Of the fact there can be no doubt. Caxton possessed only one initial of any size, the A shown among our facsimiles, which he used in one or two of his later books. His contemporaries possessed none at all. After Caxton’s death in 1491, for the next half-century and more the history of English initials is as the history of our book-illustrations--they are imported from abroad, copied from foreign originals, or of no artistic value. An early instance of importation is the large grotesque H, shown in facsimile, which De Worde acquired early in his career from Govaert van Os when the latter was moving to Copenhagen; in the same way Julian Notary obtained a few letters from André Bocard. Though it may be thought churlish to look outside England when we find a rebus on an English name, it can hardly be doubted that the initials cut for Pynson’s Morton Missal, of which specimens are given, were made for him in France. Certainly no one could claim these letters as starting an independent English school, and most of those subsequently used by Pynson and De Worde are direct copies, or imitations, from the French. Thus it is only by transcending our bounds that we can offer a few examples of English initials which have at least more independence than these early ventures. It, perhaps, shows some rashness to include among them the excellent H from Grafton’s edition of Halle’s _Union of the two Houses of York and Lancaster_ (1548), for this may perchance have been inspired by those in the Paris edition of the _Historia Danica_ of Saxo Grammaticus (see pages 85 and 230). Nevertheless the book is important, because it was on heraldic lines that some of the best later work was produced. Much of this may be connected with the name of that excellent printer John Day. The pictorial initial to the Bible of 1549, showing Edward Becke, the promoter of the edition, presenting a copy to Edward VI., is full of life, and the portrait initial of Elizabeth from Foxe’s _Book of Martyrs_ is excellent work. Between these two books Day had issued, in 1559, a fine edition of Cunningham’s _Cosmographical Glasse_, and this is adorned by an admirable heraldic D with the arms of the Earl of Leicester, and by some pictorial initials connected with the subject of the book, the authorship of these being still undiscovered, despite the letters IB, IC, ID, found on some of them. At a later date work of the same style appears in his edition of Ascham’s _Schoolmaster_. It is a pity that Day, not being the royal printer, could not be entrusted with printing the Bishops’ Bible of 1568, which came from the press of Jugge and Cawood. But his patron, Archbishop Parker, had, of course, a large share in its superintendence, and some of the heraldic initials in the volume are almost as good as the Leicester D. That which has been chosen as a sample shows the arms of Archbishop Cranmer, a pleasing compliment from Parker to his predecessor.