by Randy Robertson
This is the "Beta" version of The British Index, an annotated list of all books and pamphlets censored in... more
This is the "Beta" version of The British Index, an annotated list of all books and pamphlets censored in the British Isles and British North America 1641-1700. The Index is in chronological order by the date on which the work was questioned or suppressed. Please note that all entries comprise instances of ideological censorship or unlicensed publication. I have carefully excluded all cases in which a property dispute (e.g., the infringement of a copyright, a patent, or the Stationers’ English stock) was solely at issue.
Primary sources consulted: State Papers, Domestic, Journals of the House of Commons and the House of Lords, House of Lords’ archives, Stationers’ Company Court Books, Stationers’ Company Wardens’ Accounts, Stationers’ Company Messengers’ Accounts (Box A in Stationers' Hall), Historical Manuscripts Commission reports, Howell’s State Trials, Proceedings of the Old Bailey, Middlesex County Sessions’ Rolls, Thurloe State Papers, other secretaries of states' papers housed at the British Library, Registers of the English and Scottish Privy Councils, royal proclamations, and the writings of the censor Roger L’Estrange, messenger of the press Robert Stephens, dissident bookseller Francis Smith, and sundry others.
By my count, the number of works intended for print publication that the government deemed “suspect” was at least 2,600 titles and editions of them, excluding serials and periodicals. The number of extant works published in Britain and the North American colonies during the same period is 90,607, so the percentage of suspect works was ~2.9%.
The figure of 2.9% is a conservative estimate. In a number of cases, I have counted the seizure of multiple titles as one instance of censorship, as the precise number of banned books seized in a raid is sometimes unclear. In March 27, 1679, for example, some 990 titles were seized from a Jesuit community in Holbeck, Nottinghamshire, but it is not clear how many of these were burnt and how many were disposed of in other ways. Nevertheless, we can be fairly certain that more than one title out of the 990 was proscribed. By counting the entire episode as only one instance of censorship, I have erred on the side of caution.
On a similar note, far more was censored than the extant official documents suggest, as the loss rate of documents relating to censorship appears to have been high. The Great Fire of London may have destroyed some pertinent records. Fortunately, as the fire threatened Stationers' Hall, the Clerk of the Company "remove[d] most of the Company's records to his house in the suburbs" (Blagden 215), but given that the guild’s official charter was destroyed in the fire, it seems likely that other important documents were destroyed as well. For instance, the surviving records in Box A at Stationers' Hall, many of which relate to the enforcement of printing regulations, date from 1668, two years after the fire. It is possible that such papers went up in flames in 1666. The later fire at Westminster probably consumed relevant documents in the House of Commons archive.
What’s more, in his newsbook The Intelligencer, Surveyor of the Press Roger L’Estrange observes in July 1664 that the Quaker bookseller William Warwick is “so officious an Agent for the Party [the Quakers], that more pernicious Pamphlets are printed for him alone then [sic] all the Rest put together,” adding that “above Two Hundred several sorts [of ‘unlawfull Books’] have been taken at several times from under his Roof” (The Intelligencer, Monday, July 11, 1664, Numb. 55, 441-42). If “above Two Hundred several sorts [of ‘unlawfull Books’]” had been taken from Warwick in the four years since the Restoration, only a small fraction of these are recorded in this Index, for the state papers mention fewer than ten. It is possible, of course, that some of the illicit works seized at Warwick's house were seized elsewhere as well, and, further, that a number of those seizures are recorded in the state papers. But given that the Index records only 290 suspect titles from the time of Charles's Restoration to July 1664, when L'Estrange's offhand remarks appear in the newspaper, and that "above Two Hundred" titles were seized at Warwick's house alone in the same period, only a small proportion of which are cited by name in surviving documents, it would be extraordinary if some of Warwick's "unlawfull Books" have not slipped through the evidentiary net. The Index from 1660-1664 does not contain anything like 200 obnoxious Quaker books and pamphlets, the kinds of publication that appear to have been Warwick's specialty. Indeed, in April 1664, L'Estrange had noted that "Four Hundred and Sixty sorts of unlawfull Books, and Pamphlets already on the Roll . . . have been published since his Majesties Restauration" (Intelligencer, no. 31, 18 April 1664, 250), so the 290 total is itself clearly on the low side. Finally, it is worth highlighting L'Estrange's statement in Oct. 1670 that he had "suppressed above 600 sorts of seditious pamphlets" since his appointment as surveyor in August 1663 (CSPD, 1670, 502). The Index records fewer than 200 suspect works over the same period. The official record is thus riddled with holes.
I am still correcting and adding to the document; lacunae are marked with an asterisk. Introduction forthcoming. Please feel free to email me with comments or suggestions.
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