Note 17 — A DESCRIPTION OF BOOKS PRINTED IN TYPE No. 3.

“Easter being a moveable feast, and ruling the time for Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima Sundays, and the beginning of Lent, as well as the Sundays for Whitsuntide and the beginning of Trinity, makes great and ever-recurring alterations in the Service of the Calendar on Saints’ days. Hence was it to show the Cleric at a glance how to commemorate the Saints’ days that came in the everchanging times of Lent, Easter, Whitsuntide; and the Octave of the Trinity, the Pica began by giving a table of the Dominical letters, which make the keys of all the rest of the Pica; and after such a way no matter what month or week Easter might fall on, the manner of commemorating the Saints’ days happening then, or of putting them off till another time, was accurately described for all variations. But as the chief variations in keeping the Saints’ days happened at Easter and its following week—at Whitsuntide and its week or Octave—and at Trinity and its Octave; and, as during these three great feasts, with their Octaves, the occurring feast itself was chiefly celebrated with mere mention, or Collect, or Commemoration; and as people in Caxton’s days had not printed but handwritten Breviaries without the Pica or Pye in them, Caxton printed, to supply their want, ‘pyes of two and three commemorations,’—that is to say, directions for saying the whole office of two Octaves or Commemorations, say of Easter and Whitsuntide, and of three Octaves, Easter, Whitsuntide, and Trinity. It should be borne in mind, as I have pointed out in t. 4, p. 139 of ‘The Church of our Fathers,’ that the Laity as well as the Clergy used to say the Breviary. Hence Caxton’s invitation to buy his ‘pyes’ to the Laity too.”—Extract from a letter to J. F. Goulding, Esq., from the Very Rev. Canon Rock, D.D. February, 1862.