But notwithstanding Mr Blades' industry and learning, our knowledge of the early part of Caxton's life is very scanty, and is derived mainly from what Caxton himself tells us in the prologue to his first literary production, the English translation of the French romance by Le Fevre, entitled Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes, or, Anglicised, The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye. Speaking of his boldness in undertaking the work, he refers to the “symplenes and vnperfightness that I had in both langages, that is to wete in frenshe and in englissh, for in france was I neuer, and was born & lerned myn englissh in kente in the weeld where I doubte not is spoken as brode and rude englissh as is in ony place of englond.” He was born probably in 1422 or 1423, and further than this we know nothing of him till his apprenticeship to Robert Large, a London mercer. Large died before Caxton's term of apprenticeship expired, and the next we hear of young Caxton is that he was living on the Continent, probably at Bruges. At the time he wrote the prologue from which quotation has just been made, that is about 1475, he had been for thirty years “for the most parte in the contres of Braband, flanders, holand, and zeland.” Yet notwithstanding so long a residence in the Low Countries, he describes himself as “mercer of ye cyte of London.”
As a wool merchant in Bruges he prospered, and in time rose to be Governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers, or “The English Nation,” and in that capacity probably dwelt at the Domus Angliæ, the Company's headquarters in Bruges. In 1468, and while holding this honourable and important position, he began his translation of Le Recueil, but soon laid it aside, unfinished. Two years later he took it up again, but by this time he had resigned the governorship, and was engaged in the service of the Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV. of England. When or why he took this position, and in what capacity he served the Duchess, is not known, but it was her influence which brought about the completion of his literary work and indirectly caused the subsequent metamorphosis of the mercer into the typographer. In the prologue to The Recuyell he relates that the duchess commanded him to finish the translation which he had begun, and this lady's “dredefull comādement,” he says, “y durste in no wyse disobey because y am a servāt vnto her sayde grace and resseiue of her yerly ffee and other many goode and grete benefetes.”
The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, when finished, immediately found favour in the eyes of the English dwellers in Bruges, who, rejoiced to have the favourite romance of the day in their own tongue, demanded more copies than one pair of hands could supply. So because of the weariness and labour of writing, and because of his promise to various friends to provide them with the book, “I haue practysed & lerned,” he tells us, “at my grete charge and dispense, to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here see, and is not wreton with penne and ynke, as other bokes ben, to thende that every man may haue them attones.”
Where Caxton gained his knowledge of printing is a matter of dispute. Mr Blades holds that he was taught by Colard Mansion, the first printer of Bruges, others that he learned at Cologne. Mr Blades adduces in support of his view the similarity of the types of Mansion and Caxton, the reproduction in Caxton's work of various peculiarities to be observed in Mansion's, the improbability that Caxton would have travelled to Cologne to get what was already at hand in the city where he lived, and the absence in his work “of any typographical link between him and the Mentz school.” For the Cologne theory Wynkyn de Worde, who carried on the work of Caxton's printing-office at Westminster after the latter's death, supplies some foundation in his edition of Bartholomæus De Proprietatibus Rerum, where he says:
“And also of your charyte call to remembraunce
The soule of William Caxton, the first prynter of this boke
In laten tongue at Coleyn, hymself to avaunce,
That every well-disposed man may thereon loke.”
As usual there is something to be said on both sides, but leaving this debateable ground we will only add that the Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, translated by himself from the French, is generally considered to be the first book printed by Caxton, perhaps with Mansion's help, and probably at Bruges, and in or about the year 1475. It is also the first printed book in English. It was followed about 1476 by the French version of the same work, and by the famous Game and Play of the Chesse Moralised. This was once believed to be the first book printed on English soil, but it is now assigned to Caxton's press on the Continent, probably at Bruges.
About 1476 Caxton returned to England, and set up his press at Westminster. It has been asserted that he worked in the scriptorium, but it is not known that Westminster Abbey ever had a scriptorium. Others have thought that he printed in some other part of the Abbey. His office, however, was situated in the Almonry, in the Abbey precincts, and was called the Red Pale, but it is now impossible to identify the place where it stood. In 1477 Caxton produced The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres, the first book, so far as is known, ever printed in England.
TYPE OF CAXTON'S DICTES OR SAYENGIS OF THE PHILOSOPHRES, WESTMINSTER, 1477 (exact size.)