ABSTRACT
The efforts made to control the output of the press from the 1530s onwards all recognised that the only effective way in which this could be done was by controlling the production process. Once a book had been printed in scores or hundreds of copies, dissemination could be inhibited but rarely wholly prevented. Any enforceable controls had to be achieved at the point of production, or preferably before production even began. Pre-publication censorship was to be the normal practice in England from the 1530s until the 1690s, with a few interludes when it was unenforceable or – very briefly – abolished. It is important to recognise the historical context of this practice. A ‘free’ press in the normally understood modern sense was unknown in early modern Europe. It would have been considered neither possible nor desirable. There was an assumption that civil, ecclesiastical and academic authorities had a right and a duty to control what was printed, disseminated and read. The issue, therefore, insofar as there was an issue, was not whether to censor but rather what and how, with the inevitable concomitant of who was to undertake the task, and how a mechanism would be created to monitor compliance.
