In 1493 the _Dives and Pauper_ appeared. It is printed in a new type, copied evidently from a French model, and strongly resembling some used in Verard’s books. This type superseded the larger type of the _Chaucer_, which we do not find in use again. To 1493 a number of small books can be assigned, all printed in the type of the _Dives and Pauper_, and having twenty-five lines to the page. Amongst them we may mention the _Festum Nominis Jesu_; an edition of Lydgate’s _Churl and Bird_; a _Life of St. Margaret_, which is known only from fragments, and a legal work of which there is one leaf in Lambeth Palace Library. The method of using signatures, which Pynson adopted in these early books, affords another small piece of evidence to prove that he learnt to print at Rouen, and not in England. In the quartos, the first leaf of the quire is signed A 1, the second has no signature, while the third is signed A 2. This way of signing (by the sheet instead of by the leaf), not a very ordinary one, was commonly in use at Rouen; while Caxton and De Worde signed in the more usual manner, with consecutive signatures to each leaf for the first half of the quire. For some unknown reason, Pynson was dissatisfied with the _Dives and Pauper_ type, for after 1493 it never seems to have been used again. From this time onwards, till about 1500, the majority of his books were printed in the small type of the _Chaucer_, or in some newer types of a more severe and less French appearance. In his earliest books Pynson used a device consisting of his initials cut in wood, so as to print white upon a black background. It resembles in many ways that of his old associate Le Talleur, and may therefore have been cut in Rouen. In 1496 we find him using two new devices, one a large woodcut containing his mark, and a helmet surmounted by a small bird,[36] which began to break about 1497, and was soon disused. The other, which is a metal cut, is in two pieces, a border of men and flowers, and an interior piece with the mark on a shield and supporters. The border of this device is a most useful guide in determining the dates of the books in which it occurs. In the lower part is a ribbon pierced for the insertion of type. The two ends of the piece below the ribbon were too thin to be strong, so that the piece gets gradually bent in, the ribbon becoming narrower and narrower. According to the bend of this piece the exact year can be ascertained, from 1499, when it began to get displaced, to 1513, when it broke off altogether. [36] The bird above the helmet is a finch, no doubt a punning allusion to Pynson’s name, Pynson being the Norman word for a finch. Very probably the birds in the large coat of arms are finches also, though Ames calls them eagles.