Page:Plomer Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers 1907.djvu/17

 INTRODUCTION. HEN, on the 3rd November, 1640, the Long Parliament met, it found the book-trade suffering from an acute attack of censorship. Ever since the days of Elizabeth there had been two great impediments to the expansion of that trade. One of these was the Government, which objected to criticism and sought safety by bribing the press and strangling the free circulation of books. The other was the Company of Stationers, which desired to keep the trade in the hands of its privileged members and objected to any increase in the number of presses, or of booksellers, because the greater the number the smaller the profits of the monopolists. The duty of meeting a legitimate demand weighed little with men who cared for nothing save their own interests, and naturally, the Company seeking its privileges from the Government, was at all times the willing instrument of that Government. The result was that the book-trade was cramped, printing was bad—there being no encouragement to the printer to produce artistic work—and the most saleable books, such as school books, bibles, and service books, were printed at secret presses.

All these evils had, during the previous ten years, been intensified by Archbishop Laud and his brother bishops, who attempted to stem the growing onset of Puritanism, with the pillory, branding iron, and prison cell. Sir John Lambe had carefully winnowed the London printing houses, and Laud and his friends hoped that by the Star Chamber Decree of 1637, which gave to the Stationers' Company increased powers