Now not only are the types of the Oxford and Cologne printers identical, but both men made similar mistakes in the use of certain capitals, and we find both in the Modus Confitendi and in the Expositio a capital H frequently used in place of a capital P. This must be regarded as more than a mere coincidence and strong evidence of a connexion between the two presses. The Oxford printer also printed his capital Q sideways in his earliest book.
The printing of the Cologne Modus Confitendi was finished “in profesto undecim millium virginum,” that is on October 20; that of the Oxford Expositio on December 17. This gives an interval of eight weeks between the issue of the two books, a time much too short to allow of the same printer having produced both books, even if there were not other reasons against it. Who then was the printer from Cologne who introduced printing into Oxford? I think we are quite justified in believing that he was the Theodoric Rood de Colonia, whose name is first found in an Oxford book of 1481. Mr Madan considers it would be unsafe to assume that Rood was the printer of the first three books, no doubt because the type in which they are printed disappeared absolutely and was never used again. But analogous cases are not unknown. For his first book the St Alban’s printer used a beautiful type which, except as signatures in two other books, never appeared again.
It is extremely unfortunate that a source from which we might no doubt have learnt something about the introduction of printing into Oxford, and some details about the first printer, seems irrevocably lost. This is the volume of the registers of the Chancellor’s court covering the period between 1470 and 1497. In the volumes that remain, which contain records of all proceedings brought before the court, there are numerous references to stationers, and it may be taken as another piece of evidence against the 1468 date that there is no reference whatever to printing or printers between the years 1468 and 1470.
The two books which followed the Expositio are a Latin translation of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle by Leonardus Brunus Aretinus, and a treatise on original sin by Ægidius de Columna. The first, a quarto of one hundred and seventy-four leaves, is dated 1479, but no month is mentioned. By this date the printer had discovered which way up a capital Q should stand, and we find it always correctly printed, though some minor mistakes of the Expositio are continued, such as using a broken lower-case h sometimes for a b and sometimes, upside down, for a q. The general printing of the book was however improved, and the lines more evenly spaced out to the right-hand edge.
The second book, the treatise of Ægidius, De peccato originali, is dated March 14, 1479, but this date may be taken as 1479-80. In this book we find red printing introduced for the first and last time in an Oxford book. It is by far the rarest of the early Oxford books, perhaps on account of its small size, for it contains only twenty-four leaves, and the three copies known were all bound up in volumes with other tracts. The Bodleian copy belonged to Robert Burton and came to the library with his books; that in Oriel College Library was in a volume with the Expositio and some foreign printed quartos, which, though kept together, was rebound in the eighteenth century. The third copy, now in the Rylands Library at Manchester, was, until about thirty years ago, in a volume with the Expositio and three foreign printed tracts, including an edition of Michael de Hungaria’s Tredecim sermones, a book which has at the end a curious sermon containing a notice of the ceremony of incepting in theology at Oxford and Cambridge, with a few sentences in English. The volume had belonged to a certain A. Hylton in the fifteenth century, and was in its original stamped binding, a very fine specimen of contemporary Oxford work. The volume was sold in an auction about 1883, and the purchaser ruthlessly split up the volume and disposed of the contents. The two Oxford books found their way into Mr Quaritch’s hands, who sold the Expositio to an American collector, while the Ægidius was bought by Lord Spencer to add to the fine series of Oxford books at Althorp.
These first three Oxford books form a perfectly distinct group. In them but one fount of type is used, and they are without any kind of ornament. It is, however, quite impossible to suppose that an interval of eleven years separated the printing of the first and second books. The press-work of the second shows a slight improvement on the first, but only what the experience gained in printing a first book would enable the printer to carry out on a second attempt.
The next group of books, four in number, centring round the dates 1481 and 1482, are the Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima by Alexander of Hales, dated October 1481, the Commentary on the Lamentations of Jeremiah by John Lathbury, a Franciscan and D.D., of Oxford, dated July 31, 1482, and two books known only from fragments, an edition of Cicero Pro Milone, and a grammar in English and Latin.
These books are mostly printed in a new type, a peculiarly narrow gothic, of the Cologne school, and curiously resembling some used a little later by another Theodoricus at Cologne.
The Alexander of Hales is a folio of two hundred and forty leaves printed in double columns, and some copies have a woodcut border round the first page of text. This was probably an afterthought of the printer, for he has made no allowance for it in the size of the page, and the border extends out over two inches beyond the text, with the inevitable result that no copy, even in the original binding, has escaped being cut down. This is the first occurrence of a border in an English book. The design consists of elaborate spirals of flowers and foliage, amid which are a number of birds; it is a very well-designed piece of work, but it was probably obtained from abroad. At least sixteen copies of this book are known, and one, in the library of Brasenose College, is printed upon vellum, but is unfortunately imperfect. A copy purchased for Magdalen College, Oxford, at the time of its issue, cost thirty-three shillings and fourpence.
The Lathbury, like the Alexander, contains the printed border only in certain copies. Altogether about twenty copies are known, of which four are in Cambridge. Those in Westminster Abbey and All Souls College, Oxford, are printed upon vellum, and the latter is a particularly fine copy in the original stamped binding. A curious point about it is that four names occur, signed at the bottom of the leaves in various parts of the volume. It was considered at one time that these might be the names of press correcters, but from comparison with similar sets of markings in other books, Mr Madan came to the conclusion that they were those of the persons who supplied the vellum. It is clear that more copies on vellum than are known must have been printed, since a number of fragments have been found in bindings.