The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

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Governmental licensing of the press lingered in all the British-American colonies
long after the authorities let the English licensing law lapse in 1695. With no
printing press allowed, there was no press freedom in Virginia at the beginning of
the eighteenth century.
The struggle for freedom of the press began very slowly, as the colonial
governments of the Chesapeake kept a firm control. The first Maryland printer ran
into legal problems after the political situation there changed. When Virginia
denied him a license for his press, printer William Nuthead left for the relative
freedom of the colony to the north. In 1693, he printed some blank warrants issued
in the former Proprietor Lord Baltimore’s name. The new royal government (which
had replaced the proprietary government) did not plan to allow such a challenge to
its authority. The printer sent an apologetic deposition to the Royal Governor’s
Council, disclaiming his personal ownership of the press and type, implying it was
in reality only a tool of the government. He promised to no longer print anything
without governmental orders. The claim was extremely telling, regarding the
ownership and control of the press, especially as the physical property was
apparently Nuthead’s. His family inherited it at his death. 21 No matter who actually
owned the press and type, the government controlled the output well after licensing
had lapsed in England. In terms of content, the press was very much controlled—
and even owned—by the government.
Eventually, the government welcomed the printing press to Virginia, and a
limited concept of press freedom developed. 22 As outlined in Chapter 2, in 1730
was co-authored by Locke’s mentor, Lord Ashbury. See Laslett, in Locke, Two Treatises of
Government, 24-33.
21 Lawrence Wroth, A History of Printing in Colonial Maryland, 1686-1766 (Baltimore:
Typothetae of Baltimore, 1922), 8-9. This was one of several periods when the Calvert family’s
Proprietary Colony of Maryland was taken from them, and it was briefly a royal colony.
22 In 1726 the colonial government in Williamsburg allegedly issued a blunt warning:
“Governor Alexander Spotswood of Virginia threatened execution or loss of an arm or leg for
disseminators of seditious principles or other insinuations tending to disturb the peace,” according