continue a chapel until the Reformation, if not later? And Caxton would
no more set up his press in a chapel than in the abbey-church itself.
Stow says it was erected in the almonry. The almonry was one of the
courts of the abbey, (situated directly west of the abbey-church, and
not east, as Dr. Dibdin surmised); it contained a chapel dedicated to
St. Anne, and latterly an almshouse erected by the Lady Margaret. The
latter probably replaced other offices or lodgings of greater antiquity,
connected with the duties of the almoner, or the reception and relief of
the poor; and there need be no doubt that it was one of these buildings
that the Abbot of Westminster placed at the disposal of our
proto-typographer. There was nothing very extraordinary in his so doing
if we view the circumstance in its true light; for the _scriptoria_ of
the monasteries had ever been the principal manufactories of books. A
single press was now to do the work of many pens. The experiment was
successful; "after which time," as Stow goes on to say, "the like was
practised in the Abbeys of St. Augustine, at Canterbury, St. Alban's,
and other monasteries." The monks became printers instead of scribes;
but they would not ordinarily convert their churches or chapels into
printing-houses. The workmen, it is true, term the meetings held for
consultation on their common interests or pleasures, their _chapels_;
and whether this may have arisen from any particular instance in which a
chapel was converted into a printing-house, I cannot say. In order to
ascertain the origin of this term these Queries may be proposed:--Is it
peculiar to printers and to this country? Or is it used also in other
trades and on the Continent?

John Gough Nichols.

* * * * *