As has already been stated, the reticence of our first printers leaves us almost entirely in the dark as to the particular processes by which they produced their earliest types. Mr. Blades leans to the opinion that Caxton, in his first attempts at typefounding, adopted the methods of the rude Flemish or Dutch School, of whose conjectured appliances we have spoken in the introductory chapter. “The English printers,” he says, “whose practice seems to have been derived from the Flemish School, were far behind their contemporaries in the art. Their types show that a very rude process of founding was practised; and the use . . . of old types as patterns for new, evinces more of commercial expediency than of artistic ambition.” At the same time, there seems reasonable ground for inferring, from the peculiarities attending the re-casting of Caxton’s Type 4 as 4*, to which allusion has already been made, that at least as early as 1480 Caxton was possessed of the secret of the punch, and matrix and adjustable mould; while the {103} excellent works of De Worde and his contemporaries demonstrate that, however rudely, the art may have begun, England was, in the early years of the sixteenth century, abreast of many of her rivals, both as to the design and workmanship of her founts. The frequent indications to be met with of the transmission of founts from one printer to another, as well as the passing on of worn types from the presses of the metropolis to those of the provinces, are suggestive of the existence (very limited, indeed) of some sort of home trade in type even at that early date. For a considerable time, moreover, after the perfection of the art in England, the trade in foreign types, which dated back as early as the establishment of printing in Westminster and Oxford, continued to flourish. With Normandy, especially, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, a brisk commerce was maintained. Not only were many of the English liturgical and law books printed abroad by Norman artists, but Norman type found its way in considerable quantities into English presses. M. Claudin, whose researches in the history of the early provincial presses of France entitles him to be considered an authority on the matter, states that Rouen, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was the great typographical market which furnished type not to England only, but to other cities in France and to Switzerland. “It evidently had special typographical foundries,” he observes. “Richard Pynson, a London printer, was a Norman; Will Faques learned typography from J. le Bourgeois, a printer at Rouen. These two printers had types cast expressly for themselves in Normandy. Wynkyn de Worde must have bought types in Normandy also, and very likely from Peter Olivier and Jean de Lorraine, printers in partnership at Rouen.”[177] And with regard to the first printer of Scotland, M. Claudin has no doubt that Myllar