To write upon Westminster and not to speak of Caxton would be indeed impossible. As well write of America and forget Columbus. Even at the risk of doing over again what has already been done by the antiquary, as Blades, or by the historian, as Charles Knight; even though one may have found little to add to the investigations and discoveries of those who have gone before, we must still speak of Caxton, because through his agency was effected the change—that of printing for manuscript—which has proved the most momentous, the most far-reaching, the most fruitful of all the changes and inventions and discoveries of modern days. The Reformation threw open the door for freedom of thought; the Renaissance restored to the world the literature and the philosophy of the past; printing scattered broadcast the means of acquiring knowledge.

The humble beginnings of this revolution, the life and achievements of the man by whose hands it was effected in this country, are not so widely known that they may be assumed as common knowledge. Let us ask, for instance, who was Caxton? How did he arrive at his printing press? What did he print? These are questions that the ordinary reader would perhaps find it difficult to answer.

To begin with, the setting up of his printing press

was but an episode—albeit the last—in the long and busy life of this active man; an experiment, doubtful at first, which presently became the serious business of a man advanced in years, his occupation at an age when most men think of ease and retirement. The name and fame and praise of Caxton have gone forth into all lands; but it is the fame of Caxton in old age, Caxton the printer, not Caxton in early life and in full manhood, Caxton of the Mercers’ Company, Caxton the Merchant Adventurer, Caxton the Rector of the English House. If you ask any person of ordinary acquirements who invented printing, he will probably tell you that it was Caxton. Yet the person of a little more than ordinary acquirements very well knows that Caxton was not the inventor at all. What he did was to bring over the art of printing from the Netherlands to this country. Not such a very great thing, perhaps; had he not done so someone else would; it was

only a matter of time; the invention was already beginning to leave its cradle; other men already understood that here was a thing belonging to the whole world—a thing bound to travel over the whole world. Caxton, however, did actually give it to us; he first brought it over here; he introduced the new invention into this country. That is his great glory; for that service he will never be forgotten; he has the honor that belongs to those who understand, and advance, and associate with their own lives and achievements, things invented by others who could not, perhaps, see their importance.

Perhaps everything that can be found out about Caxton has been already discovered. When we consider the antecedent improbability of learning anything at all about a merchant of the fifteenth century,—not a merchant of the wealthier kind, neither a Whittington nor a Gresham,—we may congratulate ourselves upon knowing a good deal about Caxton. To be sure, he gives us in his prefaces many valuable facts concerning himself. The learned Mr. William Blades has put together in his two books on Caxton all that he himself, or that others before him, had been able to discover. He has also added certain conjectures as to the most important step in Caxton’s life; I will speak of these conjectures presently. The result is a tolerably complete biography. We cannot fill up the life year after year, but in general terms we know how it was spent and what things were done in the allotted span. That the personality is shadowy—yet not more shadowy than that of Shakespeare—cannot be denied.

No one, however, can say, in these times of research, when the documents of the past are overhauled and made to yield their secrets, that any point of archÆological investigation is finally closed, so that nothing more will be discovered about it. Somewhere or other are lying hidden documents, contracts, wills, conveyances, letters, reports, diaries—which may at any moment yield unexpected treasures to the finder. Let us remember how Peter Cunningham unearthed the accounts of the Revels and Masques among the papers of the Audit Office; how the debates of the House of Commons in the time of Cromwell were discovered; how Riley’s researches in the archives of London have actually restored the mediÆval city in every detail of its multi-colored life; how the history of England has been already entirely rewritten during the last fifty years from newly discovered documents, and must in the next fifty years be again rewritten. Remembering these things, let us not conclude that concerning any man, king, statesman, churchman, citizen, the last word has been spoken, the last discovery made.

For my own part, I have to contribute only those little discoveries—some may call them theories—which always present themselves when another man from another point of view approaches a certain array of facts. That is to say, I have no new fact to announce, but I have one or two new conclusions to draw.

Let me endeavor, then, to present to you William Caxton as a reality, not a shadow; you shall see how and why he became, late in life, a printer; what he was and what was his reputation before he became a printer. And you shall see for yourselves what kind of book he produced, how he illustrated it, the kind of type he employed, and the binding of his books.

First, what manner of man was he, and of what origin?

About four miles northeast of Tunbridge, in Kent, is the village of Hadlow, part of which is covered by the manor of Causton. It is supposed, but it is by no means certain, that from this manor sprang the family whose name Causton, Cauxton, or Caxton, preserves the memory of their former holding. Long before the birth of William Caxton the manor, if the family ever held it, had passed out of their hands. He says, himself, that he was born in the Weald of Kent. The Weald covers a large area; but he does not tell us any more, and it is not possible to get any closer information. In this part of the country he was born—somewhere. And in this part of the country there is a manor bearing his name. Can we safely conclude that a territorial name means that the family were once Lords of the Manor? Certainly not. There is, however, reason to believe that he came of a City family, and one long and honorably known in the City; for the name of Caxton or Causton frequently occurs in the City records. In the year 1303 Aubin de Caustone, haberdasher, was appointed one of a committee to make scrutiny into the manufacture of caps by methods and of materials forbidden by law. In 1307 William de Causton is one of those who sign a letter addressed to the Bishop of Chester by the City Fathers. In 1327 John de Causton, Alderman, is one of a Board of Arbitrators between certain disputing trade companies; and he represented the city at the council of Northampton in 1337, for which service he received the sum of sixty pounds. In 1331 John de Caxton and Thomas de Caxton were butchers—the latter, one regrets to find, obstructing the street with his stall at the Poultry, for which his meat was forfeited. In 1334 William de Causton, living in the parish of St. Vedast, was an Alderman. In the year 1348 there were seven of the name who paid their fees as liverymen of the Mercers’ Company. In 1364 Alice, wife of Robert de Causton, who appears to have been a vintner, was sentenced to the “thewe,” for thickening the bottom of a quart pot with pitch, so that he who ordered a quart of wine got short measure. This deplorable incident is the only one which tarnishes the honor of the Caustons or Caxtons. In 1401 William de Causton is apprenticed to Thomas Gedeney. In 1414 John Causton is a butcher. In 1424 Stevyn Causton is a liveryman of the Mercers. The family of Causton or Caxton, therefore, were largely engaged in various branches of trade in London during the whole of the fourteenth century. Whether William Caxton’s father was himself a citizen and freeman, and if so, how the son came to be born in the Weald of Kent, is not known. As the boy was apprenticed to the very richest merchant in the city, and admitted a member of the wealthiest company, it is quite certain that his people were of some consideration in the city: to be received into the house of a great merchant as an apprentice, to be admitted into the Company of Mercers, proves beyond a doubt City connections of an honorable kind. Either Caxton’s father or his grandfather must have been a man of weight and distinction.

“I was born and learned my English in Kent in the Weald, where I doubt not is spoken as broad and rude English as in any place of England.” These are his own words. In another place he writes, concerning his own style, “whereof I humbly and with all my heart thank God, and also am bounden to pray for my father’s and mother’s souls, that in my youth set me to school, by which, by the sufferance of God, I got my living—I hope truly.” The Weald, in which he apparently spent his childhood, was at this time largely peopled by the descendants of the Flemish cloth-workers brought over to England by Edward IV. He therefore heard as a child the Flemish language, or at least English with a large mixture of Flemish words, a fact which perhaps had something to do with his subsequent residence in Bruges. But where he went to school, what he learned there, and at what age he was taken from his lessons, he does not tell us.

He was born, I am sure, in the year 1424. It seems very clear that the usual age of apprenticeship was fourteen; and Caxton was certainly apprenticed in the year 1438, and since the age of admission to the City freedom was twenty-four, ten years were passed in servitude: a long time, but not too long to learn the various branches of a merchant’s work, and to acquire the habits of obedience which afterward are transformed into the habit of authority.

It has been said that his master was the richest merchant of his time. He was Robert Large, Mercer, Warden of the Company in 1427, Sheriff in 1430, and Lord Mayor in 1440. When this great man received an apprentice he was receiving either the son of a personal friend or of someone whom he desired to oblige. It is significant that at the same time Large received another apprentice, the son of a brother mercer, named Harrowe, and that Harrowe received as apprentice another Caxton—Robert, perhaps brother of William, but concerning him nothing is discoverable.

Robert Large occupied a house already historic; it was situated at the northeast corner of Old Jewry. In the thirteenth century the Jews who lived in that quarter built for themselves a synagogue; in the year 1262 there was a popular outbreak of hatred against the Jews, and a terrible massacre, in the course of which their synagogue was plundered and taken from them. In the year 1271 Henry III. gave the place as a House to a new order of Mendicant Friars called Fratres de Poenitenti Jesu, or Fratres de SaccÂ.

This was a short-lived but extremely interesting Order growing out of the Franciscans. It was founded in 1231, or, as is also stated, in 1241. St. Francis, as we know, founded the Gray Friars, Fratres Minores; his disciple, St. Clara, founded the Clares, or Sorores Minores, and the Poenitentiarii, or Fratres de Poenitenti Jesu, or Fratres de SaccÂ, were established shortly afterward. The Order contained both men and women; the brothers and sisters might be married; they might also hold property. They came over to England in the year 1257, and very soon possessed nine Houses, viz.: at Lynne, where Prior was the Head of the English Branch; at London, Canterbury, Cambridge, Norwich, Worcester, Newcastle, Lincoln, and Leicester. The Council of Lyons, in 1274, passed an edict permitting only four orders of Mendicants. This edict seems to have been a deathblow to the Fratres de PoenitentiÂ: they languished and obtained little support—perhaps the people had no belief in friars who held property and were married. In 1305 Robert Fitzwalter obtained the permission of the King to assign their house to him, which was done, and the Penitential Friars disappeared from history. A hundred years later Robert Large obtained the house and held his Mayoralty in it; as did Lord Mayor Clipton in 1492. It was afterward turned into a tavern called the Windmill.

In this house Caxton began his apprenticeship. He did not finish it here, because, unfortunately, in the year 1441 Robert Large died.

As there is no document in which a man reveals himself so much as in a will, wherein may be found his religion, his superstition, his love, his hatred, his charity, the whole heart and soul of a man, I transfer to these pages a part of Robert Large’s will, by which you may understand what manner of man was this rich merchant, Caxton’s master, from whom he received his ideas of honorable trade.

He begins, after the usual preamble, by leaving money to the High Altar of his Parish Church; to the structure of the church; to buy vestments for the church; the endowment of a chaplain to say mass daily. He then gives money to his widow and children; for the poor of the Mercers’ Company; for a vestment in the Mercers’ Chapel; to the four orders of Mendicants; to the Crutched Friars; for bedding in the Hospitals of St. Bartholomew and St. Mary Spital; to the parish church of Shallerton, where his father was buried; to the parish church of Allerton, where his ancestors were buried; to his servants and apprentices sums of money varying from one mark to twenty marks,—there are five apprentices, including William Caxton, who gets the larger sum,—then there are more bequests to churches. To the poor of Coleman Street ward he gives twenty pounds. His soul thus cared for by so many gifts and bequests,—a thing that no one in that age could possibly neglect,—and his children and servants remembered, the testator applies himself to things practical and worldly. And here we observe what a practical citizen of the times most desired. He gave 400 marks toward the completion of an aqueduct lately begun in the City; he gave 100 marks toward the repairs of London Bridge; he gave 300 marks to the cleansing of Walbrook; also 100 marks to ten poor girls of good character on their marriage; also £100 to be divided among poor servants in Lancashire and Warwickshire; also £20 to be distributed by his executors where it might be most needed; also 5 marks for bedding at the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem; also 40 shillings for bedding for St. Thomas’s Hospital, and £6 for bedding at the Lepers’ Houses of Hackney, St. Giles, and St. George of Southwark. Also 100 shillings for the prisoners in Newgate, and 100 shillings for the prisoners in Ludgate.

He forgets nobody, this good citizen; he desires good water and plentiful; he wants the Bridge to be kept in repair—where would trade be without the Bridge? he wants cleanliness in the City—why should Walbrook be allowed to be converted into an open sewer? Hospitals for the sick; marriage portions for girls; worn-out servants; prisoners; lepers; he remembers all. Surely, to have been brought up in the household of such a man, so kindly, so thoughtful, with so great a heart, must have been an education for the boy.

At this time the principal market of Western Europe was Bruges, and the center of the trade carried on by the Merchant Adventurers—an association containing members of various companies—was that city. There stood Domus Anglorum, the House of the English Merchants. It was not uncommon for a young man to be sent to this House in order to learn the foreign trade before he completed his time. Thither, therefore, went Caxton, having seven years still to serve; and there he remained for thirty years.

Those who know the history of the Hanseatic

Merchants and the Steelyard will understand the position and meaning of the Domus Anglorum. The Englishmen in Bruges, just as the Germans in London, lived separate and apart, a community by themselves, in their own house, which was surrounded by a wall, contained offices, warehouses, sleeping chambers, a common hall, and perhaps a chapel (I say perhaps, because a chapel belonged to every great house). The people of the London Steelyard, whether they had a chapel or no, worshiped in the Church of All Hallows the Great, just outside their walls; and very likely the English merchants observed the same practice. They lived separate from the Flemings; they were never allowed by the citizens of Bruges to consider themselves otherwise than as strangers and foreigners; they had certain privileges and rights jealously accorded, jealously watched, by the Duke of Burgundy and by the worthy burghers of Bruges; jealously guarded and resolutely claimed by the foreign merchants themselves. In order to avoid, as much as possible, the ever-present danger of a popular rising against strangers, the Englishmen lived by strict rule: abroad they walked with circumspection; they kept as much as possible within their own walls. It is not likely that the prejudice against foreigners was so strong in any European country as it was in England; certainly not at Bruges, Ghent, and Antwerp, whither foreigners flocked from every port. At the same time, to be a foreigner anywhere invited curiosity; and mediÆval curiosity was the mother of hostility; and hostility too often took a practical and an active line. The English factory, therefore, lived under rule, like the Germans of the Steelyard; they lived in a college; they observed hours of closing the gates; they had a common table; save for vows and midnight prayers the life was monastic; on no pretense were women to be admitted, and all the residents were unmarried.

These factories or foreign stations of English merchants were continued into quite modern times. In the seventeenth century, and perhaps later, there was an English factory at Aleppo; the Indian Empire sprang out of English factories; the establishment of a factory was the first step toward a footing in foreign trade.

The position of governor, or rector, of such a community was, it will be readily understood, one requiring special, rare, and valuable qualities. He must be, first of all, a man of courteous and conciliatory manners; he must know how to be firm and how to assert his rights; he must be watchful for the extension, and jealous for the observance, of privileges; he must be ready to seize every opportunity for advancing the interests of the community; he must not be afraid to stand before kings; he must be a linguist, and able to speak the language of the court and the language of the market. When we learn, therefore, that Caxton was presently raised to the very important office of Governor of all the English merchants, not only in Bruges, but in other towns,—Ghent, Antwerp, Damme, Sluys,—we understand from this single fact the manner of man he was supposed to be; when we learn in addition that he continued to hold his post till he was forty-five years of age, we understand what manner of man he must have been.

There is, as one who studies this time cannot fail to remark, a special kind of dignity belonging to these centuries; it is the dignity that springs from the knowledge of one’s own rank or place, at a time when rank, place, or station belonged to every possible occupation of life. A bricklayer or a carpenter, as well as a mercer, or a monk, or a priest, belonged to a trade association; he was ’prentice first, full member next, officer or even warden in due course. The most humble employment was dignified by the association of its members. Everybody, from the King to the lowest craftsman, understood the dignity of associated labor; everybody recognized office and authority, whether it was the episcopal office or the presidency of a Craft Company. You may see Caxton in every picture that presents a bourgeois of the time. He wears a long gown of red cloth, something like a cassock, the sleeves and neck trimmed with rich fur; round his neck hangs a gold chain; his belt is of leather, gilt, and from it hangs his purse; his hair is cut shorter than the nobles wear it, and it is seen under a round cap, the sides of which are turned up. It is a costume admitting of great splendor in the way of material; the fur lining or trimming may be broad and costly; the gold chain may be rich and heavy; the belt may be embossed by an Italian artist—all the advantages of mediÆval costume are not with the knight and soldier. As for his face, it is grave; his eyes are serious; it is not for him that the Court Fool plays his antics; it is not for him that the minstrel strikes his mandolin: he is thinking what new concessions he can get from the Duke of Burgundy. Above all, at this moment he is troubled about the late quarrel in Antwerp between certain English sailors—young hotheads—and some Flemings, in a tavern, after which two of the latter were found dead. And the town, without considering who began the brawl, was of course in an uproar against the accursed English. The news has been brought home by a Flemish merchant just from Antwerp: the Englishmen have taken sanctuary; there will be correspondence, excuses—fines, perhaps.

Or it is an Italian merchant—Caxton talks his language as well—who has things to propose, barter to effect. The Rector of the Domus Anglorum was, in fact, a kind of consul. He sent home regular reports on the state of trade, on prices and fluctuations, on supply and demand; he received English merchants, made them pay an entrance fee, instructed them in the laws and privileges of the factory, gave them interpreters, and assisted them in their buying and selling, according to the customs of the town. He was also agent to the Merchant Adventurers of London.

In the archives of the town two cases are recorded in which Caxton was concerned, the first in which he had become surety to a merchant of the Staple at Calais, the second in which he consented to arbitration. In the first he is styled simply “English Merchant.” In the second he is “English Merchant and Governor of the English House.” As a merchant, or as Rector of the English House, Caxton did not become rich. This point seems to me abundantly proved by the facts of the case. His biographers have sometimes represented him as returning to England enriched by his calling, and setting up his press as an occupation or recreation for his old age. Let us look again at the facts. Those which bear upon the point are the following:

1. He remained in the Domus for thirty years, leaving it at the age of forty-seven or thereabouts. Merchants who grow rich do not continue in the service of their company so long.

2. He married on leaving the Domus. Those who prosper do not continue in celibacy till they are past their prime.

3. He then remained abroad for a time, and entered the service of the Duchess of Burgundy. Wealthy merchants do not remain in exile, nor did they at any time enter into the service of a foreign prince.

4. During the whole thirty years of Caxton’s residence abroad, his native country was torn to pieces by a long and bitter civil war. It has been shown that the towns suffered comparatively little from this conflict, but its effect upon the Merchant Adventurers was most certainly disastrous. Where, when all the country was covered with armies, and every great noble had to take a side, was the market for imports? Where were they to get the exports when the land was ravaged throughout its length and breadth? The Merchant Adventurers could neither sell their imports nor ship their exports. The condition of London was something like that when the Saxons overran the country on all sides; and also, like that time, the flower of the London youth were called out to fight. Of money-making there was small thought; happy the merchant who could hold his own. “I have known London,” Caxton writes, “in my young age much more wealthy, prosperous, and richer than it is at this day.” While the Red and the White Roses were tearing at each other’s throats one fears that the Domus AngliÆ showed empty warehouses and a deserted hall.

Lastly, if there were any doubt on the subject of Caxton’s comparative poverty, it should be removed by the grateful words in which he speaks of the money given him when he entered the service of the Duchess of Burgundy; these are not the words of a prosperous man.

Caxton, therefore, one may be quite sure, left Bruges as slenderly provided as regards store and treasure as when he entered the city.

After this preamble, we now arrive at the invention of printing.

The fifteenth century—the beginning of the Renaissance—was also remarkable for the production of beautiful and costly books. The art of the illuminator had never been finer, the writing had never been more beautiful, the demand for books had never been so great; the numbers of those engaged outside the monasteries in the production of books rapidly increased. In every town they formed themselves into Guilds; thus, at Bruges, there was the Guild of St. John, in which were enrolled booksellers, painters, scriveners and copyists, illuminators, bookbinders, curriers, makers of parchment and vellum, and engravers. And they could not produce books fast enough to meet the increased demand. Now, it is perfectly certain that if the demand for anything that is made, grown, or produced is increased from any cause, the methods of production of that thing will be reconsidered, and men’s ingenuity will devise means of making the production easier, cheaper, and more practicable. What happened with the production of books was exactly what happened with everything else. “Give us more books,” cried those who, a hundred years before, had wanted no books; “give us more books.” Those who were interested in the production pondered continually over the enormous labor and cost of copying. Could there be found any way to lessen that labor? The result was the invention of printing.

Who was the first printer?

You may read all the books, pamphlets, and articles; you may consider all the arguments, and in the long run you will know no more than you knew at the beginning. Perhaps it was Coster of Haarlem, or perhaps it was Gutenberg of Mainz. No one knows, and really it matters little except for the antiquary and the historian. At this period, as we have seen, some modification in the old method of copying was certain to be invented. It was by the greatest good luck, I have always thought, that a sort of shorthand, a representation of words by little easy symbols, was not invented. For instance, supposing a separate symbol for each of the prepositions, articles, and auxiliary verbs, and other separate symbols for the commoner words, there might be some thousands of symbols in all to be learned by the scribe; but his labor would be reduced to one-tenth. They might have invented some such method. Then, satisfied with the result, we should have gone on for centuries, and the art of printing would still have to be invented.

But the time was come, and the invention, happily, came with it. Had printing been invented two centuries before, it would have been neglected and speedily forgotten, because there was no demand for books. Had it been invented two centuries later, it would have had to contend against some other contrivance for shortening labor and cheapening books. If an ingenious projector discovers some great truth or invents some useful contrivance before or after his time, he is lost—he and his discovery. Thus, in the reign of James the First a man of great ingenuity contrived a submarine boat—he was before his age. In the middle of the last century another ingenious person discovered a way of sending messages by electricity—he was before his age. In a romance, now a hundred and fifty years old, the possibility of photography was imagined by another person before his age. Men whose ideas are much before their age receive, as their reward, contempt, certainly; imprisonment, probably; and perhaps death in one of its more unpleasant forms.

The generally received story, after all that has been said, is this: There was a certain Johann Gensfleisch von Sorgenloch, called Zum Gutenberg, a man of noble family, who was born in Mainz somewhere about the end of the fourteenth century. He removed from his native town to Strasbourg, where he began experimenting upon wood blocks. He then, with the idea of printing clearly defined in his mind, perhaps with type already cut in wood, went back to Mainz and entered into partnership with three others, named Riffe, Heitman, and Dritzchen. Documents still exist which prove this partnership, and contemporary evidence is clear

CAXTON’S HOUSE IN THE ALMONRY, WESTMINSTER.