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.
CHAPTER II.
CAXTON'S PRESS AT BRUGES.
In what city and from what printer Caxton received his earliest training in the art of printing has been a much debated question amongst bibliographers. The only direct assertion on the point is to be found in the lines which form part of the prologue written by Wynkyn de Worde, and added to the translation of the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, issued about 1495.
"And also of your charyte call to remembraunce,
The soule of William Caxton, the fyrste prynter of this book,
In Laten tongue at Coleyn, hymself to avaunce,