Government control of information in Britain did not first emerge as a problem for government in 1889, when the first Official Secrets Act was passed. Control of information had been a central preoccupation of government since government first assumed responsibility for defence, taxation and administration, and even before. The King's household, until the Tudor monarchy, was characterised by personal government on the advice of trusted counsellors who remained bound by allegiance and confidence to the Crown. Serious breaches of confidence might involve a charge of treason in the form of adhering to the King's enemies under the Act of 1351, which was extended well beyond the terms of the statute by judicial decisions. High treason ‘was regarded as a final denial of the divine order of things as established in the body politic and defined in the oath of allegiance’.

Breaches of confidence were not always problematic in the absence of widespread printing and publishing facilities. More pressing for the power in existence was the control of the spread of seditious ideas or movements which could threaten its position. This point is vividly illustrated by the breach with the Church of Rome and the accumulation of statutes extending treason to punish inter alios those who: