
death of Philip in 1467, and the succession of his son Charles the
Bold, matters were entirely changed. The marriage of Charles with the
Princess Margaret, sister of Edward IV., cemented the friendship
of the two countries, and friendly business relations were again
established. The various negotiations entailed by these changes,
in all of which Caxton must have played an important part, perhaps
impaired his health, and were responsible for his complaint of a few
years later, that age was daily creeping upon him and enfeebling his
body.
Somewhere about 1469 Caxton's business position and manner of life
appear to have undergone a considerable change, though we have now no
clue as to what occasioned it. He gave up his position as Governor of
the Adventurers and entered the service of the Duchess of Burgundy,
but in what capacity is not known. In the greater leisure which the
change afforded, he was able to pursue his literary tastes, and began
the translation of the book which was destined to be the first he
printed, _Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes_. But there is perhaps
another reason which prevailed with him to alter his mode of life. He
was no doubt a wealthy man and able to retire from business, and it
seems fairly certain that about this time he married. In 1496 his
daughter Elizabeth was divorced from her husband, Gerard Croppe, owing
apparently to some quarrels about bequests; and assuming Caxton to
have been married in 1469 the daughter would have been twenty-one at
the time of his death. The rules of the various companies of merchants
trading abroad were extremely strict on the subject of celibacy, a
necessary result of their method of living. Each nation had its house,
where its merchants lived together on an almost monastic system. Each
had his own little bed-chamber in a large dormitory, but meals were
all taken together in a common room.
Caxton's duties in the service of the Duchess had most probably to do
with affairs of trade, in which at that time even the highest nobility
often engaged. The Duchess obtained from her brother Edward IV.
special privileges and exemptions in regard to her own private
trading in English wool, and she would naturally require some one with
competent knowledge to manage her affairs. This, with her interest in
Caxton's literary work, probably determined her choice, and under her
protection and patronage Caxton recommenced his work of translation.
In 1471 he finished and presented to the Duchess the translation of
_Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes_, which had been begun in Bruges
in March, 1469, continued in Ghent, and ended in Cologne in September,
1471.
The completion of this manuscript was no doubt the turning-point in
Caxton's career, as we may judge from his words in the epilogue to the
printed book. "Thus ende I this book whyche I have translated after
myn Auctor as nyghe as god hath gyven me connyng to whom be gyven the
laude and preysyng. And for as moche as in the wrytyng of the same my
penne is worn, myn hande wery and not stedfast, myn eyen dimmed with
overmoche lokyng on the whit paper, and my corage not so prone and
redy to laboure as hit hath ben, and that age crepeth on me dayly and
febleth all the bodye, and also because I have promysid to dyverce
gentilmen and to my frendes to addresse to hem as hastely as I myght
this sayd book. Therefore I have practysed and lerned at my grete
charge and dispense to ordeyne this said booke in prynte after the
maner and forme as ye may here see. And it is not wreton with penne
and ynke as other bokes ben to thende that every man may have them
attones. For all the bookes of this storye named the recule of the
historyes of troyes thus enprynted as ye here see were begonne in oon
day, and also fynysshed in oon day."
The trouble of multiplying copies with a pen was too great to be
undertaken, and the aid of the new art was called in. Caxton ceased to
be a scribe and became a printer.