About 1496 Henry Quentell, a Cologne printer, had issued the first edition of the Expositio Hymnorum et Sequentiarum, according to the use of Sarum, but it was found that several hymns and sequences were omitted, so Pynson issued two supplements, one of sixteen leaves to the hymns, another of six to the sequences.
Another rather quaint book issued about this time is a kind of vocabulary or phrase book in English and French. “Here is a good book to lerne to speak french, Vecy ung bon liure a apprendre a parler fraunchoys.” The book contains also specimens of letters in French relating to trade, in fact it was evidently intended as a manual for people who had business relations with France.
Two more editions of the Nova Festa, the Festum transfigurationis and the Festum nominis Jesu were issued about this time. The only copies known of these two books are in a private library in Somerset, and I have not yet had an opportunity of examining them.
In 1497, or perhaps slightly earlier, Pynson began to use his third device, made probably to take the place of the second which had split, and taking warning from it he had the new one cut in metal. The device consists of the shield and monogram supported by a man and a woman, with the helmet and bird above. The border, which is cut on a separate piece, contains birds and foliage, with the Virgin and Child and a saint in the bottom corners. In the lowest part of the frame a piece in the form of a ribbon has been cut out for the insertion of type. In consequence of the weakness of that particular place the small piece of border below the ribbon began to be pushed inwards, and by 1499 there was a distinct indentation in the border. This got deeper and deeper year by year, until the piece broke off entirely in 1513. The first dated book in which it occurs is the 1497 edition of Alcock’s Mons perfectionis, but it occurs in several of the undated books that can be placed about 1496.
Between 1495 and the end of 1497 Pynson issued the plays of Terence, the first classic (with the exception of an Oxford edition of the Pro Milone, which is known from a few leaves) that had been printed in England. The six plays were evidently issued separately and not as a volume, for they differ considerably typographically. There is some difficulty, too, in determining in what order they were issued.
In 1498 there are seven dated books, one of them being the sermon of Bishop Alcock called Gallicantus, and he is so pleased with jesting on his name that he prefaces the text of his sermon with a little black picture of a cockerel, which he also used as a device. Another edition of the Doctrinale of Alexander the Grammarian was issued this year, but I have not yet seen the book, as the only copy known belongs to Lord Beauchamp.
In 1499 a very interesting book was printed by Pynson. This was the Promptorius Puerorum, a Latin-English dictionary ascribed to a monk of Lynn. The imprint tells us that the book was printed for Frederick Egmondt and Peter post pascha. Frederick Egmondt was an important stationer, and no doubt Peter post pascha was a stationer also, though what name in the vernacular can be represented by post pascha remains an unsolved riddle. Mr Albert Way, in his edition of the Promptorium parvulorum, applies a curious amount of misplaced ingenuity to the question of the identity of these two stationers. “We find about the time in question,” he says, speaking of the name Egmondt, “a distinguished person of that family, possibly the patron of Pynson, Frederic, son of William IV, Count of Egmond. In 1472 he received from his uncle, the Duke of Gueldres, the lordship of Buren; he was named governor of Utrecht by the Archduke Maximilian in 1492; two years later Buren was raised to a count in reward of his services. There was a Peter, an illegitimate brother of his father, who might have been living at that time; what was his surname does not appear.” Another book printed about this year was the Elegantiarum viginti praecepta, a book which I am fond of for a peculiar reason. I found once a leaf of it in the Signet Library, Edinburgh, and, not knowing that any copy was in existence, set to work to reconstruct the book from the leaf. I counted the lines, and comparing with foreign editions, conjectured the size and structure of the book, and knowing how Pynson would make a title-page with a woodcut, and the woodcut he would probably use, I made up a description of the book, taking the title from an early bibliography. At last I heard of a perfect copy in a private library which the owner was kind enough to allow me to examine. When the book arrived I found I had not only got the collation right, but by a lucky inspiration had selected the correct woodcut for the title-page. As it happens I might have spared myself the trouble, for I found afterwards a fairly accurate collation of the book in an authority I had not consulted.
A curious prognostication for 1499 is in the Bodleian. It is addressed to Henry VII, and was drawn out by a William Parron, who lived at Piacenza and called himself doctor of medicine and professor of astrology. Another prognostication for 1502, by the same author, was printed by Pynson, and some fragments are in the library of Westminster Abbey. He also wrote an astrological work on Henry, Duke of York, afterwards Henry VIII, in 1502, of which there are manuscripts in the British Museum and Bibliothèque Nationale, but it does not seem ever to have been printed.
The Missal which Pynson printed in 1500 is perhaps the finest book printed in the fifteenth century in England. It was produced at the expense of Cardinal Morton, whose arms appear at the beginning, and Pynson has introduced into the borders and initials a rebus on the name consisting of the letters Mor surmounting a barrel or tun. Five copies of this book are known, three being on vellum. One of the latter copies, slightly imperfect, is in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge. In the copy at Manchester all the references to St Thomas and his service, which had been scraped out and erased according to the command of Henry VIII, have been entirely filled in by some pious seventeenth century owner in gold.
In the imprint, after setting forth that the book was printed at the command of Cardinal Morton, Pynson adds the date, January 10, 1500. Now, as Cardinal Morton died on September 15, 1500, I think we have here a strong piece of evidence that Pynson, like De Worde, began his year on January 1. For if he had begun it on March 25, then January 10, 1500, would be after the Cardinal was dead, and Pynson would surely have spoken of him as lately dead, or in some way alluded to the loss of his patron.