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Geoff Kemp
The end of pre-publication censorship in England in 1695 is a milestone in the historical self-image of modern liberal democracy, although historians since at least Macaulay have seen the fall of the Licensing Act as preceding, rather than proceeding from, a principled commitment to press freedom. One outcome has been a routine assumption that the multiple attempts to pass printing legislation in the decade after 1695 tried to restore press licensing, and so censorship. Recent accounts have reinforced this view in tracing a pathway to the 1710 Copyright Act, assuming censorship as a cause of Church and state while focusing on literary property as the cause of print trade and authors. Yet a close reading of the evidence overturns the view that the lapse of censorship in 1695 was followed by a series of licensing bills. Instead, press bills sought compulsory imprints, as Milton's Areopagitica had recommended in 1644 and Locke's circle advocated in 1695. This became, via Defoe, a connecting-point between religious politics and copyright. This article shows how working from 1695 towards 1710 as the year of the Sacheverell trial provides a new perspective on �the end of censorship�, tied to acute post-revolution division in the Church over toleration and the suppression of heresy. From this perspective, the abandonment of licensing was a Church cause, orchestrated, in part, by the archbishop of Canterbury to outflank high church opponents.
