It is believed by some writers, that Gutenberg continued to the end of his career as a Typographer to print with cut metal types. Oaths of secresy were imposed by Faust and Schœffer upon all whom they employed, by which means they hoped to secure the knowledge of the art of type-founding to themselves. But in the year 1462, when Mentz was sacked by the troops of the Elector-Archbishop, Count Adolphus of Nassau, their workmen were dispersed, and the arts of printing and type-founding were generally made known all over Europe. Gutenberg however must have seen at once, upon an examination of the works that were issued from Faust and Schœffer’s establishment, that they were producing types in some extraordinarily rapid manner; and acute as he was, it is not likely that he would remain long in ignorance of the method adopted. There were no doubt intimacies among the workmen of the rival establishments, who had at first worked all together; and among whom the secret would sooner or later ooze out. The _science_ of Johann Nummeister, (whose name occurs in a document associated with that of Gutenberg), may also have been especially called in to assist in a competing method of type-founding. Certain it is, that two or three years before 1462, Albrecht Pfister, and the brothers Henry and Nicholas Bechtermuntze, with Wyngardum Spyes de Otherberg, printed works with types so evidently the same as those cut by Gutenberg, that they have not unfrequently been attributed to his press. Various suppositions have been made, to account for this, but no one appears to have thought of that which seems to be the most obvious; namely, that sets of matrices or types were sold by Gutenberg to these early printers, who with Keffer and Sensenschmidt and others, were taught the art at his establishment. Where suppositions must be resorted to in order to account for facts, those which are the most natural ought surely to be chosen in preference to others which are less or least so. About the year 1800, some interesting documents relating to Gutenberg and his family were said to have been discovered by M. Bodman the archivist of Mentz. The following,--the seals to which were copied by Fischer in his “Essai sur le Monumens Typographiques de Jean Gutenberg,” is entitled:-- “Agreement between Gutenberg and his brothers, &c., and the Nuns of the Convent of St. Clair, at Mentz, A.D. 1459.