At Westminster, within the precincts of the Abbey, Caxton found a house and set up his printing-press.  And there, not far from the great west door of the Abbey he, already an elderly man, began his new busy life.  His house came to be known as the house of the Red Pale from the sign that he set up.  It was probably a shield with a red line down the middle of it, called in heraldry a pale.  And from here Caxton sent out the first printed advertisement known in England.  “If it please any man spiritual or temporal,” he says, to buy a certain book, “let him come to Westminster in to the Almonry at the Red Pale and he shall have them good cheap.”  The advertisement ended with some Latin words which we might translate, “Please do not pull down the advertisement.”

The first book that Caxton is known to have printed in England was called The Dictes* and Sayings of the Philosophers.  This was also a translation from French, not, however, of Caxton’s own writing.  It was translated by Earl Rivers, who asked Caxton to revise it, which he did, adding a chapter and writing a prologue.

Another word for sayings, from the French dire, to say.

To the people of Caxton’s day printing seemed a marvelous thing.  So marvelous did it seem that some of them thought it could only be done by the help of evil spirits.  It is strange to think that in those days, when anything new and wonderful was discovered, people at once thought that it must be the work of evil spirits.  That it might be the work of good spirits never seemed to occur to them.

Printing, indeed, was a wonderful thing.  For now, instead of taking weeks and months to make one copy of a book, a man could make dozens or even hundreds at once.  And this made books so cheap that many more people could buy them, and so people were encouraged both to read and write.  Instead of gathering together to hear one man read out of a book, each man could buy a copy for himself.  At the end of one of his books Caxton begs folk to notice “that it is not written with pen and ink as other books be, to the end that every man may have them at once.  For all the books of this story, called the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy thus imprinted as ye see here were begun on one day and also finished in one day.”  We who live in a world of books can hardly grasp what that meant to the people of Caxton’s time.

For fourteen years Caxton lived a busy life, translating, editing, and printing.  Besides that he must have led a busy social life, for he was a favorite with Edward IV, and with his successors Richard III and Henry VII too.  Great nobles visited his workshop, sent him gifts, and eagerly bought and read his books.  The wealthy merchants, his old companions in trade, were glad still to claim him as a friend.  Great ladies courted, flattered, and encouraged him.  He married, too, and had children, though we known nothing of his home life.  Altogether his days were full and busy, and we may believe that he was happy.