The Last Plantagenets (54 page)

Through some influence, possibly that of the king, he was given the use of a small building called the
almonesrye
in a group of similar structures occupying an enclosure southwest of Westminster Abbey. Here he set up a
pale
, a sign painted red to denote his occupation, and began on the methods of producing books which he had learned on the continent.

No authentic description of the place has been left, but it is generally assumed that he did not live on the premises. Some of the space was devoted to the very necessary task of selling the books to the public. It was Caxton’s practice to issue what were called advertisement sheets (the word “advertisement” could not have been new at the time for he uses it several times in the volumes he produced) in which he announced that certain books were available and advised customers “to come to Westminster in to the almonesrye at the
reed pale
.” People began to come in numbers which increased steadily. Caxton often had to print third and fourth editions of his books.

The work which went on inside can be explained in some detail. One biographer, H. R. Plomer, says that the center of the workshop contained “a substantial framework of timber and iron, the mechanical part being fitted with an ordinary worm-screw and iron.” This was said to
resemble, in fact, the old cheese presses in use up to comparatively recent times. On this mounted platform were placed the small metal frames in which the compositors (this term seems to have been a century later in achieving common usage) had set up words with small letters of lead. This appears to have been a slow process because of the necessity of carrying each line completed from the type case to the press.

Beside the press were pots filled with ink and “inking balls,” which are described as much like boxing gloves tied to the end of a stick. When enough lines of type to make a page had been assembled on the press, the balls would be dipped in ink and the type thoroughly swabbed. After this a sheet of paper would be placed on the form and the pulling of a lever would press the paper against the type. This meant, of course, that only one sheet could be printed at a time. Sometimes ink stains were left on the sheet and it would then have to be discarded and another drawn. Caxton, it seems, was so determined to produce good-looking books that he would often discard many pages before securing one which suited him.

The pages would be laid in piles until all of the copy for the book had been put into print. Each pile was then sent to be bound. The trade of the bookbinder had been plied in England in the previous century. They were employed then, no doubt, in binding the illuminated sheets which came from the monasteries and the copies turned out by scriveners. It seems certain that at first Caxton did not have his own bindery.

In addition to the large room where the printing was done, there was a smaller one for the making and casting of type. Caxton seems to have designed his own type, with the exception of one “fount” which he brought with him from the continent. The type faces he designed later were much more artistic and at the same time easier to read.

Although he is supposed to have been so completely immersed in the work himself that he sometimes set type and even helped with the laborious work of printing, he depended on a foreman, a young man from Alsace who had accompanied him to England, named Jan van Wynkyn, but who is most often called Wynkyn de Worde. This ambitious young man took over the production end of the business. After Caxton’s death, he acquired the plant and made a considerable success of it, issuing 110 works which are known and perhaps many more. Wynkyn de Worde became so prosperous, in fact, that he moved away from the premises at the reed pale and purchased two houses on Fleet Street. One he used as his dwelling and the other became the printing plant. On the opposite side of Fleet Street stood the printing shop of
one Richard Pynson who had set himself up in opposition. The proximity of these two pioneering efforts established a tradition and led to Fleet Street being the recognized site of publishing endeavors down through the centuries.

William Caxton was not content to print books; he always concerned himself with the translations and with the preparation of the copy. Before returning to England, he had made a translation of
Le Recueil des Histoires de Troye
, a romance which had been highly successful. This he produced later from his busy little plant in Westminster. The first book he printed in England, however, was a more serious venture,
The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers
. This had been translated from the French by Caxton’s aristocratic friend, Lord Rivers, but that gentleman of varied interests realized that it required some additional attention. This he was quite willing to entrust to the busy printer, and so Caxton went to work and introduced some revisions and also wrote an additional chapter, which he believed necessary. This initial venture was so successful that the little shop at the almonesrye rang with preparations for more. One of the most commendable of his early efforts was an edition of Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
which was much larger than any of the others. Undoubtedly it did much to acquaint the people of England with the work of their great poet. He also put out an edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s
King Arthur
and a translation of Cicero’s
De senectute
. That he translated the last named himself is an evidence of his scholarship.

Caxton apparently was qualified to translate from both French and Latin. His first years were frantically busy ones, for in addition to his editorial duties he always supervised the work going on in the shop under young Master Wynkyn. He did not confine himself to his more serious ventures in publishing. A continuous succession of smaller books and pamphlets poured out from the ever busy press—some devotional books, some ballads, some short romantic tales. Caxton was not only jealous of his reputation as a judge and editor of literary material, he was also a very good man of business. The smaller books, particularly the short romances, were probably the ones from which the bulk of his profits were derived. In the course of the fourteen years between the founding of the printing house and his death, he produced nearly eighty books in all classifications.

He died in harness. On his last day of life he was busily engaged on
a translation of
Vitae Patrum
, which was finished after his death on instructions from Wynkyn de Worde, who later published it. No reason is supplied in the records for his death but the suddenness of it suggests that his heart failed him. There is no record of the exact day on which the busy pen fell from his hand, except that it occurred in the year 1491. He was buried in St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster.

Such in brief is the story of a man who deserves to be remembered for all time. History, which seldom has endings to record because of the cycles which bring to life again and again the issues which have seemed dead and done with, is full of robust and stimulating stories of the beginnings of things. The work of this courageous and industrious pioneer lacks the excitement of political change and the fascination of the chronicles of war. But in his quiet way he provided the foundation, or at least an important part of it, from which would rise the mightiest of towers.

T
HE whipping boy was an unfortunate youngster appointed to receive any chastisement earned by the son of a royal family, on the theory that princes were above physical punishment. Sometimes the king might take it on himself to doff his crown, roll up his ermine sleeves, and lay the erring son across his august knee, but that was outside the rule. Under no circumstances should stinging whip or menial hand be laid on the hide of an heir apparent. It was supposed that the sight of someone else suffering for his wrongdoing would create a feeling of shame in the princely breast and be fully as effective, therefore, as a good, sound, personal beating.

The custom was not universal. The whipping boy was not a fixture in all royal households as was, for instance, the court jester and the dancing master. But references creep into the pages of history often enough to indicate that it was frequently the practice. It is recorded that one Barnaby Fitzpatrick was on hand to receive the hidings which ordinarily would have been the lot of Edward VI. That delicate little fellow, who resembled his burly father, Henry VIII, in so few respects, could not have been guilty often of offenses against discipline.

There seems to have been in the main a more common-sense approach to the problem in England, a feeling that the lesson would be more effective if the beating were administered to the one who had earned it.

The classic example of vicarious punishment was placed on the scroll of time by a ceremony at Rome when permission was granted Henry of Navarre to abjure the Huguenot faith and become King of France. Pope Clement VIII had a stubborn streak in him which had to be overcome first. It may have been not too difficult for Henry to consider Paris
worth a Mass, but he, Clement, was not convinced that Henry was worth receiving into the church unless he underwent a cleansing ceremony. In diplomatic circles in Rome there was a fear that the Navarene, being a prince of such high spirit, might regard this as humiliating and refuse to agree. Then someone, recalling the custom of the whipping boy, suggested that the whole matter could be carried off by proxy. It has been contended since that Henry was kept in the dark until the ceremony had been performed.

Accordingly on September 16, 1595, the two ambassadors from France, D’Ossat and Du Perron, walked on foot to a church in Rome and knelt on the worn stone steps, in recognition of their unworthiness to go inside. Here they chanted together “Have Mercy, Lord” and on the closing line of each verse a switch was laid across their bent shoulders. It is said the switch was a slender one and that orders had been given that the blows were to be light. Both of the ambassadors were later made cardinals, a more than fair exchange; a red hat for a somewhat less than pink shoulder blade.

Richard III, who called himself Richard Plantagenet, succeeded his brother Edward IV. He ruled briefly, for little more than two years. His accession has been judged by history to be the most glaring and inexcusable of usurpations. His motive is still believed to have been personal ambition and his methods are held up as a combination of cunning and cruelty. Edward IV had left two sons, one twelve and one nine. They were incarcerated in the Tower of London and supposedly died there at the hands of assassins employed by Richard. It was due to the wave of horror which swept across the nation, so history tells us, that Henry of Richmond was able to land in England and draw to his banner strong enough forces to defeat and kill the king at the Battle of Bosworth Field on August 22, 1485.

Shakespeare, who cannot be blamed for taking history as it came to him between staid and sacrosanct covers, has used Richard as the darkest and most devious villain in his series of historical plays. Anyone who has seen an accomplished actor play the role in
King Richard III
can never forget this evil creature hobbling about the stage and later dying on the battlefield with the cry which lingers in every memory: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

This is the Richard III with whom the world has grown up. This is the version generally accepted, despite efforts which have been made,
sometimes guarded but sometimes loud-spoken and decisive, to say that there is little or no truth in it.

That Richard III was the most notorious whipping boy in history is a theory which is now being widely held. Fortunately for him he did not know when he fell in battle the humiliating role he would play. It was his memory and not his body which was to bear the brunt of blame for the blackest of deeds. Richard, whose naked body had been carried off the battlefield on a donkey’s back with a halter around his neck, was in his grave and there was no voice that dared speak up for him. It is perhaps not strange that all the blame has been heaped on the supposedly crooked back of the last of the Plantagenets, while Henry VII, the first of the Tudors, has emerged in the full white light of blamelessness.

And so the saga of the extraordinary Plantagenets, with their brilliant successes, their tragic reverses, their wild extravagances, does not end with the blood of Richard ebbing away on Bosworth Field. With their gift for involvement in drama of the most fantastic kind, they have left another story for history to record: a grim and terrifying story, which can without question be termed the greatest of mysteries in English history, perhaps the greatest of all time.

T
HERE are only two sources of any value for the story which charges Richard with the murder of the two princes in the Tower of London. The first in importance,
The History of King Richard III
, is generally ascribed to Sir Thomas More. The second is
Anglica Historia
by Polydore Vergil, an Italian author who was hired by Henry VII to write a history of England. The Vergil version follows that of More in most respects but departs from it in many important omissions. The histories which were published later during the Tudor period, with few exceptions, did not deviate from what More had set down, even accepting his most absurd and inaccurate statements. A controversy has been waged ever since, with a great deal of heat on both sides. Strangely enough, most of what might be termed official history, including schoolbooks and the reports (written long ago) in encyclopedias and dictionaries, still adheres to the More version, even quoting in full the most ludicrous of details. But modern thought seems to have moved away from complete acceptance of the thinly supported legend.