EARL RIVERS PRESENTING CAXTON TO EDWARD IV. (From MS. in the Library of Lambeth Palace.)
But that wonderful art which was destined to chase this darkness like a new sun was already on its way from Germany to this country. The Chinese had printed from engraved wooden blocks for many centuries, when the same idea suggested itself to a citizen of Haarlem, named Laurent Janszoon Coster. Coster, who was keeper of the cathedral, first cut his letters in wood, then made separate wooden letters, and employed them in printing books by tying them together with strings. From wood he proceeded to cut his letters in metal, and finally to cast them in the present fashion. Coster concealed his secret with great care, and was anxious to transmit it to his children; but in this he was disappointed, for at his death one of his assistants, John Gensfleisch, the Gutenberger, went off to Mayence, carrying with him movable types of Coster's casting.
That is the Dutch story, but the Germans insist on Gutenberg being the originator of printing. They contend that Coster's were only the wooden blocks which had long been in use for the printing of playing cards, and manuals of devotion. They even insinuate that all that the Dutch claim had probably been brought from China by Marco Polo in the thirteenth century, who had seen the paper-money thus printed there in letters of vermilion, and that Holland had no share in the invention at all. But we know that the Germans have a vast capacity for claiming. It is notorious that all the earliest block-printing, the Bibliæ Pauperum, the Bibles of the Poor, the Speculum Humanæ Salvationis, with its fifty pictures, and other block works, were all done in the Low Countries in the century we are reviewing.
Taking a broad view, however, it is certain that Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, were the men who first printed any known works in movable types, and from Mayence, in 1445, diffused very soon the knowledge of the present art of printing over the whole world. The first work which they are supposed to have printed was the Bible, an edition of the Latin Vulgate, known by the name of the Mazarin Bible, of which various copies remain, though without date or printer's name.
Printing was introduced into England in 1474, according to all the chief authorities of or near that time, by William Caxton. Caxton was a native of the weald of Kent. He served his apprenticeship to a mercer of London, and left England in 1441 to transact business in the Low Countries. There he was greatly regarded by Margaret, the Duchess of Burgundy, Edward IV.'s sister, who retained him as long as she could at her court. Caxton was now upwards of fifty years of age, but his inquisitive and active temperament led him to learn, amongst other things, the whole art of printing from one Colard Manson. He saw its immense importance, and he translated Raoul le Feure's "Recueil des Histoires de Troye," and printed it in folio. This great work he says himself that he began in Bruges, and finished in Cologne in 1471. The first work which he printed in England was the "Game and Playe of Chesse," which was published in 1475. From this time till 1490, or till nearly the date of his death in 1491 or 1492, a period of sixteen years, the list of the works which Caxton passed through his press is quite wonderful. Thomas Milling, the Abbot of Westminster, was his most zealous patron; and at Westminster, in the Almonry, he commenced his business. Earl Rivers, brother to the queen of Edward IV., another of his friends and patrons, translated the "Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers" for his nephew, the Prince of Wales, and introduced Caxton, when it was printed, to present it to the king and royal family.
But while Caxton was thus busy he saw others around him also as hard at work with their presses: Theodore Rood, John Lettow, William Machelina, and Wynkyn de Worde, foreigners, and Thomas Hunt, an Englishman. A schoolmaster of St. Albans set up a press there, and several books were printed at Oxford in 1478, and to the end of the century. There is no direct evidence of any work being printed in Scotland during this century, though such may have been the case, and all traces of the fact obliterated in the almost universal destruction of the cathedral and conventual libraries at the Reformation. James III. was known to collect the most superb specimens of typography, and Dr. Henry mentions seeing a magnificent edition of "Speculum Moralitatis," which had been in that king's possession, and contained his autograph.
Not less meritorious benefactors of their country, next to the writers and printers of books, were those who collected them into libraries, and the most munificent patron and encourager of learning in this manner was the unfortunate Duke Humphrey of Gloucester. He gave to the University of Oxford a library of 600 volumes in 1440, valued at £1,000. Some of these very volumes yet remain in different collections. Duke Humphrey not only bought books, but he employed men of science and learning to translate and transcribe. He kept celebrated writers from France and Italy, as well as Englishmen, to translate from the Greek and other languages; and is said to have written himself on astronomy, a scheme of astronomical calculations under his name still remaining in the library of Gresham College. The great Duke of Bedford, likewise, when master of Paris, purchased and sent to this country the royal library, containing 853 volumes, valued at 2,223 livres.
The schools and colleges founded during this century were the following:—Lincoln College, Oxford, founded in 1427, by Richard Fleming, Bishop of Lincoln, and completed by Thomas Scott, of Rotherham, Bishop of Lincoln, in 1475. All Souls' College, Oxford, was founded by Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1437. He expended upon its erection £4,545, and procured considerable revenues for it out of lands of the alien priories dissolved just before that time. Magdalene College, Oxford, was founded by William of Waynflete, Bishop of Winchester, in 1458, and soon became one of the richest colleges in Europe. King's College, Cambridge, was founded by Henry VI. in 1441. Queens' College, Cambridge, was founded by Margaret of Anjou, in 1448; and Catherine Hall, Cambridge, was founded by Robert Woodlark, third provost of King's College, in 1473.
Besides these, Henry VI. founded Eton College, and Thomas Hokenorton, Abbot of Osney, founded the schools in Oxford, in 1439. Before that time the professors of several sciences in both universities read their lectures in private houses, at very inconvenient distances from each other. To remedy this inconvenience, schools were erected in both universities at this period. Hokenorton's schools comprehended the teaching of divinity, metaphysics, natural and moral philosophy, astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, music, logic, rhetoric, and grammar. They required liberal aid from other benefactors, and they found these in the noble Humphrey of Gloucester, and the two brothers Kemp, the one Archbishop of York and the other Bishop of London. They were completed in 1480, including Duke Humphrey's noble library, the nucleus of the present Bodleian, which was refounded by Sir Thomas Bodley in 1597. The quadrangle, containing the schools of Cambridge, was completed in 1475.
Up to this period Scotland had possessed no university whatever, and its youth had been obliged to travel to foreign universities for their education. But now the University of St. Andrews was founded in 1410, and obtained a charter in 1411 from Bishop Wardlaw, which was confirmed by the Pope in 1412, and by James I. in 1431. The great need of such an institution was soon evidenced by the university becoming famous. In 1456 Kennedy, the successor of Wardlaw, founded the College of St. Salvator in that city; and in 1450 William Turnbull, the Bishop of Glasgow, founded the University of that city; and in the same year was founded the college or faculty of arts in Glasgow, King James II. taking both college and university under his especial patronage and protection. This college received a handsome endowment from James, Lord Hamilton, and his lady, Euphemia, Countess of Douglas, in 1459.