The Control of Printing

In 1557, when the Guild of Stationers was incorporated as the Stationers' Company, it took on the regulation of printing in London and, in practice, the whole of England. Thereafter, a printer could, if he wished, register the details of a work he intended to print, known as his ‘copy’, with the Company. Registration with the Stationers' Company was not obligatory, but it prevented other stationers from printing the work. Under the charter of the Stationers' Company, the right of registration was not originally restricted to its own members, but extended also to freemen of other City guilds and associates or ‘brothers’ of the Company. This changed in 1586, when registration was limited to members of the Company. From that time, too, the commissioning of new printing presses was controlled and needed the approval of the Company, largely excluding non-members from engaging in legitimate printing operations.

This relatively straightforward situation was complicated by the granting of royal monopolies – a cost-free form of patronage for the monarch, which reached a peak in Elizabeth I's reign, and covered a wide range of commodities and activities, including levying import duty on wine, transporting iron and tin, growing woad, exporting steel, and importing, making and selling playing cards. There were also monopolies that conferred sole rights for the printing of particular books or classes of book.