<g>Printing.</g>--This invention occasioned the following results: The scribes having less employment, there were few good artists of this kind, and writing lost much of its former beauty. About the year 1546, when all the religious houses had been dissolved, limners and scribes were reduced to great distress for want of employment; for, besides printing, engraving, “invented about 1460, superseded the illumination of initials and margins. The last specimen was the sectionary of Cardinal Wolsey at Oxford. Besides the rule, it was inquired whether the monks had made, taken, and received the king’s age and succession, according to act of parliament; for they were obliged to record these, and the births of the royal family, as well as other public events.” <g>Bookbinding</g> was generally very gorgeous; gold, relics, silver plate, ivory, velvet, and other expensive adornments, were bestowed upon the books relating to the church service--hence the vast amount of plunder derived from this source alone at the <g>Dissolution</g>, when the Vandal emissaries, hired for the work of destruction, stripped the sacred books of their gold, silver, and jewels, and sold them to the highest bidder. These ornaments, however, were not confined to the books of the Altar; for we hear of a book of _Poems_, finely ornamented, bound in velvet, and decorated with silver-gilt clasps and studs, intended for a present to the king. Books were written on purple vellum, in order to exhibit gold or silver letters, and adorned with ivory tablets. The most common binding was a rough white sheepskin, lapping over the leaves sometimes, with or without immense bosses of brass, pasted upon a wooden board; and sometimes the covers were of plain wood, carved in scroll and similar work. There were formerly leaden books with leaden covers, and books with wooden leaves.[152]