one of the society of the foresaid mystery of a stationer of the city aforesaid, or has for that purpose obtained our licence'. This practically freed the associated stationers from any danger of outside competition, and it immensely simplified the task of the heresy hunters by enlisting the help of the Company against the establishment of printing-presses by any but well-known and responsible craftsmen. Registration is always half-way towards regulation. The charter did not, however, dispense, even for the members of the Company, with the requirement of a licence; nor did it give the Company any specific functions in connexion with the issue of licences, and although Elizabeth confirmed her sister's grant on 10 November 1559, she had already, in the course of the ecclesiastical settlement earlier in the year, taken steps to provide for the continuance of the old system, and specifically laid it down that the administration of the Company was to be subordinate thereto. The licensing authority rested ultimately upon the Act of Supremacy, by which the power of ecclesiastical jurisdiction for the 'reformation, order, and correction' of all 'errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, offences, contempts, and enormities' was annexed to the Crown, and the Crown was authorized to exercise its jurisdiction through the agency of a commission appointed under letters patent.[1] This Act received the royal assent on 8 May 1559, together with the Act of Uniformity which established the Book of Common Prayer, and made it an offence 'in any interludes, plays, songs, rhymes, or by other open words' to 'declare or speak anything in the derogation, depraving, or despising' of that book.[2] In the course of June followed a body of Injunctions, intended as a code of ecclesiastical discipline to be promulgated at a series of diocesan visitations held by commissioners under the Act of Supremacy. One of these Injunctions is directly concerned with the abuses of printers of books.[3] It begins by forbidding any book or paper to be printed without an express written licence either from the Queen herself or from six of the Privy Council, or after perusal from two persons being either the Archbishop of Canterbury or York, the Bishop of London, the Chancellor of Oxford or Cambridge, or the Bishop or Archdeacon for the place of printing. One of the two must always be the Ordinary, and the names of the licensers are to be 'added in the end' of every book. This seems sufficiently to cover the ground, but the Injunction goes on to make a special reference to 'pamphlets, plays and ballads', from which anything
