THE REPLY TO THE PETITION
(With the signatures of James I, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Lincoln, and Lord Maundeville)
The next award of the Privy Council, made on 29 November, 1623, embodied a compromise: the Cambridge printers were authorised to comprint with the Stationers all books save bibles, books of common prayer, grammars, psalters, primers or books of common law; they were to have one press only and to print only those almanacks of which the first copy was brought to them. A later order similarly forbade the printing of prayer-books, "and as to books whereof the first copy was brought to the University printer, he was to have the sole printing, as the London printers were to have of all books whereof the first copy was brought to them."
From the rather wearisome history of this constantly recurring dispute[33], two main facts seem to emerge: the difficulty, in the absence of any fixed law, of establishing copyright in a printed book and the incompatibility of the wide powers conferred on the university by the charter of 1534 with the Stationers' claim to a trade monopoly.
A study of the list of books printed between 1588 and 1625 will show that there was by this time a slow, but steady, output of Cambridge books. Prominent among them are the works of that voluminous theologian, William Perkins, "the Learned, pious, and painfull preacher of God's word in St Andrewes in Cambridge" whose virtues are celebrated by Fuller in the second book of The Holy State (1642):
His Sermons were not so plain but that the piously learned did admire them, nor so learned but that the plain did understand them.... He would pronounce the word Damne with such an emphasis as left a doleful Echo in his auditours ears a good while after. And when Catechist of Christ-Colledge, in expounding the Commandments, applied them so home, able almost to make his hearers hearts fall down, and hairs to stand upright.
Perkins's works, dealing with such subjects as A Direction for the government of the Tongue, Salve for a Sicke man, A Reformed Catholike, and The Damned art of witchcraft, and other theological matters were collected into three folio volumes.
Thomas's Latin Dictionary was regularly reprinted, reaching its tenth edition in 1610.