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 to the abbeys and cathedral churches, who directed and superintended the education of the neighboring nobility and gentry.  He was, besides, one of the members of the scriptorium, a large establishment within the abbey, where school and other books used to be written.

The first book Caxton printed, after he returned to England and established himself at the Almonry, is supposed to be The Game and Play of Chesse, dated 1474.  But some have raised doubts whether this was printed in England, as there is no actual evidence of it.  One of the arguments is that the type is exactly the same as what he had previously used at Cologne; but this is no evidence at all, as both the type and paper used in England for many years came from Cologne, and there is no doubt that Caxton brought some with him.  A second edition of the book of chess, with woodcuts, was printed two or three years later, and this is generally admitted to have been printed in England.

The first book with an unmistakable imprint was his Dictes and Sayings of Philosophers, which had been translated for him by the gallant but unfortunate Lord Rivers, who was murdered in Pomfret castle by order of Richard III.  The colophon of this states that it was printed in the Abbey of Westminster in 1477.  He appears to have printed but one single volume upon vellum, which is The Doctrynal of Sapience, 1489, of which a copy, formerly in the King’s Library at Windsor, is now in the British Museum.  This is a very interesting work as connected with Caxton, being entirely translated by himself into English verse.  It is an allegorical fiction, in which the whole system of literature and science comes under consideration.

Caxton died in 1491, after having produced, within twenty years of his active career, more than fifty volumes of mark, including Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and his own Chronicle of England.  Before Caxton’s time the youths of England were supplied with their school-books and their reading, which was necessarily very limited, by the Company of Stationers, or text-writers, who wrote and sold, by an exclusive royal privilege, the school-books then in use.  These were chiefly the A B Cs, (called Absies), the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the address to the Virgin Mary, called Ave Maria.

The location of these stationers was in the neighborhood of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whence arose the names Paternoster Row, Creed Lane, Amen Corner, and Ave Maria Lane.  Manuscripts of a higher order, that is, in the form of books, were mostly supplied by the monks, and were scarcely accessible to any but the wealthy, from their extreme cost.  Thus, a Chaucer, which may now be bought for a few shillings, then cost more than a hundred pounds; and we read of two hundred sheep and ten quarters of wheat being given for a volume of homilies.