“The letter Y,” says Mr. Koning, “is, without doubt, the initial of Ysabel of Portugal, who was married to Philip le Bon in 1430.”
Mr. Koning sums up the third chapter of his book by saying, “the paper-marks prove that the said works were published between the years 1420 and 1440; since it appears from what has been said above, that the paper of the first Dutch edition (of the Speculum) which is evidently the most ancient, bears alone the marks which are the most ancient; that is to say, the arms of Bavaria which were used by the paper-makers in the reign of the Countess Jacqueline, and consequently, before the year 1428; and that the paper of the second or third edition of the Speculum bears the letter P, the mark of the sovereign Philip of Burgundy, which certainly was not in usage until the year 1425.”
Upon all this Mr. Ottley thus comments:— (pp. 163–164).
“Now, with respect to the Gothic letter P, which was so much used on paper, from the middle of the fifteenth to the early part of the sixteenth century, I shall not take upon me to deny Mr. Koning’s assertion, that it is to be considered as the initial of Philip of Burgundy; although, as it appears to have been used in other parts, as well as in his dominions, and continued so long after his death (as was the Y also, after that of Ysabel, the wife of Philip), the fact may be doubted. As to Mr. Koning’s hypothesis, concerning the two paper-marks with the arms of Bavaria, it is certainly ingenious: and, had he proved that the paper so marked, was manufactured in the dominions of Jacqueline, or of her mother Margaret, at the early period he speaks of, I should have thought it so strong a circumstance, in favour of that edition of the Speculum in which those paper-marks occur, that I should have felt disposed to carry back the three preceding editions of that work (for it certainly is the fourth) to a very remote period indeed, rather than have denied that it was printed at the early date he has assigned to it. But first, Mr. Koning has brought no evidence to shew that the paper was made in Brabant; (for the circumstance, supposing it true, that all the paper used in those times, at Haarlem, came from that great commercial depôt, Antwerp, proves nothing, since paper coming from different parts, was doubtless sold there); and, secondly, we have no proof that it was made at that early period. Suffice it for me to add, that neither of these paper-marks was to be found among the tracings, made by Mr. Koning from the ancient registers of Haarlem, which, as I have said, he was so good as to lend to me; and that after a diligent search of several months in the extensive collections of original Books of Accounts, from 1352 to about 1470, in the archives at the Hague, I was unable to discover either of them; though at length I chanced to find them both, in a book in sq. fol. obligingly lent to me by Mr. De Jonge, now the principal archivist at the Hague; viz. the Fasciculus Temporum in Dutch, printed at Utrecht, by Joh. Veldener, in 1480; though perhaps the paper was not made from the same identical sieves or moulds, as the paper that is found in the Speculum.”
Thus then, Mr. Ottley, who “shews a determined inclination to favour the claims of Laurent Coster,”[129] also shews, that M. Koning, who obtained the prize from the Dutch Society of Arts and Sciences at Haarlem, for the best dissertation in support of the ancient tradition that the Art of Printing was invented in that city,—is wrong in his assertions in regard to the paper-marks; and that the earliest instances of the occurrence of those to which Koning chiefly refers, the Gothic P, and the arms of Bavaria, are in the years 1445, 1453, and 1480.
It follows therefore, from the evidence of the paper-marks, that the printing of the Speculum could not have taken place before 1445; that most probably it was not printed earlier than 1453; and that it may not have issued from the press before even 1480. Consequently, as the Speculum was the first Dutch work printed with separable types, it cannot claim priority over the invention of Gutenberg, which, as has been shewn in the preceding chapter, must have been previous to 1436.
As to the costume and armour of the figures in the vignettes of the Speculum,[130] the following extracts from Sir Samuel Meyrick’s letter to Mr. Ottley, and the observations of the latter thereon, are most pertinent. Sir Samuel says:—
“Next to actual dates, there is no criterion of age so sure as Costume, which, changing on an average within every ten years, fixes the real period, almost precisely; especially, as, all its parts not varying at the same moment, the one rectifies the vagueness of the other. After costume, ornament is a fair guide, as is architecture; and next to these, the style of writing, where the subject is a manuscript.
“You are, no doubt, well aware that the designers of the middle ages, until the latter part of the seventeenth century, always dressed their figures from the objects before their eyes; and those writers who would fabricate descriptions of what they wished should be supposed to have occurred before their times, always used the terms of costume applicable to their own period.”
Then follow numerous illustrations and references, in proof of the position laid down; amongst which are the different articles of armour used from the reigns of Edward I, to Henry VIII. With reference to some of these articles, Sir S. Meyrick continues:—
“On comparing these with what appears in the woodcuts to the Speculum, the identity will be evident. It is true that their use continued till the close of the fifteenth century; but this authority shews that they were also known at its commencement....
“On a careful review and consideration of the whole, I am inclined to think, that the wood-blocks of the Speculum cannot be of later date than 1435, and that they may be a little earlier; nor is this opinion in the least degree shaken on an examination of the rest, besides that of which you more particularly asked it.”