The boke of Saint Albans : $b containing treatises on hawking, hunting, and cote armour — John Shaqi
The boke of Saint Albans : $b containing treatises on hawking, hunting, and cote armourBerners, Juliana
History
The boke of Saint Albans : $b containing treatises on hawking, hunting, and cote armour
Berners, Juliana
Falconry -- Early works to 1800; Heraldry -- Early works to 1800; Hunting -- Early works to 1800
Was he connected with Caxton and the Westminster press? Without a shadow
of doubt I say, No! Mr. E. Scott, of the MS. department in the British
Museum, has indeed strung together a number of surmises to show that the
Schoolmaster was employed by Caxton, and that all the books without date
or place hitherto attributed to Westminster were really printed at St.
Albans. But internal evidence is against any such gratuitous assumption.
There is nothing in common between the two printers in any of their
habits or customs except the possession of Caxton’s No. 3 type. This is
the only one of Caxton’s types used outside his own office (for W. de
Worde, his successor in house and business, must not be regarded as a
separate printer). Caxton employed it from his arrival in England in
1477 till 1484, when it makes its last appearance in the headings of
“Æsop,” the “Order of Chivalry,” and “The Golden Legend.” In 1485 Caxton
obtained a new fount, similar in shape and character, and from that time
the old No. 3 disappears to make way for the new and smaller type No. 5.
This being more suited to the taste of the day, we find the larger and
worn fount passing over to the country press of St. Albans, where the
Schoolmaster first uses it in 1486, being the identical year in which
its successor appears in Caxton’s “Royal Book.” We may here observe that
after the stoppage of the St. Albans’ Press the same fount finds its way
back again and is seen in W. de Worde’s reprint, in 1496–97, of the two
English St. Albans books. But the discovery of a copy of Caxton’s
Boethius in the old Grammar School at St. Albans, and the numerous
fragments of old books extracted from its covers, are quoted as
confirming the idea. Yet the book itself and all these fragments were
from Westminster, not a single one being from a known St. Albans book,
and they included the Caxton “Chronicles,” 1480, the “Dictes,” 1477, and
the still earlier “Life of Jason;” so that we had better at once remove
the whole Westminster press, dated and undated, to St. Albans, if such
an argument is to have any force. These fragments, indeed, can only
point to the fact that the copy of Boethius was bound in the printing
office, as was commonly the case with the books from Caxton’s press.
Again, Mr. Scott draws attention to the fact that a page of the St.
Albans’ Book, 1486, has been copied by a contemporary writer on to the
blank leaves of one of Caxton’s earliest books. ’Tis true; but this
copying of part of one book into another, printed ten years before, has
no typographical bearing whatever. Lastly, the name Causton appears in
an old St. Albans’ Register of the early part of the fifteenth century.
But this, again, means positively nothing. Caxton’s name was not at all
uncommon; there were Caustons or Caxtons in nearly every English county,
and I have quite a long list of them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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