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NOTES AND QUERIES. ARUN also chooses to say that the only question which is material, is, Who was Caxton's patron? i.e. who was the Abbot of Westminster at the time,--who may not, after all, have actively interfered in the matter. This question remains in some doubt; but it was not the question with which DR. RIMBAULT commenced the discussion. The object of that gentleman's inquiry (Vol. ii., p. 99.) was, the particular spot where Caxton's press was fixed. From a misapprehension of the passage in Stow, a current opinion has obtained that the first English press was erected within the abbey-church, and in the chapel of St. Anne; and Dr. Dibdin conjectured that the chapel of St. Anne stood on the site of Henry VII.'s chapel. The correction of this vulgar error is, I submit, by no means immaterial; especially at a time when a great effort is made to propagate it by the publication of a print, representing
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William Caxton examining the first proof sheet from his printing-press in Westminster Abbey; the engraving of which is to be
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where the draftsman has deliberately represented the printers at work within the consecrated walls of the church itself! When a less careless reader than Dr. Dibdin consults the passage of Stow, he finds that the chapel of St. Anne stood in the opposite direction from the church to the site of Henry VII.'s chapel, i.e. within the court of the Almonry; and that Caxton's press was also set up in the Almonry, though not (so far as appears, or is probable) within that chapel. The second question is, When did Caxton first set up his press in this place? And the third, the answer to which depends on the preceding, is, Who was the abbot who gave him admission? Now it is true, as ARUN remarks, that the introduction of Abbot Islip's name is traced up to Stow in the year 1603: and, as Mr. Knight has observed,
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because John Islip did not become Abbot of Westminster until 1500. The entire passage of Stow has been quoted by DR. RIMBAULT in
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NOTES AND QUERIES,
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Islip, abbot of Westminster, erected the first press of book-printing that ever was in England, about the year 1471.