Page:Plomer Dictionary of the Booksellers and Printers 1907.djvu/22

xvi with pamphlets and, as if the gates of passion had not been opened wide enough, the unfortunate Charles was sent to his doom on Tuesday, the 30th January, 164. Sober men of all parties were shocked at the deed, and hastened to dissociate themselves from it, while the Royalist press became ten times more bitter than before. The Roundheads were split into two camps, and the Independents, who had now gained the ascendency, were assailed on all sides. Once again the old weapon of repression was brought from the armoury, and on the 20th September, 1649, Parliament passed the most drastic Act against the book-trade that had been known since the Star Chamber decree of 1637. In the preamble attention was called to the "assumed boldness" of the weekly pamphleteers, who, it was stated, "took upon them to publish, and at pleasure to censure the Proceedings of Parliament and Army, and other affairs of State," and to the licentiousness of printing which, in this country and in foreign parts, "hath been" and "ought to be" restrained.

This Act closely followed the model set before it in the Star Chamber decree of 1637, to such a pass had the reformers come. The first clause enacted that no persons were to write, print, or sell scandalous or libellous books under a penalty of ten pounds or forty days' imprisonment for the author, five pounds or twenty days for the printer, two pounds or ten days for the bookseller or stationer. The buyer of any book or pamphlet declared to be seditious was immediately to hand it over to the Lord Mayor, or to some Justice of the Peace of the County, under a penalty of one pound. No news-sheet was to be printed or sold without license, all such licenses to be obtained from the Clerk of the Parliament or the Secretary of the Army. No seditious books or pamphlets were to be sent either by post or carrier under a penalty of forty shillings for every copy found. For the better discovery of malignant (read Royalist) booksellers, magistrates were entrusted with full powers for searching any packs or packages which they might suspect of containing books or pamphlets of a seditious character. The clauses relating to printing contain a surprise. Printing was restricted to the City of London and the two universities,