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‘Very Knaves Besides’: Catholic Print and the Enforcers of the 1662 Licensing Act in Restoration England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 May 2020
Abstract
This article explores the motivations of three enforcers of the Licensing Act of 1662 in regard to their treatment of the illicit Catholic book trade in London during the Restoration. As censors, the Stationers’ Company, the Surveyor of the Press, Roger L'Estrange, and the bishop of London, Henry Compton, were intended to unite the concerns of the book trade, the state and the church. However, each used the Licensing Act to pursue their own interests. Contemporaries and historians have both viewed the act as being unsuccessfully enforced; this article explores whether full enforcement was ever the goal. Using the case of Catholic print, it posits that it was precisely the act's flexibility that encouraged its repeated renewals. Moreover, exploring the print of the Catholic minority in London highlights the differences between the written law and the enforced law. Finally, this article suggests that at times there existed an informal toleration for the printers and booksellers engaged in Catholic book production that enabled books to escape detection and the Catholic book trade to continue despite the Licensing Act.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2020
References
1 McKenzie, Donald F. and Bell, Maureen, A Chronology and Calendar of Documents relating to the London Book Trade 1641–1700, 3 vols (Oxford, 2005; hereafter: CCLBT)Google Scholar, 2: 21 July 1676 (references are presented using the dates given in these volumes); James Dymock, The Great Sacrifice of the New Law ([London], 1676). Dymock's work was an English translation of the Roman mass; Wing gives the place of publication of the 1676 edition as Antwerp (Wing D2972), but the CSPD (cited in CCLBT) clearly describes it as being printed in London. There may have been a separate, unlisted edition, part of it may have been printed abroad, or Wing may have been incorrect about the location.
2 CCLBT, 2: 20 December 1676.
3 John Cordy Jeaffreson, ed., Middlesex County Records, 4: 1667–88 (London, 1892), British History Online, December 2014, online at: <http://www.british-history.ac.uk/middx-county-records/vol4/pp45-57>, accessed 15 May 2018.
4 CCLBT, 2: 7 March 1677.
5 London operated as the centre of the English book trade and surpassed the Scottish and Irish markets. The comparatively small number of presses operating in the English provinces and in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dublin resulted in far less centralized organization or regulation. The Stationers’ Company attempted to regulate the Scottish and Irish presses throughout the late seventeenth century, with limited success. Outside London during the latter half of the seventeenth century, the king, local bishops or privy and town councils carried out ad hoc censorship. Meanwhile, the university presses of Oxford and Cambridge largely regulated themselves, although they could not grant their own licenses without royal permission. Attempts to increase this regulation occurred after the Restoration, usually involving the appointment of London-based stationers or censors. For instance, after 1670, the crown attempted to increase regulation in Ireland by forming a printing guild constituted by members of the Stationers’ Company. Most books available in Wales came from London or Oxford, and Wales did not have a specific regulatory or censorship system: see Mann, Alastair, ‘The Anatomy of the Printed Book in Early Modern Scotland’, SHR 80 (2001), 181–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 193–6; Barnard, John, ‘The English Provinces’, in idem and McKenzie, D. F., eds, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 4: 1557–1695 (Cambridge, 2002; hereafter: CHBB), 665–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 665–6; Robert Welch, ‘The Book in Ireland from the Tudor Re-conquest to the Battle of the Boyne, ibid. 701–18, at 716–17; Philip Johnes, ‘Wales’, ibid. 719–34, at 721, 729–30; Treadwell, Michael, ‘Lists of Master Printers: The Size of the London Printing Trade, 1637–1723’, in Myers, Robin and Harris, Michael, eds, Aspects of Printing from 1600 (Oxford, 1987), 141–70Google Scholar, at 142–8.
6 ‘Act for preventing the frequent abuses in printing seditious treasonable and unlicensed Books’, 14 Car. II c.33, in John Raithby, ed., Statutes of the Realm, 5: 1628–80 (London, 1819), 428–35.
7 Parliament failed to renew the Licensing Act in 1679 amidst debates over the exclusion crisis. It was revived at James II's accession (1 Jac. II c.17 §15) before lapsing permanently in 1695: Raymond Astbury, ‘The Renewal of the Licensing Act in 1693 and its Lapse in 1695’, The Library 5th series 33 (1978), 296–322.
8 Crist, Timothy, ‘Government Control of the Press after the Expiration of the Printing Act in 1679’, Publishing History 5 (1979), 219–38Google Scholar, at 220–1. This included the Star Chamber decrees of 1586 and 1637 restricting trade to London, Cambridge, Oxford and York.
9 See n. 5 above.
10 CCLBT, 1: 15 August 1663.
11 While the act established a detailed pre-publication licensing system, this article focuses on its provisions for unlicensed works that escaped this system.
12 Michael Treadwell, ‘The Stationers and the Printing Acts at the End of the Seventeenth Century’, in Barnard and McKenzie, eds, CHBB, 4: 755–76, at 765.
13 14 Car. II c.33 §1.
14 Ibid. The act stipulated fines, seizure and destruction of goods and presses, and imprisonment as punishments but did not provide further specification.
15 CCLBT, 1: [undated] 1666. The text Darby printed was unnamed, but Milburn was charged with printing Roger Castlemaine's English Catholicke Apologie, and London's Flames was found at Leach's shop.
16 Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester, 2006); William J. Shiels, ‘“Getting on” and “getting along” in Parish and Town: Catholics and their Neighbours in England’, in Benjamin Kaplan et al., eds, Catholic Communities in Protestant States: Britain and the Netherlands c.1570–1720, Studies in Early Modern European History (Manchester, 2009), 67–83; Gabriel Glickman, ‘The Church and the Catholic Community 1660–1714’, in Grant Tapsell, ed., The Later Stuart Church, 1660–1714: Politics, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain (Manchester, 2012), 217–42.
17 Walker, J., ‘The Censorship of the Press during the Reign of Charles II’, History 35 (1950), 219–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hamburger, Philip, ‘The Development of the Law of Seditious Libel and the Control of the Press’, Stanford Law Review 37 (1985), 661–765CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Treadwell, ‘Stationers and Printing Acts’; Myers, Robin and Harris, Michael, eds, Aspects of Printing from 1600 (Oxford, 1987)Google Scholar; Anne Dunan-Page and Beth Lynch, eds, Roger L'Estrange and the Making of Restoration Culture (Burlington, VT, 2008); Maureen Bell, ‘Offensive Behaviour in the English Book Trade 1641–1700’, in Robin Myers, Michael Harris and G. Mandelbrote, eds, Against the Law: Crime, Sharp Practice and the Control of Print (London, 2004), 61–79.
18 Stephen Bardle, The Literary Underground in the 1660s: Andrew Marvell, George Wither, Ralph Wallis, and the World of Restoration Satire and Pamphleteering (Oxford, 2012); Kate Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge, 2005).
19 The Licensing Act also regulated imports.
20 For ‘elite’ Catholics, see Gabriel Glickman, The English Catholic Community, 1688–1745: Politics, Culture and Ideology, Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History 7 (Woodbridge, 2009); Geoff Baker, Reading and Politics in Early Modern England: The Mental World of a Seventeenth-Century Catholic Gentleman (Manchester, 2010). For lay metropolitan Catholics, see Francis Dolan, Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender, and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture (Notre Dame, 2005); Penny Richards, ‘A Life in Writing: Elizabeth Cellier and Print Culture’, Women's Writing 7 (2000), 411–25.
21 For examples of cross-confessional book production, see CCLBT, 1: 8 June 1669; 2: 27 October 1678.
22 See Roger Flexman, ed., A General Index to the Eighth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Volumes of the Journals of the House of Commons (London, 1780), 49–50, for a list of speeches given against recusants.
23 Scott Sowerby, ‘Opposition to Anti-Popery in Restoration England’, JBS 51 (2012), 26–49; Peter Walker, ‘Leicestershire and the Three Questions: James II's Canvass of the Gentry on the Question of Repeal of the Test Acts and Penal Laws in 1688’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society 87 (2013), 207–24; Walsham, Charitable Hatred, 300–6.
24 Keith Wrightson, ‘Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-Century England’, in John Brewer and John Styles, eds, An Ungovernable People: The English and their Law in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1980), 21–46, at 21.
25 Crist, ‘Government Control’, 224.
26 Treadwell, ‘Stationers and Printing Acts’, 765.
27 Bell, ‘Offensive Behaviour’, 68.
28 John Hetet, ‘The Wardens’ Accounts of the Stationers’ Company, 1663–79’, in Robin Myers and Michael Harris, eds, Economics of the British Book Trade 1605–1939 (Cambridge, 1985), 32–59, at 36.
29 CCLBT, 2: 20 December 1676.
30 Howard M. Nixon, English Restoration Bookbindings: Samuel Mearne and his Contemporaries (London, 1974), 10.
31 Anon., The London Printers Lamentation, or, the Press opprest, and overprest (London, 1660), 4.
32 Walter Joseph Travers, ‘Autobiography of Father Bede of St. Simon Stock (Walter Joseph Travers)’, in Benedict Zimmerman, ed., Carmel in England: A History of the English Mission of the Discalced Carmelites, 1615 to 1849 (London, 1899), 171–307, at 243.
33 Walker, ‘Censorship’, 220–2.
34 Angelus à Sancto Francisco [Richard Mason], A Liturgical Discourse of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, 2 parts ([London], 1669–70); CCLBT, 1: 15 October 1669.
35 CCLBT, 2: 27 March 1677.
36 Roger L'Estrange, Considerations and Proposals in Order to the Regulation of the Press together with Diverse Instances of Treasonous, and Seditious Pamphlets, proving the Necessity thereof (London, 1663), 24.
37 Hetet, ‘Warden's Accounts’, 43.
38 CCLBT, 1: 5 June 1669.
39 Ibid.: [June 1669?].
40 Travers, ‘Autobiography’, 243.
41 CCLBT, 1: 7 June 1669, 4 October 1669.
42 Treadwell, ‘Lists of Master Printers’, 145–50.
43 CCLBT, 1: 15 October 1669, 7 March 1670.
44 Ibid. 2: 13 September 1676.
45 Ibid. 1: 15 August 1663; Tim Harris, Revolution: The Great Crisis of the British Monarchy, 1685–1720 (London, 2006), 72. This post derived its powers from the Licensing Act; when that lapsed in 1679, the position lapsed with it. In 1685, the renewal of the act prompted a new warrant from James II restoring L'Estrange's former powers.
46 Leona Rostenberg, ‘Robert Stephens, Messenger of the Press: An Episode in 17th-Century Censorship’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 49 (1955), 131–52.
47 CCLBT, 2: [before 20 February 1677].
48 Roger L'Estrange, A Caveat to the Cavaliers (London, 1661); idem, Interest Mistaken, or, The Holy Cheat (London, 1662).
49 Idem, Considerations and Proposals.
50 Ibid. 19, 21.
51 Peter Hinds, ‘The Horrid Popish Plot’: Roger L'Estrange and the Circulation of Political Discourse in Late Seventeenth-Century London (Oxford, 2010), 34–5.
52 Sir Henry Janson, Philanax Anglicus (London, 1663); Bardle, Literary Underground, 54; Martin Dzelzainis, ‘Milton's Of True Religion and the Earl of Castlemaine’, Seventeenth Century 7 (1992), 53–69, at 57–8. Philanax Anglicus was sold by the queen's bookseller in ordinary, Thomas Sadler.
53 Bardle, Literary Underground, 54.
54 Hinds, Horrid Popish Plot, 163–6.
55 Roger L'Estrange, The Case put, concerning the Succession (London, 1679).
56 Walker, ‘Censorship’, 230.
57 Ibid. 227–35.
58 Thomas Blount, Boscobel: Or, the History of His Sacred Majesties Most Miraculous Preservation after the Battle of Worcester (London, 1660).
59 Roger L'Estrange, A Brief History of the Times (London, 1687), 14.
60 Andrew M. Coleby, ‘Compton, Henry (1631/2–1713)’, ODNB, 3 January 2008, online at: <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-6032>, accessed 15 August 2018.
61 Edward Carpenter, The Protestant Bishop: Being the Life of Henry Compton, 1632–1713, Bishop of London (London, 1956), 60, 67–9.
62 Coleby, ‘Compton’.
63 It should be noted that the bishop and archbishop were responsible for issuing licences for texts outside the fields of common law, history, affairs of the state and heraldry or books produced by the university presses: 14 Car. II c.33 §2.
64 Carpenter, Compton, 67.
65 Ibid.; CCLBT, 2: 9 September 1676.
66 CCLBT, 2: 3 January 1679.
67 Hugh Bowler, ed., London Sessions Records, 1605–1685, CRS 34 (London, 1934).
68 My doctoral work on late Restoration English Catholic print culture will show this in more detail.
69 Juliet Fleming, ‘Damask Papers’, in Andy Kesson and Emma Smith, eds, The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England (London, 2013), 179–91, at 182.
70 CCLBT, 2: 28 October 1678.
71 Odai Johnson, ‘Pope-Burning Pageants: Performing the Exclusion Crisis’, Theatre Survey 37 (1996), 35–57.
72 Hamburger, ‘Seditious Libel’, 684–8.
73 Roger Palmer, The Compendium, or, A Short View of the Late Tryals in relation to the present Plot against His Majesty and Government (London, 1679); CCLBT, 2: 26 September 1679 n. 24, quoting from the Domestic Intelligence.
74 Le sieur Combes, An Historical Explication of what there is most remarkable in that Wonder of the World, the French King's Royal House at Versailles (London, 1684), 141–4.
75 Thompson, Nathaniel, A Choice Collection of 120 Loyal Songs (London, 1684), 139–41Google Scholar, 148–55, 248–50.
76 Blount, Thomas, Boscobel: or The compleat History of His Sacred Majesties Most Miraculous Preservation after the Battle of Worcester, 3 Sept. 1651 (London, 1680)Google Scholar.
77 Turner, Dorothy, ‘Royalism, Romance, and History in Boscobel: or, The History of His Sacred Majesties Most Miraculous Preservation’, Prose Studies 22 (1999), 59–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 67.
78 CCLBT, 2: 11 November, 4, 28 December 1678.