beral education. His father must have been in
respectable circumstances, as there was at that time a law in full force
prohibiting any youth from being apprenticed to trade whose parent was
not possessed of a certain rental in land. In his eighteenth year Caxton
was apprenticed to Robert Large, an eminent London mercer, who in 1430
was sheriff and in 1439 Lord Mayor of London. At his death, in 1441,
he bequeathed Caxton a legacy of twenty marks--a large sum in those
days--and an honorable testimony to his fidelity and integrity. Soon
after this the Mercers' Company appointed him their agent in the Low
Countries, in which employment he spent twenty-three years.

In 1464 he was one of two commissioners officially employed by Edward IV
to negotiate a commercial treaty with Philip of Burgundy; and in 1468,
when the King's sister, Margaret of York, married Charles of Burgundy,
called "the Bold," he attached himself to their household, probably
in some literary capacity, as in the next year we find him busied in
translating at her request. During the greater part of this long period
he was residing or travelling in the midst of the countries where the new
art of printing was the great subject of interest, and would naturally
take some measures to acquaint himself with it. Indeed, it has been said
that he had a secret commission from Edward IV to learn the art, and to
bribe some of the foreign workmen into England. Be this as it may, we
know that Caxton acquired a complete knowledge of it while abroad, for
he tells us so, and that he had printed at Cologne the _Recueil des
Histoires de Troye_ (or _Romance History of Troy_), in 1465, and in 1472
an English edition of the same, translated by himself. These two early
productions are remarkable as being the first books printed in either the
French or English language[26]. The English edition was sold at the Duke
of Roxburghe's sale for one thousand sixty pounds, and is now in the
possession of the Duke of Devonshire.

Caxton returned to England about 1474, bringing with him presses and
types, and established himself in one of the chapels of Westminster
Abbey, called the Eleemosynary, Almondry, or Arm'ry, supposed to have
been on the site of Henry VII's chapel. A printer would naturally resort
to the abbey for patronage, as in those days it was the head-quarters
of learning as well as of religion. Before the foundation of grammar
schools, there was usually a _scholasticus_ attached