CAXTON'S DEVICE.
In 1480, three or four years after Caxton had settled at Westminster, John Lettou, a foreigner of whom little is known, established the first London printing-press.[4] His workmanship was particularly good, and he was the first in this country to print two columns to the page. He subsequently took into partnership William de Machlinia, and according to the colophon of their Tenores Novelli the office of these two printers was located in the Church of All Saints', but this piece of information is too vague to assist in the identification of the spot. Machlinia is afterwards found working alone in an office near the Flete Bridge. His later books were printed in Holborn.
A well-known name is that of Wynkyn de Worde, a native of Holland, and at one time assistant to Caxton. At Caxton's death he became master of the Red Pale, and issued a number of books “from Caxton's house in Westminster,” including reprints of several of Caxton's publications. He made use of some modified forms of Caxton's device, but he also had a device of his own, which first appears in the Book of Courtesye printed some time before 1493. He printed, among other works, the Golden Legend, the Book of Courtesye, Bonaventura's Speculum Vitæ Christi, Higden's Polychronicon, which appeared in 1495 and is the first English book with printed musical notes; Bartholomæus' De Proprietatibus Rerum, which appeared about 1495 and is the first book printed on English-made paper, and which has already been noticed as the authority for supposing that Caxton learned printing at Cologne; the Boke of St Albans, the Chronicles of England, Morte D'Arthur, The Canterbury Tales, etc., etc. He also issued a host of sermons, almanacs, and other minor works.
TYPE OF WYNKYN DE WORDE'S HIGDEN'S POLYCHRONICON, LONDON, 1495 (exact size.)
In 1500 Wynkyn de Worde moved from Caxton's house in Westminster to the Sign of the Sun, in Fleet Street, and presently opened another place of business at the Sign of Our Lady of Pity, in St Paul's Churchyard.
About a year after Caxton had established himself at the Red Pale, and had issued the Dictes or Sayengis, and two years before the city of London had attained to the dignity of a printing-press, typography began to be practised at Oxford, but by whom is not known, though very possibly by Theodore Rood of Cologne. The first Oxford book was the Exposicio in Simbolum Apostolorum of St Jerome, a work which happens to be dated 1468, and has thereby led some to assign to Oxford the credit of having printed the first book in this country. But that date is now acknowledged to be a printer's error for 1478. A similar misprint led to a similar error as to the first book printed in Venice. The Decor Puellarum, executed by Nicolas Jenson, purports to have appeared in 1461, and thus was at one time supposed to be the first book printed in Venice, but the date is now recognised as a misprint for 1471, which leaves John of Spires the first Venetian printer and his Epistolæ familiares of Cicero, 1469, the first Venetian printed book.
Cambridge was more than forty years later than Oxford in providing herself with a printing-press.