In effect the documents did not reach Caxton for some months, for it was not until August 20th that "Kaufmann 1 Wilhem Caxton" and "Notar Wilhem Dollyng" were empowered by the king to execute the exchange of ratifications. The actual event took place on September 7th, when Caxton and Dollyng placed in the hands of Duerkoep, Goswin de Cousvelden and Gerhard Bruns, Secretary to the League, the three documents from Edward and received the two newlywritten ratifications from the Hansards.2

Now that peace had at last been achieved both with the Hanse League and with Burgundy, Edward immediately set about the proposed Anglo-Burgundian invasion of France. At the end of June (1475) he crossed with an army to Calais, but his poor prowess in the campaign, Charles the Bold's defection and the mercenary settlement which was effected by Louis of France do not concern us. Our interest lies solely in the fact that William Caxton, "commissaris ende facteur van den 3 Coninc van Engelant," was entrusted with the task of acquiring in Holland and Seeland ships for the invasion.

That this task was not easy we learn from the Rentmeestersrekeningen van Noord-Holland, an extract from which, never before printed, appears in the Appendix.4

Gysbertus van der Mye and William Caxton set out on April 23rd, 1475, from the Hague at the express command of the President of the Council of Holland to attend to the fitting out of certain ships lying in Dutch waters for the transportation of the English King and his army. Van der Mye's task was to escort Caxton to the chief towns of the district, Delf, Rotterdam, Gouda, Middelburg, Flushing and others, and to present him to their respective authorities.

They bore a special mandate from the President commanding that Caxton in the name of the English King, the Duke's brother-in-law, should be supplied with any suitable ships they might have at their disposal. But the sailors Caxton selected

to man these vessels caused a great deal of trouble by their intractability, for they looked to him 'for so many unreaso promises and rewards' that he found it impossible to pr a single ship in a fitting manner.

The local authorities were therefore urged to use every a able coercive measure to prevent the delay of the Eng expedition which was likely to be caused.

The round of visits took thirty-three days to perform, the whole thing proved very costly, for the sailors fin insisted on a month's pay in advance.

Of their visit to Gouda in South Holland the Munic Accounts of that town testify, for they record two pu dinners given in honour of William Caxton and Van der M for a month unspecified in the year 1475.1 These entries co plete our present knowledge of Caxton as foreign ambassador

X

When Caxton returned from Cologne towards the end 1472 we may safely conclude that he had learnt the art printing, but that he did not immediately set up a press f himself is fairly obvious, for the first book he printed seer not to have appeared until 1475. It was Gordon Duff wh threw light on what was happening in the interim.

It is true that in 1471 Cologne was the nearest printing-cent to Bruges, but within the years immediately following Thierr Martens and John of Westphalia commenced printing at Alos and John Veldener was at Louvain, both much nearer Bruges. "Caxton's preparations for setting up a printing-pres " on his own account were probably made in 1474. (The "quotation is from Duff's monograph for the Caxtor "Club.)2 His assistant or partner, Colard Mansion, by "profession a writer and illuminator of manuscripts, is "entered as such in the books of the Guild of St. John "from 1454 to 1473, when his connexion with the guild This may point to two things: he had either "left Bruges, perhaps in search of printing material, or "had changed his profession; and the former seems the " most probable explanation.

"If Caxton was assisted by any outside printer in the "preparation of his type, there can be little doubt that "that printer was John Veldener of Louvain. Veldener

was matriculated at Louvain in the faculty of medicine, "July 30, 1473. In August, 1474, in an edition of the "Consolatio peccatorum of Jacobus de Theramo, printed " by him, there is a prefatory letter addressed 'Johanni "Veldener, artis impressoriae magistro,' showing that he "was by that time a printer. He was also a type-founder, "and in 1475 he made use of a type in many respects "identical with one 1 used by Caxton.

"In body they are precisely the same, and in most of "the letters they are to all appearances identical; and the "fact of their appearance about the same time in the "Lectura super institutionibus of Angelus de Aretio, "printed at Louvain by Veldener, and in the Quatre der“renieres choses, printed at Bruges by Caxton, would " certainly appear to point to some connexion between the "two printers.

"Furnished with a press and two founts of type, both "of West Flandres kind and cut in imitation of the "ordinary book-hand, William Caxton and Colard Mansion "started on their career as printers."

Colard Mansion's name certainly does not appear in the Guild's records for 1473-1474, but we learn from the following entry that his fee was duly paid :

which fell due in the year '73.

(Item, George Caelwaert paid Colard Mansion's year,

Again received for funeral expenses of Colard Mansion's wife.

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There is then a gap, but he reappears in 1482-3: -1 "folio 113r. Van Colard Manchion

VJ

It is certain that a printing press was assembled and e lished, for Mansion, under the patronage of Louis de Bru and Caxton, doubtless still under that of the Duchess, prod their first books in 1475.

From the first Caxton resolved to print for English rea and the "Recuyell of the Histories of Troye" was translated him into English from the version "composed and drawen of dyuerce bookes of latyn in to Frensshe by the ryght ver able persone and worshipfull man, Raoul le ffeure. prest a chapelayn vnto the ryght noble gloryous and mighty prynce his tyme Phelip duc of Bourgoyne."

It was upon this translation that he had worked in I leisure time between the years 1469 and 1471, continuing the "dredefull commandement" of Margaret, Duchess Burgundy, that which he had once abandoned in despair.

His first impulse to translate the work, he tells us, cam from his appreciation of the "nouelte" and "fayr langage ( frenshe. whyche was in prose so well and compendiously sett and wretton" that he was seized with that desire which assail all lovers of fair things, the desire to show to others the beautie which have delighted themselves. Wherefore, because, say Caxton,

"I... never had seen hit in oure englissh tonge, "thought in myself hit shold be a good besynes to trans "late hyt into oure englissh, to thende that hyt myght be "had as well in the royame of England as in other "landes."

The thought that he was engaged upon pioneer work spurred him on throughout the first two books and for the third book the translation of "that worshipfull and religious man dan Iohn Lidgate monke of Burye" was at hand in verse to aid him to the completion of his prose text. That worthy man he had no wish to rival, but "for as moche as dyuerce men ben of

dyuerce desyres, some to rede in Ryme, and some in prose" he felt himself justified.

In the following year the Bruges press produced an edition of the same book in Le Fevre's French, but it is uncertain what share Caxton himself had in the work: it offers however a convenient edition for a study of Caxton's powers of translation. The Prologue itself begins as a translation from the French, but rapidly ceases to be even an adaptation.

A second important book however was also produced in 1475 -"The play and Game of the Chess Moralised"-in which Life is likened to that game. The original Latin version of Jacobus de Cessolis had been independently translated by two Frenchmen, Jean Faron and Jean de Vignay, and it would seem that Caxton used both French versions, although the Prologue is an adaptation of De Vignay's own prologue. This book Caxton dedicated to the King's brother Clarence, then made Earl of Warwick, and Mr. Plomer is moved by it to take up the cudgels against those depreciators of Caxton who impugn him for lack of originality. The highly intellectual and moral tone of the work so pleased him that he for the second time set about translating for the benefit of his fellow Englishmen: he was neither requested to do it, nor paid for doing it. He even describes himself as "unknowen" to Clarence, in a passage which is an addition and not suggested by De Vignay's prologue. There needs no greater proof of his good taste and disinterestedness.

The Conclusion states that the work was "Fynysshid on the last day of marche the yer of our lord god. a thousand foure honderd and lxxiiii" (N.S. 1475), but this applies more probably to the translation than to the printing. Very likely however the completion of translation and impression were not separated by many months.

The second edition of 1483 throws some little more light on the history of the first: the prologue is no longer an adaptation, but a straightforward piece of original English, showing that eight years had gone to make a great improvement in Caxton's mastery of English style, and therein he states that

"there was an excellent doctour of dyuynyte in the royaume
"of Fraunce, of the ordre of thospytal of Saynt Johns of

1 "William Caxton," p. 59.

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