THE USE OF WILLIAM CAXTON'S TYPE 3 BY JOHN LETTOU AND WILLIAM DE MACHLINIA IN THE PRINTING OF THEIR YEARBOOK 35 HENRY VI, ^.1481-1482

W. J. PARTRIDGE

WILLIAM CAXTON'S Type 3, which was the second type used by him when setting up his business in Westminster in 1476, was a fresh casting of a sharply cut, well-aligned Gothic by Johan Veldener, a typographer then active in the Low Countries. It measures 135 mm over twenty lines. The typeface shows to good effect in Caxton's Boethius of £-.1478 (fig. i), and was used as a bold face or headline type in his Cicero printed in 1481 (fig. 2), where it was set in line with another Veldener type, a formal bdtarde^ Type 2:i35B,^ cast on the same body. When we come to examine the use the two earliest printers in London, John Lettou and William de Machlinia, made of this same typeface a few years after its introduction by Caxton (fig. 3), and of other typefaces from the Caxton repertoire, a number of interesting questions arise. Let us first examine a typeface which shows an obvious relationship to Caxton Type 2, and is in effect a reduced version of this type. On this ground alone it has recently been thought to be likewise the work of Johan Veldener. It is referred to as Caxton Type 4:95B and it was used by Caxton from 1480 onwards; it was recast on a larger body in 1483 and in this guise is known as Caxton Type 4*: 102B. A version of this face was used in all the books which John Lettou and William de Machlinia printed in partnership. No firm dates can be attached to any of these books, but the activities of this press must have started either late in 1481 or in 1482. When we compare the two earliest versions of this typeface as used by Caxton (Type 4) and by Lettou and De Machlinia (their Type 2:iO2B), the irregularity of alignment in the version used by the two London printers is striking. Throughout all Caxton's publications the alignment of the types which are thought to have come from Veldener is remarkably uniform. This uniformity of casting, which is particularly noticeable in his first book. The Recuyell of the Historyes ofTroye^ which he printed before bringing his press to London, can be seen, for instance, in the Quattuor Sermones (Duff 299),^ the second edition of the Canterbury Tales (Duff 88), and other Caxton titles in which Type 4 has been used. But when we see the same typeface in the Yearbook j^ Henry VI (Duff 420), one of the six books printed by the Lettou-De Machlinia partnership, the alignment is highly irregular even where the page is set in solid text type (their Type 2) with no larger type inserted. Could Veldener, a typefounder of great

56 Caimina qui quontam GwDio flotcnfe i^mi ^kW^ {)eu meGoa oagot mite motos

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/. Caxton's Type 3 : r35G used as title type in his Boethius. TB.55O[8, leaf [a] 2 recto f

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. 2. Caxton's Type 3:135G used as a bold face in his Cicero. C.io.b.6, leaf 1.2 recto skill and experience, have been responsible for such indifferent casting? It seems much more likely that for the smaller typeface, punches or a set of duphcate matrices were bought or borrowed, and used on the printers' behalf by someone new to the business of casting type, and less skilled than Veldener. The second and more complex question is to do with the way in which Lettou and De Machlinia used their versions of Caxton's large Type 3:135G in the role of a bold face for emphasis inserted into solid pages of their founts of the text type.

omh^mmlB

cit frevue ^ ccutt Ee rog cc'qi mocucra Ec ^offi ^'i oa

Fig. J. Abbreviamentum Statutorum, printed at London by John Lettou and William de Machlinia, showing their two typefaces. IB.55421, leaf c 4 recto (detail)

In tht journal of the Printing Historical Society^ Nicolas Barker referred to this odd and difficult practice when he described how De Machlinia 'continued to use Caxton's type 3, squeezing it on to the same line with the smaller batarde, which had a bad effect on his page make-up' (this can clearly be seen in the centre of fig. 4). In 1979 Lotte Hellinga invited me to examine and comment on the way in which Lettou and De Machlinia's compositors had set about the task of 'squeezing in' this larger type into the solid page settings of the smaller text type. It was obvious from a glance at the British Library copy of the Yearbook that the text was in fact set sohd and that there was no possibility of spacing leads or reglets having been cut to let in the larger type. The next possibility to be ruled out was that of double impression printing as used at this time by Veldener and others for printing in red and black. It will be seen in fig. 5 that the lower-case y in 'Danby' is trapped against the 1 below and is thus held proud of the line below, consequently printing blacker, while the upper part of the 1 is starved of ink by the ink ball being held off by the y. A simulation of this effect is shown in fig. 12. This effect could only have been obtained if the printing was done at one impression. There is other evidence, connected with ink density and impressional strength, that quickly disposes of any question of two printings in this case. We are now left with two alternative possibilities. The simplest answer is that all the characters of the large type, except the descenders, have had their beards filed off, reducing the body size to the same as the smaller text type, and the descenders have been accommodated either by filing the letter below or by respacing the following hne to allow

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Ftg. 4. Yearbook 35 Henry VI printed at London by John Lettou and William de Machlinia. IB.55423, leaf b 4 verso 5 ittmt icp a tns ^nt EC pt occifi

5. Yearbook js Henry VI. IB.55423, leaf c 1 recto (detail, enlarged)

Fig. 6. Yearbook ss Henry VI. IB.55423, leaf b 4 verso (detail, enlarged) them to drop between the words. In fig. 3, which shows a detail of the Abbreviamentum Statutorum (Duff 375), the cross-heading in the large type is, for no apparent reason, placed tight up against the first line of the text and it can clearly be seen that the large type is a full face on the body with no beard. The z in 'dez' has been fitted in above the n by filing away the top of the shank of the n. But no self-respecting compositor in his right mind would have gone to the trouble of filing down the beards of all the other characters in a cross-head in this situation. The beards were missing before the line was set. In fig. 6 the descending g in 'Billing' falls above the ascending ligature le and there is no means of getting over the difficulty without resorting to very wide word spacing and carrying over a word into the next line. Happily, wide word spacing was not tolerated, but the next five lines are left curving downwards in misalignment, which will have caused this page to be almost impossible to lock up and lift from the stone to the press. Perhaps the final page make-up was actually done on the press and not, as later would have been the case, in a chase on the stone to be lifted onto the press. The alternative to all this filing of characters, a possibility which to me seems the more

61 compacgno tee %h 5cf 6^ g m n;J) fur 5M O56 G^ qffi o6e fait m come i u? c6Et| caCie eft qj ft 3 ao Sfu oicft J -if Oe

Fig. 7. Yearbook 35 Henry VI. IB.55423, leaf b 4 verso (detail, enlarged)

urf Cp graiif J5 //^wr}/ VI. IB.55423, leaf b 5 verso (detail, enlarged) credible, is that a small fount ofthe large type excluding the descenders was cast for this specific purpose on the same body size as the smaller text type. This would be a sensible, practical solution considering the number of books other than the Yearbook in which Lettou and De Machlinia used this particular method of emphasizing key words or proper names.^ The word 'Litteltone' shown in fig. 4 and used frequently in the Yearbook presents no problems. The type beard is missing, the face is full on the body like a titling and is aligned with the descenders ofthe smaller type; but at the beginning of line 15 on the same page a lower-case g has been carefully slotted into a word space in the line below (fig. 6). This also occurs with the y in 'Danby' (fig. 5). In fig. 7 it can be seen that the p in 'porte' overlaps the fin 'fuit' below. This would have required some very careful filing. Other examples of careful fit can be seen in fig. 8 in the capitals M and B, fig. 9 where three

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ieottqucCcOitCptiour ^. 9. Yearbook js Henry VI. IB.55423, leaf c 3 verso (detail, enlarged) B0U6 co' pur em

^. 70. Yearbook j^ Henry VI. IB.55423, leaf b 6 recto (detail, enlarged) lines ofthe large type are dovetailed into three lines of text type, and fig. 10 where the u in *issue' has been damaged by filing to allow for the p descender. The number of words set in the large type in some of these pages is considerable, fifty-eight words appearing in one fairly typical gathering of eight leaves. Even if not more than six or eight pages were set up at the same time (before distributing the type for reuse), it does look as if a complete small fount of the filed down or full-face-on-small-body type must have been made available. To confirm the practicability and check the time taken for the filing method, and having no type in the sizes ofthe faces discussed here, I have set in type two examples (fig. 11 and 12) fitting 18 point Plantin bold (20 lines = 126 mm) into lines of 14 point set solid (20 lines = 98 mm), the amount to be filed off being 1.4 mm as against 1.6 mm difference between the two Lettou-De Machlinia types. The time taken on filing and fitting, using a firm vice and a sharp file, averaged twenty minutes per word. The word 'Litteltone' took

63 Phellipe ad use pdicti thome tune and Litteltone Pur le sur eert eondit and reheree le

Fig. II, Typographical experiment by the author

trauers issint ici ama entente punisshe Danbv nioy semb et pfent qiit le pi occist le di

Fig. 12. Typographical experiment by the author more filing and less fitting than the word 'Danby' which has fewer characters but includes the descending y which had to be fitted into the next line. It is interesting to note how precise the alignment is of Lettou-De Machlinia's large type when compared with the irregularity of his text type. This evenness of the large type would have been difficult to maintain if the sorts had been individually filed and it would have been difficult not to have damaged occasional characters with the file when taking off the beard flush with the face. (I nicked 20 per cent of the characters I filed down.) I have not found any file damage on the lines in large type but a number of cuts do show on the text type lines where descenders have been let in from lines above. The Lettou-De Machlinia version of the larger type, incidentally, can be seen to be a different casting from that used by Caxton (Type 3) in his Boethius and Cicero and some of the letters have been recut. The lower-case o, for example, has a different shape at the base of the letter, the e is rounder, the capital I has a flattened base stroke; as in Type 2 the ligatures et, te, ti, to, and tt have not been observed. My conclusion is that the pages of the Lettou and De Machlinia Yearbook 3s Henry VI were printed at one impression and the words in the large typeface were fitted into the lines

64 of text type by a combination of filing down individual characters, and having a fount of the large type, except the descenders, cast on the same body size as the text type. This solution would occur instantly to any printer who planned his book far enough ahead to allow him to order the special fount or, with less foresight needed, to anyone who could get hold of a set of matrices and a mould and had the ingenuity to set up his own small foundry. A special casting on the smaller body would have been the sensible, practical, economic solution, and there is plenty of evidence to show that practical, economic business sense was not in short supply in printing circles at that time.

1 Types as used by printers are indicated by their John Lettou alone: number in Proctor's chronological arrangement, Thomas Wallensis, Expositiones super Psalterium their measurement in mm over twenty lines, and (1481), Duff 396. (Only the words 'Eatus qui' their style (G for Gothic, B for bdtarde). For at the beginning ofthe text.) Caxton's Types 2 and 3 see Wytze and Lotte John Lettou and William de Machlinia in partner- Hellinga, The Fifteenth-Century Printing Types of ship: the Low Countries (Amsterdam, 1966), p. 24, pis. 35-8, 61-4. For Type 3 and its affiliated types see Abbreviamentum Statutorum., Duff 375. Lotte Hellinga, Caxton in Focus. The Beginning of Yearbook ss Henry F7, Duff 420. Printing in England (London, 1982), pp. 69-76, Sir Thomas Littleton, Tenores novelli. Duff figs. 31-40. 273- Dialogus inter Hugonem., Catonem et Oliverium 2 Duff: E. Gordon Duff, Fifteenth Century English super libertate ecclesiastica. Duff 116. Books. A Bibliography of Books and Documents Yearbook jj Henry VI., Duff 418. Printed in England and of Books for the English Yearbook j6 Henry VI, Duff 421. Market Printed Abroad (London, 1917). 3 Nicolas Barker, 'Caxton's Typography', Papers William de Machlinia alone: Presented to the Caxton International Congress Nova Statuta (before March 1483), Duff 378. I gj6. journal of the Printing Historical Society., xi Promise of Matrimony (early 1483), Duff 351. (1976/7), PP- 114-33- The Revelation of St. Nicholas to a Monk of 4 Books printed by John Lettou and William de Evesham., Duff 357. Machlinia in which use was made of a version of Sir Thomas Littleton, Tenores Novelli (2nd edn.). Caxton Type 3 in conjunction with other type- Duff 274. faces: