made Caxton leave Bruges and go home to England in order to begin
life anew as a printer there.

Many a time, as Governor of the English Nation over the seas, he
had sent forth richly laden vessels. But had he known it, none
was so richly laden as that which now sailed homeward bearing a
printing-press.

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.