his capacity of governor. But this is the last date at which he appears to have been fulfilling the duties of his commercial office.
The English princess who had become Duchess of Burgundy in 1468 showed Caxton much attention from her first arrival in the Low Countries, and when her brother Edward IV took refuge in Flanders in October 1470 from the successful rebellion of the Earl of Warwick, there is little doubt that Caxton was brought into personal relations with him. Before March 1470–1 Caxton had wholly relinquished his commercial pursuits for the household service of the duchess. Doubtless this change was due to an increasing desire on his part for leisure in which to essay various literary enterprises. In 1471, while at Ghent, he busily employed himself in completing the translation of ‘Le Recueil,’ which he had neglected for two years, and on 19 Sept. 1471 the work was finished at Cologne. The book was in great demand, and, in order to multiply copies with the greater ease, Caxton (as he tells us in his ‘Prologe’) resolved to put himself to the pains of learning the newly discovered art of printing.
In all likelihood 1474 was the year in which ‘The Recuyell’ was printed. This, the first English book printed, gives no indication of time or place, and the date and the exact circumstances of its publication have been, in the absence of precise evidence, the subject of much controversy. At Bruges there lived a skilful caligrapher named Colard Mansion, who set up a press in that city for the first time about 1473. Mr. Blades states that Caxton probably supplied Mansion with money to carry out his enterprise, and placed himself under Mansion's tuition at Bruges. That Caxton and Mansion were acquainted with one another is not disputed. But Caxton's explicit mention of Cologne as the place in which he finished his translation in 1471, and the remark of Caxton's successor, Wynkyn de Worde, that Caxton printed a Latin book, ‘Bartholomæus de Proprietatibus Rerum,’ at Cologne (W. de Worde, Proheme to his ed. of Bartholomæus, n.d.), powerfully support the conclusion that Caxton was associated with Cologne in his early printing operations. M. J. P. A. Madden suggests that Caxton and Mansion were fellow-students of the art of printing at Cologne some time between 1471 and 1474, and this is very probable. For the rest, the absence from the ‘Recuyell’ of many technical points met with in Cologne books of the time, and the presence there of most, though not all, the technical points found in the early books of Mansion's press, point to the conclusion that Caxton, having learned printing at Cologne, returned to Bruges about 1474, and printed the ‘Recuyell’ at Mansion's press there.
On 31 March 1474–5 Caxton states that he completed another translation—‘The Game and Playe of the Chesse’—from Jean de Vignay's French version (1360) of J. de Cessolis's ‘Ludus Scacchorum.’ This was the second English book printed. The same types were used as in the case of ‘The Recuyell,’ and although it also is without printer's name, place, or date, it may be referred to Colard Mansion's press at Bruges and dated 1475. ‘I did do set [it] in imprinte,’ writes Caxton when bringing out a later edition, and the expression probably means that he caused it to be printed, but did not actually print it with his own hands.
In 1476 Caxton left Bruges to practise his newly acquired art in his native country, and on 18 Nov. 1477 he printed at Westminster a book called ‘The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers.’ This work contains a colophon giving for the first time the name of printer, the place of publication, and date. The copy in the Rylands Library supplies the day of the month. The ‘Dictes’ is undoubtedly the first book printed in England. Its type, though dissimilar from that of the two former books in which Caxton had been concerned, is identical with that used in Mansion's later books. It is therefore probable that Caxton brought to Westminster his printing apparatus from Bruges. The translation (from the French ‘Les dits moraux des philosophes’) was from the pen of Earl Rivers, but was revised at the earl's request by Caxton, who added a prologue and a chapter ‘touchyng wymmen.’ The ‘History of Jason,’ an English translation of Raoul Lefevre's ‘Les Fais … du … Chevalier Jason,’ which seems to have been first printed by Mansion about 1478, was another early publication of Caxton's Westminster press. But the claim of precedence over the ‘Dictes,’ as the first book printed in England, which has been put forward in its behalf, rests on shadowy evidence.
From 1477 to 1491 Caxton was busily employed in printing and translating. His later assistant, Robert Copland, in the prologue to his edition of ‘Kinge Apolyn of Thyre,’ speaks of Caxton ‘begynnynge with small storyes and pamfletes and so to other,’ but it would seem that Caxton was more ambitious from the first. Chaucer's ‘Canterbury Tales,’ a large folio, was one of his early ventures, and although he printed very many ‘Horæ,’ ‘Indulgentiæ,’ Sarum service books, and other ecclesiastical handbooks, together with many brief pamphlets of poems and
