Rebellion: The History Of England From James I To The Glorious Revolution - Plot & Excerpts
An ordinance of 14 June 1643 had been passed ‘to prevent and suppress the licence of printing’. It was declared necessary to suppress the ‘great late abuses and frequent disorders in printing many false, forged, scandalous, seditious, libellous, and unlicensed papers, pamphlets, and books to the great defamation of religion and government’; a committee of censors, therefore, was appointed to license new publications and to seize any that were unlicensed. One republican deplored what he considered to be this reversion to the evil practices of the past that had no place in the new world for which he so devoutly wished. The Presbyterian members of parliament, who were largely behind the measure, might as well ‘kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image: but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth: but a good book is the precious life blood of a master spirit, imbalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.’ This is the unmistakable prose of John Milton.
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