Three grave-looking men, decently clothed in black, were girding on their swords. Their caps were in their hands. The door opened, and the chief of the workmen came in. It was Wynkyn de Worde. With short speech, but with looks of deep significance, he called a chapel—the printer's parliament—a conclave as solemn and as omnipotent as the Saxons' Witenagemot. Wynkyn was the Father of the Chapel.
The four drew their high stools round the imposing-stone—those stools on which they had sat through many a day of quiet labour, steadily working to the distant end of some ponderous folio, without hurry or anxiety. Upon the stone lay two uncorrected folio pages—a portion of the 'Lives of the Fathers.' The proof was not returned. He that they had followed a few days before to his grave in Saint Margaret's church had lifted it once back to his failing eyes,—and then they closed in night.
"Companions," said Wynkyn—(surely that word "companions" tells of the antiquity of printing, and of the old love and fellowship that subsisted amongst its craft)—"companions, the good work will not stop."
"Wynkyn," said Richard Pynson, "who is to carry on the work?"
"I am ready," answered Wynkyn.
A faint expression of joy rose to the lips of these honest men, but it was damped by the remembrance of him they had lost.
"He died," said Wynkyn, "as he lived. The Lives of the Holy Fathers is finished, as far as the translator's labour. There is the rest of the copy. Read the words of the last page, which I have written:—
"Thus endeth the most virtuous history of the devout and right-renowned lives of holy fathers living in desert, worthy of remembrance to all well-disposed persons, which hath been translated out of French into English by William Caxton, of Westminster, late dead, and finished at the last day of his life."[14]
The tears were in all their eyes; and "God rest his soul!" was whispered around.
"Companion," said William Machlinia, "is not this a hazardous enterprise?"