The exact date of Caxton's death has never been settled, but from the position of the entry in the parish accounts relating to his burial, it would appear to have taken place towards the end of the year 1491. All the early writers fixed on 1493 as the date, no doubt because his name appears in the colophon of the edition of the Golden Legend printed in that year.
His will, could this be recovered, would doubtless throw light on this and many another obscure point, but the hope of finding it grows daily less and less. The ordinary repositories have been searched in vain; though it was still considered possible that it might be found amongst the large collection of documents preserved in Westminster Abbey. Mr. Scott, of the British Museum, who is at present engaged in calendaring these documents, and to whom I wrote on the subject, replied: "I believe it to be quite impossible that Caxton's will can be in the Muniment Rooms at the Abbey, because all the wills are together in one bundle, arranged chronologically, and also I have calendared, so far as I can see, all papers and deeds relating to Westminster." There is just the possibility that at some period the will, having been recognized as of supreme interest, has been removed to some place of greater security and its whereabouts forgotten.
In a copy of the Fructus Temporum printed by Julyan Notary in 1515, which belonged at one time to a Mr. Ballard of Cambden, in Gloucestershire, a friend of Joseph Ames, the bibliographer, there was written in a very old hand the following epitaph on Caxton:
"Of your charitee pray for the soul of Mayster Wyllyam Caxton, that in hys time was a man of moche ornate and moche renommed wysdome and connyng, and decessed ful crystenly the yere of our Lord M.CCCC.Lxxxxj.
"Moder of Merci shyld him from thorribul fynd
And bryng hym to lyff eternall that neuyr hath ynd."
There seems great probability that this is a genuine copy of a genuine inscription, for had it been a forgery of the time when it is first mentioned, early in the eighteenth century, the forger would have given the date as 1493, which was then supposed to be the date of Caxton's death, rather than 1491, the genuine date.
Two years later we find in the colophon to Gerard Leeu's reprint of Caxton's Chronicles the same epithets applied to him by his workmen (by one of whom he had been killed during the progress of the work) as are applied to Caxton, "a man of grete wysedom in all maner of kunnying."
Of Caxton's domestic affairs we know hardly anything. A lucky discovery made by Mr. Gairdner in the Public Record Office proves that he was a married man. This is a copy of a document produced in a lawsuit relating to a separation between Gerard Croppe, a tailor of Westminster, and his wife Elizabeth, daughter of William Caxton, and dated the 11th of May, 1496. Each was bound over, under penalty of one hundred pounds, not to vex, sue, or trouble the other about any matters relating to their marriage, and to live for the future apart, unless the said Gerard could recover the love and favour of the said Elizabeth. This having been agreed to, Gerard was to receive out of the bequest of William Caxton twenty printed Legends at thirteen shillings and four pence a Legend, giving a general quittance to the executors of William Caxton.
Could the record of the original trial be recovered, the evidence of the various witnesses would no doubt afford much information.
In the churchwarden's accounts of St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, there occurs an entry in the year 1490.
"Item atte Bureyng of Mawde Caxston for torches and tapres iijs. ijd."
This has been supposed to refer to Caxton's wife, but beyond the similarity of names there is no evidence to support the conjecture. In the same way, too, the entry of a William Caxton's burial in 1479 in the parish records of St. Margaret's has caused several to conjecture that this may have been the printer's father.
It appears almost certain that Caxton left no son, for all his printing material passed into the hands of Wynkyn de Worde, who had for some time been his assistant.
Wynkyn de Worde, who took out letters of denization in April, 1496, is described as a printer, and a native of the Duchy of Lorraine. Many writers have mistakenly derived his name from the town of Woerden in Holland, whereas he really came from the town of Worth in Alsace, and sometimes uses the name Worth in place of Worde. The suggestion, too, that he came with Caxton from Bruges would appear improbable, for as that event took place in 1476, and De Worde did not die until 1535, he would have been too young to be an assistant.
Amongst the documents, however, in Westminster Abbey is one dated 1480, relating to the giving up of a tenement by Elizabeth, wife of Wynand van Worden. If this really refers to the printer, it is clear that he must have married an Englishwoman, who would be able to hold property, which the husband, as an alien, could not. It makes it also appear probable that he was an assistant of Caxton when he established himself as an English printer in 1476, but De Worde must at that time have been a fairly young man.
Several other printers have been quoted as apprentices of Caxton by different writers, but without any authority. Blades mentions Pynson, and even goes so far as to say that he used Caxton's device, a mistake which may be traced to an imperfect copy of Pynson's Speculum Vitae Christi in the British Museum, formerly in the Offor Library, which has a leaf with Caxton's device inserted at the end.
Although Caxton makes frequent mention of the homeliness and rudeness of his language, yet it is clear that these expressions must not be taken quite literally. He was born in the Weald of Kent, where the peasants no doubt spoke a very marked dialect, but his own English shows no signs of this. His family was not of the peasant class, and he had received a good education, though where he does not say. Living as an apprentice in the house of one of the richest and most important London merchants, and in the company of his fellow-apprentices, he would soon lose any provincialisms he might possess. His position as head of the English merchants abr and his confidential position at the court of the Duchess of Burgundy, could hardly have been reached by one who spoke rude and provincial language. His statements must be taken rather as expressions of the mock humility which it was the fashion of the time to insert in prefaces, especially when they were addressed to people in high rank.
In the same way we must hardly take as literal his expressions as to his own want of education and learning. French and Dutch he knew fluently, and we know from his own words in the Golden Legend that he could read Latin, for he made use of both a French and a Latin version in making his translation. He seems, indeed, to have been a really well-educated man of the middle classes, at a time when learning was difficult to obtain, and was generally confined to the professions and the members of the Universities.
His work as a printer and a translator is the best evidence as to what manner of man he was. It shows clearly that he did not look upon the printing-press merely as a means of making money, or his publications would have been of a very different character. His mind seems to have grasped the great possibilities of his art, though he could not have foreseen the immensity of the power it was destined to become. He laboured steadily to give to the English-speaking public the literature of their country, and where a suitable was not to be found in the vernacular, he set to work and translated it. Death found him at his work. "Thus endyth," writes his successor in the colophon of Jerome's Vitas Patrum, "the moost vertuouse hystorye of the devoute and right renommed lyves of holy faders lyvynge in deserte, worthy of remembraunce to all well dysposed persones, whiche hath be translated out of Frensshe in to Englysshe by Wyllyam Caxton of Westmynstre late deed, and fynysshed it at the laste daye of his lyff."
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