The Invention of Printing was doubtlesse at the first one of the most laudable and profitable discoveries that could have been made by man. By it Letters, which had long been under the rubbidge of Barbarism, were restored to their former lustre, and conveyed through Europe; by it the Gospel … was a little more purely taught, … by it there is not only better communication of knowledge for the present, but greater hopes of preserving it for the future: And yet so unlucky hath it been, that since the mystery of it grew common, and the permission in a manner general, it hath been a pestilent Midwife to these accursed brats, Error in the Church, and Sedition in the State.

Much of the cheap and ephemeral print we consult at research libraries survives thanks to the efforts of private collectors from the early modern period. Such individuals valued these objects enough to arrange and display them to their contemporaries and preserve them for posterity. They did so, however, in the knowledge that the ‘art and mystery’ of printing was viewed in both a positive and negative light. For some the printing press was a providential invention that spread the Reformation and gave knowledge a ‘fixity’, providing ‘Rays of new Light’ for the future. Others were concerned by the spread of cheap, ‘common’ genres of print such as ballads, newsbooks or pamphlets that formed, in their words, ‘infectious Swarmes’ of ‘guilty sheetes’. The press had given seditious persons ‘the Facility and cheapness and celerity, of dispersing ill papers above what is possible by writing’. None could forget the lapses in press censorship during the Civil Wars, and again in 1679, allowing ephemera to spread the ‘Contagion’ of division in ‘Church and State’. It was thus questioned ‘whether the Benefits received by’ printing were ‘equal to the Disadvantages we have one way or other sustained’. Integral to these concerns was the relationship between print and popular politics. ‘[It] has never been good times,’ noted one opponent of an unrestrained press, ‘since every Cobler and Porter pretend to understand State Policy, and every Finical Meckanick, and proud Tradesman, to be verse’t and knowing in the Arcana’s of the Privy-Councel.’