These obviously divide the books into three groups. In the first group of three (“1468”–1479
80) only type no. 1 is used. In the second group of four (1480–82, Theodoric Rood) only types 2–3 are found. In the last group consisting of eight (1483–1486
7, T. Rood and Thomas Hunte) only types 4–7 are used, except that the peculiar black initial type (no. 3) is occasionally still used.
The press was of course a wooden hand-screw one, which was at first employed to print one page at a time (Jerome), but after the first book two pages and perhaps later four were struck off together. The earliest printing press of which we have an engraving is as late as 1499
500 (see an article in Bibliographica, 1894, no. 2), but there was great conservatism in detail, and from the early engravings and such researches as those which Blades, De Vinne, Talbot Reed, and others have made, we know many of the details of working in the earliest days.
Type 1. “1468”—1479
80.
Character:—Cologne black.
Body:—English, nearly (10 lines = 115
16 in. In modern English 10 lines = 1⅞ in.).
Used in the Jerome, Aretinus and Aegidius, with no other.
The “upper case” (to use a modern expression) consisted of at least 16 divisions, G, J, K, L, T, U, W, X, Y, Z not being used, and P seldom in the Jerome, H being there used for both H and P. This misuse is not found in the other two books. On the other hand there are two forms of C, E, N, and Q, both probably mixed in the same division. Q is in the Jerome almost always
(a peculiarity found in some ornamental MSS., from the convenience of extending the tail into the margin), in the Aretinus and Aegidius always Q: the letter is however identical in all three books, but being on a square body it is in the Jerome turned one quarter round.