clear whether these requirements were intended to replace, or merely to reinforce, that of a licence. Henry's proclamations lost their validity upon his death in 1547, but the policy of licensing was continued by his successors. Under Edward VI we get, first a Privy Council order of 1549, directing that all English books printed or sold should be examined and allowed by 'M^r Secretary Peter, M^r Secretary Smith and M^r Cicill, or the one of them', and secondly a proclamation of 1551, requiring allowance 'by his maiestie, or his priuie counsayl in writing signed with his maiesties most gratious hand or the handes of sixe of his sayd priuie counsayl'.[1] Mary in her turn, though with a different emphasis on the kind of opinion to be suppressed, issued three proclamations against heretical books in 1553, 1555, and 1558, and in the first of these limited printers to books for which they had 'her graces speciall licence in writynge'.[2] It is noteworthy that both in 1551 and in 1553 the printing and the playing of interludes were put upon exactly the same footing.
Mary, however, took another step of the first importance for the further history of publishing, by the grant on 4 May 1557 a charter of incorporation to the London Company of Stationers.[3] This was an old organization, traceable as far back as 1404.[4] By the sixteenth century it had come to include the printers who manufactured, as well as the stationers who sold, books; and many, although not all of its members, exercised both avocations. No doubt the issue of the charter had its origin in mixed motives. The stationers wanted the status and the powers of economic regulation within their trade which it conferred; the Government wanted the aid of the stationers in establishing a more effective control over the printed promulgation of inconvenient doctrines. This preoccupation is clearly manifested in the preamble to the charter, with its assertion that 'seueral seditious and heretical books' are 'daily published'; and the objects of both parties were met by a provision that 'no person shall practise or exercise the art or mystery of printing or stamping any book unless the same person is, or shall be,
- [Footnote: 'daye of the printe' is in the t.ps. of Thyestes (1560), Oedipus (1563),
Gordobuc (1565), Four Ps (1569), and the colophon of Promos and Cassandra (1578); the year and month in the t.p. of King Darius (1565). Earlier printers had given the day in the colophons of Mundus et Infans (1522), Johan Johan (1533), and The Pardoner and the Friar (1533).]
