Excerpt from Tercentenary Handlist of English and Welsh Newspapers, Magazines and Reviews: Secrion I. London and Suburban; II. Provincial; Section I

But a printing-press in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was not the. Complicated machine known to us nowadays. It was easily put together and could be removed from place to place without much difficulty. Type, too, was secretly imported from the Continent and thus, in spite of the restrictions imposed by the rules upon the typefounders, a great deal of surreptitious printing followed the promulgation of the Decrees of the Star Chamber - the Martin Marprelate tracts soon bore witness to this during the life of Whitgift himself.

In their final form the rules of the Star Chamber seem to have been again set forth on June 23 of the following year, 1586 but the rules do not seem to have been printed, and this, no doubt, accounts for the fact that in modern times attention has been divert-ed to the better known but relatively unimportant Star Chamber Decree of 1637 (to be discussed later on). It is natural to consider all these Decrees tyrannical; but it should be remembered that Luther and Melanchthon had set in force the same kind of legislation in Germany against other Protestant sects and that it was not so much licensing itself that was objected to as the persons of the licensers - the bishops who by themselves or their deputies were attempting to stamp out the propaganda of a large and growing Puritan minority. 'another fact too frequently forgotten is the question of copyright. An author or publisher had no protection unless a book or pam phlet was first seen allowed and entered into the Stationers Registers for copyright at Common Law was doubtful until the famous case of Donaldson v. Becket, in 1774. The privilege granted by the exercise of the Royal Prerogative, therefore, was not one to be despised.

The Royal Prerogative in the publication of news, however, stood on an even narrower footing. It was the unanimous opinion of the Judges given to Charles II. In 1680 (london Gazette for May 3-6, at a time when there was no Act of Parliament in force controlling printing, that the King might of his own authority prohibit all printing of news as tending to a breach of the peace. Nothing corresponding to a modern newspaper, therefore, was published until long after the introduction of printing.

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