Though 1486 is the latest date which we can fix to any of Machlinia’s productions, it is probable that he continued to print up till about the year 1490. Soon after the cessation of Machlinia’s press, his business seems to have been taken on by Richard Pynson, whose first dated book appeared in 1493. Though it is impossible to prove conclusively that Pynson succeeded Machlinia in business, many small points seem to show that this was the case. We find leaves of Machlinia’s books in bindings undoubtedly produced by Pynson, and he was also in possession of a border used by Machlinia in his edition of the _Sarum Horæ_. It is often said that Pynson was an apprentice of Caxton’s; but we have no evidence of this beyond the words in the prologue to the _Chaucer_, where Caxton is called ‘my worshipful master’—a title applied sometimes to Caxton by printers living fifty years after.[35] [35] Blades, in his _Life of Caxton_, not only says that Pynson was Caxton’s apprentice, but that he used his mark in some of his books. This mistake has arisen from a doctored copy of Bonaventure’s _Speculum vite Christi_ in the British Museum, which has a leaf with Caxton’s device inserted at the end. In his patent of naturalisation of 30th July 1513, Pynson is described as a native of Normandy; and we know that he had business relations with Le Talleur of Rouen, who printed some law-books for him. These books, three in number, may be ascribed to about 1490, or to some time after Machlinia had ceased printing, and before Pynson had begun. It was probably very soon after 1490 that Pynson set up his printing establishment at the Temple Bar; for though his first dated book, the _Dives and Pauper_, is dated the 5th July 1493, there are one or two other books that can with certainty be placed before it. A fragment of a grammar, consisting of the last leaf only, among the Hearne fragments in the Bodleian, is all that remains of one of his earliest books. It is printed entirely in his first large coarse type, which bears so much resemblance to some of Machlinia’s; and was used as waste to line the boards of a book before Passion Week, 1494. The _Chaucer_, in which two types are used, one for the prose and another for the verse, is also earlier than the _Dives and Pauper_. It is illustrated with a number of badly executed woodcuts, cut specially for the book, of the various pilgrims in the _Canterbury Tales_. Some of these cuts were altered while the book was passing through the press, and serve again for different characters. The Sergeaunt with a little alteration reappears as the Doctor of Physick, and the Squire is turned into the Manciple. [Illustration: FROM THE ‘FESTUM NOMINIS JESU.’ PYNSON, C. 1493.]