846, I
made this remark:

"There can, we think, be no doubt that the device used by
Caxton, and afterwards by Wynkyn de Worde, (W. 4.7 C.) was
intended for the figures 74, (though Dibdin, p. cxxvii, seems
incredulous in the matter), and that its allusion was to the
year 1474 which may very probably have been that in which his
press was set up in Westminster."

Will the Editor of "NOTES AND QUERIES" now allow me to modify this
suggestion? The figures "4" and "7" are interlaced, it is true, but the
"4" decidedly precedes the other figure, and is followed by a point (.).
I thinly it not improbable that this cypher, therefore, is so far
enigmatic, that the figure "4" may stand for _fourteen hundred_ (the
century), and that the "7" is intended to read doubled, as
_seventy-seven_. In that case, the device, and such historical evidence
as we possess, combine in assigning the year 1477 for the time of the
erection of Caxton's press at Westminster, in the time of Abbot Esteney.
If _The Game and Play of the Chesse_ was printed at Westminster, it
would still be 1474. In the paragraph quoted by ARUN (Vol. ii., p. 122.)
from Mr. C. Knight's _Life of Caxton_, Stow is surely incorrectly
charged with naming Abbot Islip in this matter. Islip's name has been
introduced by the error of some subsequent writer; and this is perhaps
attributable to the extraordinary inadvertence of Dart, the historian of
the abbey, who in his _Lives of the Abbots of Westminster_ has
altogether omitted Esteney,--a circumstance which may have misled any
one hastily consulting his book.

JOHN GOUGH NICHOLS

* * * * *

MISCELLANEOUS

NOTES ON BOOKS, SALES, CATALOGUES, ETC.

_The Fawkes's of York in the Sixteenth Century, including Notices of the
Early History of Guye Fawkes, the Gunpowder Plot Conspirator_, is the
title of a small volume written, it is understood, by a well-known and
accomplished antiquary resident in that city. The author has brought
together his facts in an agreeable manner, and deserves the rare credit
of being content to produce a work commensurate with the extent and
interest of his subject.

We learn from our able and well-informed contemporary, _The Athenaeum_
that "one curious fact has already arisen out of the proposal for the
restoration of Chaucer's Monument,--which invests with a deeper interest
the present undertaking. One of the objections formerly urged against
ta