The Restoration brought with it little change in the conditions under which printing was carried on in England, or in the lot of the printers themselves. There is still preserved in the Public Record Office a document which throws considerable light on this matter, and is believed to have been drawn up either in 1660 or in 1661. This is a petition signed by eleven of the leading London printers, for the incorporation of the printers into a body distinct from the Company of Stationers, and appended to it are the 'reasons' for the proposed change, which occupy four or five closely written folio sheets. The men who put forward this petition were:—

and it was undoubtedly this band of men, some of them the biggest men in the trade, who formed the 'Companie of Printers,' for whom in 1663 a pamphlet was issued, entitled A Brief Discourse concerning Printers and Printing. For the printed pamphlet embodies the same views put forward in the petition, only backed up with fresh evidence and terse arguments. The claim of the printers amounted to this, that the Company of Stationers had become mainly a Company of Booksellers, that in order to cheapen printing they had admitted a great many more printers than were necessary, and from this cause arose the great quantity of 'scandalous and seditious' books that were constantly being published. They go on to say that the condition of the great body of printers was deplorable, 'they can hardly subsist in credit to maintain their families ... When an ancient printer died, and his copies were exposed to sale, few or none of the young ones were of ability to deal for them, nor indeed for any other, so that the Booksellers have engross'd almost all.' The petitioners show also that the Company of Stationers was grown so large that none could be Master or Warden until he was well advanced in life, and therefore unable to keep a vigilant eye on the trade, while a printer did not become Master once in ten or twenty years. They argue that the best expedient for checking these disorders and ensuring lawful printing, would be to incorporate the printers into a distinct body, and they advocate the registration of presses, the right of search, and the enforcement of sureties. Finally, they claim that this plan would also do much to improve printing as an art, as under the existing conditions there was no encouragement to the printers to produce good work.

This petition, though it does not seem to have received any official reply, was noticed by Sir Roger L'Estrange in the Proposals which he laid before the House of Parliament, and which undoubtedly formed the basis of the Act of 1662. Sir Roger L'Estrange had been an active adherent of the Royal cause, and soon after the Restoration, on the 22nd February 1661-2, he was granted a warrant to search for and seize unlicensed presses and seditious books (State Papers, Charles II. Vol. li. No. 6). A list is still extant of books which he had seized at the office of John Hayes, one of the signatories of the above petition. So that although the office of Surveyor of the Press was not officially created until 1663, it is clear from the issue of the warrant, and also from the fact of L'Estrange having been directed to draw up proposals for the regulation of the Press, that he was acting in that capacity more than a twelvemonth earlier. His proposals were, in 1663, printed in pamphlet form with the title, Considerations and Proposals in order to the Regulation of the Press, and were dedicated to the King, and also to the House of Lords; and they contain much that is interesting. He states that hundreds of thousands of seditious papers had been allowed to go abroad since the King's return, and that there had been printed ten or twelve impressions of Farewell Sermons, to the number of thirty thousand, since the Act of Uniformity, adding that the very persons who had the care of the Press (i.e. the Company of Stationers) had connived at its abuse. In support of this statement he pointed out that Presbyterian pamphlets were rarely suppressed, that rich offenders were passed over, and scarcely any of those who were caught were ever brought to justice. He gives the number of printers then at work in London as sixty, the number of apprentices about a hundred and sixty, besides a large number of journeymen; and he proposed at once to reduce the number of printers to twenty, with a corresponding reduction of apprentices and journeymen. As this would throw a large number of men out of work, he further proposed a scheme for the relief of necessitous and supernumerary printers. He calculated that the twelve impressions of the Farewell Sermons, allowing a thousand copies to each impression, had yielded a profit, 'beside the charge of paper and printing,' of £3300, and he advised that this sum should be levied as a fine upon those booksellers who had sold the book, and be placed to a fund for the benefit of the suppressed printers, the balance of the sum required to be levied on other seditious publications!

In this pamphlet L'Estrange gave the titles of most of the pamphlets to which he objected, with brief extracts from them, and the names of the printers and publishers, amongst whom were Thomas Brewster, Giles Calvert, Simon Dover, and one other, whose name is not mentioned, but who is referred to as holding a highly profitable office. The reference may be to Thomas Newcomb.

At pages 26 and 27 L'Estrange notices the petition of certain of the printers to be incorporated as a separate body. He says 'that it were a hard matter to pick out twenty master printers, who are both free of the trade, of ability to manage it, and of integrity to be entrusted with it, most of the honester sort being impoverished by the late times, and the great business of the press being engross'd by Oliver's creatures.' He admits that the Company of Stationers and Booksellers are largely responsible for the great increase of presses, being anxious to have their books printed as cheaply as possible, but thinks that there would be as much abuse of power among incorporated printers as among the Company of Stationers.

The Act of 1662, which was mainly based on L'Estrange's report, was in a large measure a re-enactment of the Star Chamber decree of 1637. The number of printers in London was limited to twenty, the type-founders to four, and the other clauses of the earlier decree were reinforced, but with one notable concession. Hitherto printing outside London had been restricted to the two Universities, but in the new Act the city of York was expressly mentioned as a place where printing might be carried on.

This new Act was enforced for a time with greater severity than the old one, and under it, for the first time in English history, a printer suffered the penalty of death for the liberty of the press.

The story of the trial and condemnation of John Twyn is told in vol. 6 of Cobbett's State Trials, and was also published in pamphlet form with the title, An exact narrative of the Tryal and condemnation of John Twyn, for Printing and Dispersing of a Treasonable Book, With the Tryals of Thomas Brewster, bookseller, Simon Dover, printer, Nathan Brooks, bookseller ... in the Old Bayly, London, the 20th and 22nd February 166-3/4.