During the 15th century English prose was gradually being brought into a shape fitting it for more serious uses.  In the controversy between the Church and the Lollards Latin was still mainly employed, but Wiclif had written some of his tracts in English, and, in 1449, Reginald Peacock, Bishop of St. Asaph, contributed, in English, to the same controversy, The Repressor of Overmuch Blaming of the Clergy.  Sir John Fortescue, who was chief-justice of the King’s Bench from 1442-1460, wrote during the reign of Edward IV. a book on the Difference between Absolute and Limited Monarchy, which may be regarded as the first treatise on political philosophy and constitutional law in the language.  But these works hardly belong to pure literature, and are remarkable only as early, though not very good, examples of English prose in a barren time.  The 15th century was an era of decay and change.  The Middle Age was dying, Church and State were slowly disintegrating under the new intellectual influences that were working secretly under ground.  In England the civil wars of the Red and White Roses were breaking up the old feudal society by decimating and impoverishing the baronage, thus preparing the way for the centralized monarchy of the Tudors.  Toward the close of that century, and early in the next, happened the four great events, or series of events, which freed and widened men’s minds, and, in a succession of shocks, overthrew the mediaeval system of life and thought.  These were the invention of printing, the Renaissance, or revival of classical learning, the discovery of America, and the Protestant Reformation.

William Caxton, the first English printer, learned the art in Cologne.  In 1476 he set up his press and sign, a red pole, in the Almonry at Westminster.  Just before the introduction of printing the demand for MS. copies had grown very active, stimulated, perhaps, by the coming into general use of linen paper instead of the more costly parchment.  The scriptoria of the monasteries were the places where the transcribing and illuminating of MSS. went on, professional copyists resorting to Westminster Abbey, for example, to make their copies of books belonging to the monastic library.  Caxton’s choice of a spot was, therefore, significant.  His new art for multiplying copies began to supersede the old method of transcription at the very head-quarters of the MS. makers.  The first book that bears his Westminster imprint was the Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, translated from the French by Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, a brother-in-law of Edward IV.  The list of books printed by Caxton is interesting, as showing the taste of the time, since he naturally selected what was most in demand.  The list shows that manuals of devotion and chivalry were still in chief request, books like the Order of Chivalry, Faits of Arms, and the Golden Legend, which last Caxton translated himself, as well as Reynard the Fox, and a French version