Page:Plomer Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers 1907.djvu/18

xii of search, they had effectually muzzled the press. As vainly did Mrs. Partington with her mop try to keep out the sea. Had the state of England been normal, there would have been no need for the decree of 1637, and conversely, the public mind being in a highly excitable state, the decree of 1637 was overwhelmed and swept aside by the events which immediately succeeded it. Almost the very first act of the Long Parliament was to appoint a Committee for Religion, which called before it booksellers and printers who had been interfered with by "my lord of Canterbury," thrown into prison, and otherwise grievously maltreated, and great was the punishment they exacted in return. So too there were Committees of printing, which listened to the woes of Michael Sparke and recommended that he should be repaid the sum wrung from him by the Star Chamber. Meanwhile, with religion at fever heat, and public events moving with a rapidity hitherto unknown, the cry was for "News!" and "More News!" Thus the Star Chamber decree that there were to be no more than twenty printers was speedily disregarded.

So for the next three years printers and booksellers alike were left unmolested, and grew and multiplied prodigiously. News-sheets poured from the press in ever increasing numbers, and were hawked broadcast through the city and suburbs of London, and pens of all kinds "walked," to use the quaint expression of the period, fast and furiously in the political and religious controversies that were rending the country, to the entire exclusion of all other forms of literature.

Then came a change. The Parliament began to find itself criticised, as even the most popular of Parliaments is bound to make some enemies, and it liked the process as little as the King and the bishops had done. It looked about for weapons to defend itself and found two, the old rusty censorship and the pen. Half ashamed to go back to the methods it had so vigorously denounced, the Long Parliament adopted the censorship very mildly at first, while freely engaging writers such as Milton to meet the onslaught of its foes with the pen. The first