The indications of the period at which Caxton first brought the art of printing into England are not very exact. Several of his books, supposed to have been amongst the earliest, are without date or place of impression. The first in the title of which a date or a place is mentioned is ‘The Dictes and Sayinges of Philosophres,’ translated by the Earl of Rivers from the French. This bears upon the title “Enprynted by me William Caxton, at Westminster, the yere of our Lord m.cccc. lxxvij.” Another imprint, three years later, is more precise. It is in the ‘Chronicles of Englond,’ which book the printer says was “Enprynted by me, William Caxton, in thabbey of Westmynstre by london, &c., the v day of Juyn, the yere of thincarnacion of our lord god m.cccc. lxxx.” In 1485, ‘A Book of the Noble Hystoryes of Kynge Arthur,’ was “by me deuyded into xxi bookes chapytred and enprynted and fynysshed, in thabbey Westmestre.” The expression “in the Abbey of Westminster” leaves no doubt that beneath the actual roof of some portion of the abbey Caxton carried on his art. Stow, in his ‘Survey of London,’ says, “In the Eleemosynary or Almonry at Westminster Abbey, now corruptly called the Ambry, for that the alms of the abbey were there distributed to the poor, John Islip, Abbot of Westminster, erected the first press of book-printing that ever was in England, and Caxton was the first that practised it in the said abbey.”