THE WHITTINGHAMS AND THE MODERN BOOK 68 SUPPLEMENTARY READING 76 REVIEW QUESTIONS 77 PRINTING IN ENGLAND CHAPTER I THE ENGLISH PIONEERS England was slow to take up printing and slow and backward in the development of it. It was 25 years after the invention of printing before any printing was done in England. It was many years after that before the work of the English printers could compare with that done on the continent. The reason for this is to be found in the conditions of the country itself. Although the two great universities had long been in existence, Oxford dating back to 1167 and Cambridge to 1209, England as a whole was a backward country. In culture and the refinements of civilization, as well as in many more practical things, England was not so far advanced as the rest of Europe nor was it to be so for many years to come. England at this time was an agricultural and grazing country. A colony of Flemings had been brought over to start the cloth industry. There was still, nevertheless, a large export of wool to Flanders, which was there woven and sent back as cloth. The English nobles lived largely on their estates, looking after their tenants, hunting for diversion, and doing a little fighting occasionally when life became otherwise unbearably uninteresting. They were not an educated class and the peasantry were profoundly ignorant. The cities which, as always, depended upon manufacture and commerce were just beginning to grow, with the exception of some of the seaport towns which were already prosperous and wealthy. Not only was this general condition true, but there were special conditions which rendered the middle of the fifteenth century unfavorable to culture and to the introduction of a new invention auxiliary to culture. In 1450 England was shaken and horrified by the bloody insurrection of peasants, with its attendant outrages, known as Jack Cade’s Revolt. Scarcely had order been restored when a disputed succession to the crown plunged the country into the bloody civil war between the adherents of the Houses of York and Lancaster, known as the Wars of the Roses. This period of civil strife lasted for thirty years and affected the general welfare of England very seriously. It was especially marked by mortality among the noblest families in the realm, many of which were actually exterminated.