Minstrels, instead of books, were in early times the principal medium of
communication between authors and the public; they wandered up and down
the country, chanting, singing, or reciting, according to the taste of
their customers, and had certain privileges of entertainment in the halls
of the nobility.

It may be wondered that Caxton, like many of the foreign printers, did
not begin with, or at least some time during his career print, the
Scriptures, especially as Wycliffe's translation had already been made.
But there were good reasons. Religious persecution ran high, and the
clergy were extremely jealous of the propagation of the Scriptures among
the people. Knighton had denounced the reading of the Bible, lamenting
lest this jewel of the Church, hitherto the exclusive property of the
clergy and divines, should be made common to the laity; and Archbishop
Arundel had issued an enactment that no part of the Scriptures in English
should be read, either in public or private, or be thereafter translated,
under pain of the greater excommunication. The Star Chamber, too, was big
with terrors. A little later, Erasmus' edition of the New Testament was
forbidden at Cambridge; and in the county of Surrey the Vicar of Croydon
said from the pulpit, "We must root out printing, or printing will root
out us."

Winkin de Worde, who had come in his youth with Caxton to England and
continued with him in the superintendence of his office to the day of his
death, succeeded to the business, and conducted it with great spirit
for the next forty years. He began by entirely remodelling his fonts
of Gothic type, and introduced both Roman and Italic; became his own
founder, instead of importing type from the Low Countries; promoted the
manufacture of paper in this country; and such was his activity that he