INTRODUCTORY. 21 



some of its people were divided were arming for civil war, 

 the invention of printing by movable types was perfected at 

 Mayence, for the Mazarin Bible is not only the first but, even 

 at this day, the finest example of the printer's art. Paper 

 had long been common, and was frequently employed for 

 accounts. From the beginning of the fifteenth century paper 

 is uniformly employed for the accounts of King's Hall, Cam- 

 bridge, and for those of the corporation at Norwich. The 

 accounts of King's -College, Cambridge, are also on paper, and 

 generally this vehicle for account-taking is more frequently 

 used in the eastern counties than it is in the midland. 

 Towards the latter end of the fifteenth century, the invention 

 of spectacles, a discovery only a little less important than 

 that of printing, was made, and the folio or quarto in large 

 type, with which the invention of printing begins, gives way 

 to handy books in octavo or duodecimo size, and in small 

 type. It is well known that Caxton was patronized by the 

 accomplished and unfortunate Lord Rivers. 



I have stated above that entails became general during the 

 civil wars. The first entails un.!er the statute de donis were, 

 I am persuaded, grants of small estates which did not, after 

 the statute quia emptores, violate -the legal rule against sub- 

 infeudation, though they did its spirit, and were intended to 

 enable intermediate lords to create a body of male military 

 tenants, who should be dependent on them, by the fact that 

 no known device of law could defeat the reversion of the lord. 

 As they were inalienable, they were not liable to forfeiture. 

 Hence, when the game of civil war began, the practice also 

 commenced of entailing the great estates. The nobles risked 

 nothing in the strife but their lives, having by this conveyance 

 secured their estates from involuntary alienation. I draw my 

 inference to the rarity of entails during the earlier period of 

 my enquiry from the fact that the landowners invariably let 

 their lands to tenants for term of years, a form of tenancy 

 which was, under the conditions of an entail, no security to 

 the tenant, if it did not in many cases involve the- risk of 



