INDUSTRIES 



printer, Dr. Edward Scott has found amongst 

 the muniments at Westminster Abbey a 

 deed or deeds relating to a manor there called 

 ' Little St. Albans,' which, he says, stood on the 

 green outside the chapter-house, between it and 

 the present House of Lords, and which was 

 occupied by one Otnel Fulle (presumably 

 Fuller), the ' magister scolarium ' of the West- 

 minster School.* Mr. Scott was unfortu- 

 nately unable to lay his hand on these docu- 

 ments when the writer visited him at the 

 muniment room with the object of examining 

 them, but he produced two deeds — one ■■ an 

 account by John Esteney, warden of the ' new 

 work ' at Westminster for the year 1482-3, 

 in which mention is made of a gift of los. from 

 ' Otnel Fulle late master of the scholars at the 

 Almonry ' ; the other * undated, but assigned 

 to the year 1509, an account of the collectors of 

 the rents of Westminster Abbey, which mentions 

 the Earl of Shrewsbury as renting two tenements 

 in ' seynt albonys.' This last would seem to 

 indicate that the manor was known to the 

 inhabitants of Westminster as ' St. Albons,' 

 rather than ' Little St. Albons,' and assuming 

 Dr. Scott's statement to be correct, that it 

 was at one time occupied by Otnel Fulle, the 

 ' magister scolarium,' it would exactly fit 

 Wynkyn de Worde's statement, ' sometyme 

 scolemayster of St. Albons.' 



The discovery made by Dr. Scott is an attrac- 

 tive one. The arrival of Caxton with a printing 

 press at Westminster must have aroused much 

 curiosity amongst the clergy and others con- 

 nected with the abbey, and we can readily 

 believe that amongst the earliest visitors to the 

 new printing office at the Red Pale would be 

 the ' magister scolarium.' It is quite possible 

 that a friendship may have sprung up between 

 the two men, and that Otnel Fulle may have 

 been the ' friend and gossip ' at whose instiga- 

 tion, as Caxton tells us himself, he printed the 

 Boethius. 



But, beyond what has been stated, nothing 

 whatever is known about Otnel Fulle or Fuller. 

 There is no evidence that he ever printed any- 

 thing or that he ever spoke a word to Caxton 

 in his Ufe. It is true that we are in the same 

 case as regards the Hertfordshire schoolmaster ; 

 before attempting to decide between the 

 claims of these two shadowy claimants we had 

 better look at the books. 



Of the eight works printed at the St. Albans 

 press six were of a scholastic character. The 

 first to appear is believed to have been the 

 Elegancie of Augustine Dactus, a small quarto 

 of thirty-two leaves, without date, with the 

 colophon, ' Impressum fuit opus hac apud Scm 



' Letter of Dr. Edward Scott to the writer. 

 *No. 23558. 

 • No. 22872. 



Albanu.' A facsimile of this book has recently 

 been published by the University Press of 

 Cambridge, under the editorship of Mr. F. 

 Jenkinson, from the unique copy in the Univer- 

 sity Library.' 



The type is quite remarkable, a small Gothic 

 letter, unUke anything in use either at West- 

 minster or Oxford at that time, and noticeable 

 not only from the variety of sorts, but for the 

 regularity of the casting and the neatness of 

 the press work, which makes it difficult to believe 

 that it was the work of a beginner in the art of 

 printing. Mr. E. G. Duff, in his Early English 

 Printing,'' expresses the opinion that this type 

 was modelled on Caxton's, but there is no 

 evidence on the point. No other book was 

 printed with it, and it was never used again 

 except for signatures ; hence the belief that it 

 was the first type used by this printer about 

 the year 1479. 



Two books are found with the date 1480, each 

 in a different fount of type. The first is a 

 quarto without title-page or pagination, but 

 having the colophon, ' Impressum fuit hoc 

 presens opus Rethorice facultatis, apud villa 

 sancti Albani. Anno domini M.CCCCL.XXX.' 



The type, which may be described as Type 2 

 of the St. Albans press, is a larger and more 

 striking letter than its predecessor. Mr. Duff ' 

 rightly describes it as bearing a ' superficial 

 resemblance ' to Caxton's Type z*. It was 

 this ' superficial resemblance ' that led Mr. 

 H. G. Allnutt, when describing the work of this 

 press,® to say : ' The type used in printing the 

 Saone in 1480 bears so remarkable a likeness 

 to a fount used by Caxton about the same time, 

 and called by Mr. Blades Type 2*, that there 

 may well have been some connection between 

 the two men, and why, indeed, may not the 

 schoolmaster have learned his art in Caxton's 

 office f ' But ' superficial ' is entirely the 

 right word to describe the resemblance that 

 strikes the eye between this type and Caxton's 

 Type 2*. A close analysis shows first that it is 

 smaller in body than Type 2", measuring only 

 122 mm. to twenty lines of text, as against 

 134 mm. to twenty lines in Caxton's type. It 

 was also more clumsy and irregular than 

 Type 2*, it reveals the presence of a lower case 

 ' V,' which is not found in Type 2*, and is more- 

 over not found in any of Caxton's books, while 

 the looped letters, so marked a feature of 

 Types 2 and 2*, are not met with in the Saone. 

 This type may have been modelled on Caxton's, 

 or it may have been some of the type from his 



' A series of photogravure facsimiles of rare i^th-eent. 

 books printed in Engl, nota in the University at Cambridge 

 (ed. F. J. H. Jenkinson, 1905). 



' E. G. DufF, Early English Printing (1896). 



8 Op. cit. 



« See also Blades, Life of Caxton, ii, 75. 



259 



