[Scriptoris] Interesting article on the first page printed in England

[Hillary Greenslade]

>From the Medieval Trivia yahoo group posts: 

An interesting article in the National Archives:
http://www.national archives. gov.uk/museum/ item.asp? item_id=9

Check out the image, and the zoom function - can get right in there to see stroke lines. 
The seal is pretty impressive as well. 

Text: 
The first page printed in England
This is the first item printed in England. It was made by William Caxton, who introduced printing
into England. 

It is an indulgence - a certificate written in Latin and issued by the Church. It gave the person
who received it a reduction in the time that they had to spend in Purgatory (the place where souls
were thought to go after death to spend time suffering before going on to heaven). John, Abbot of
Abingdon, signed this indulgence for a couple called Henry and Katherine Langley. 

William Caxton was born in Kent in 1421 and worked abroad as a diplomat and merchant. While in
Europe, he became interested in the new technology of printing developed by Johannes Gutenberg
during the early 1450s. Caxton returned to England and set up a printing shop near Westminster
Abbey. He printed over 100 books before his death in 1491, including Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales'.
The design of the flat bed wooden hand-press used in Caxton's printing house remained the same,
except for minor changes, for over 350 years.

In the printing process, ink was spread over the raised surfaces of individual metal letters held
within a frame. The printer then pressed this against a sheet of paper, screwing down the press by
hand. Printing presses were first invented in the Rhineland in Germany. The craftsmen there were
used to building grape presses for making wine and applied the same methods to building printing
presses.

Printing revolutionised life in Western Europe. Previously, all manuscript books had to be copied
out carefully and slowly by hand. This was very expensive. Now it was quick to make lots of copies
of books. This meant that books circulated faster. People had easier access to new ideas and new
views of the world. Early printing copied the look of manuscript books, which is why Caxton's
indulgence looks like it has been written by hand.