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.