2. This book is intituled, confeſ- | ſio amantis / that is to saye | in englysshe the confeſſyon of | the louer maad and compyled by | Johan Gower squyer borne in walys | ... (Colophon) Enprynted at Westmestre by me | Willyam Caxton and fynyſſhed the ij | day of Septembre the fyrſt yere of the | regne of Kyng Richard the thyrd / the yere of our lord a thouſand / CCCC / | lxxxxiij / (a mistake for 1483).
The text is a composite one, being taken from at least three MSS. Manuscripts are extant in three versions: the earliest is dedicated to Richard II, and contains a panegyric on Chaucer; the second is dedicated to Henry of Lancaster, but the poets having quarreled, the panegyric is omitted; and the third is likewise addressed to Henry, but with certain differences in the work. With the exception of these variations, the text is alike in all.
The type of the printed work exhibits two variations of the same characters, and is called Type No. 4, and No. 4*. It is the smallest font employed by Caxton in any of his books, and the most used, thirty-one volumes having been printed between 1480 and 1487 in one or the other or in both variations.
The printer does not, as in the following work, write a special prologue or preface to the Confessio, but states all the facts he knows concerning it in the introductory paragraph, or title, at the beginning of the first column. The book has no catchwords or folios, and the signatures are irregularly printed. Seventeen copies were known to Blades: three in the British Museum; Cambridge, Pembroke College, Cambridge, Hereford Cathedral, Lambeth Palace Library, Queen's College, and All Souls, Oxford, each having one; while eight were in private libraries.
The copy whose title-page is here shown in facsimile is one of five copies that are perfect. We first hear of it in the library of Brian Fairfax, a Commissioner of Customs in the 18th century, who bequeathed it to his kinsman, Hon. Robert Fairfax, afterward seventh Lord Fairfax. Lord Fairfax intended to sell the collection at auction, but eventually sold it entire, in 1756, to his relative, Francis Child of Osterley Park, for two thousand pounds. In 1819 the Osterley Park library passed into the family of the Earl of Jersey, and, when finally dispersed, in 1885, brought thirteen thousand and seven pounds, nine shillings.
At the time of the intended auction, in 1756, a catalogue was printed, but afterward all but twenty copies of the edition were suppressed. One of these is marked with the valuation of each book, and shows the Confessio to have been held at three pounds. Eight hundred and ten pounds was the price it brought at the sale in 1885.
Folio. Black letter. 12⅝ × 1815⁄16 inches
Collation: 222 leaves; four of which are blank.