THE TEMPLE PRESS, PRINTERS, LETCHWORTH

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It was said in 18 Car. II. (1666) that "the king by the common law hath a general prerogative over the printing press; so that none ought to print a book for public use without his license." This seems, however, to have been in the argument of counsel; but the court held that a patent to print law-books exclusively was no monopoly. Carter's Reports, 89. "Matters of state and things that concern the government," it is said in another case, "were never left to any man's liberty to print that would." 1 Mod. Reps. 258. Kennet informs us that several complaints having been made, of Lilly's Grammar, the use of which had been prescribed by the royal ecclesiastical supremacy, it was thought proper in 1664 that a new public form of grammar should be drawn up and approved in convocation, to be enjoined by the royal authority. One was accordingly brought in by Bishop Pearson, but the matter dropped. Life of Charles II. 274.

[2] We find an order of council, June 7, 1660, that the stationers' company do seize and deliver to the secretary of state all copies of Buchanan's History of Scotland, and De Jure Regni apud Scotos, "which are very pernicious to monarchy, and injurious to his majesty's blessed progenitors." Kennet's Register, 176. This was beginning early.

[3] Commons' Journals, July 29, 1661.

[4] 14 Car. II. c. 33.

[5] State Trials, vii. 929.

[6] This declaration of the judges is recorded in the following passage of the London Gazette, May 5, 1680: "This day the judges made their report to his majesty in council, in pursuance of an order of this board, by which they unanimously declare that his majesty may by law prohibit the printing and publishing of all news-books and pamphlets of news whatsoever not licensed by his majesty's authority, as manifestly tending to the breach of the peace and disturbance of the kingdom. Whereupon his majesty was pleased to direct a proclamation to be prepared for the restraining the printing of news-books and pamphlets of news without leave." Accordingly such a proclamation appears in the Gazette of May 17.

[7] State Trials, vii. 1127; viii. 184, 197. Even North seems to admit that this was a stretch of power. Examen, 564.