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

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Governor William Gooch was the author of several of the earliest Virginia prints by
Parks, including speeches before the House of Burgesses. One of the first known
works of the Virginia press is Typographia. An Ode, on Printing. Inscrib’d to the
Honourable William Gooch, Esq. by J. Markland. It is a celebration of the art of
printing and of governance by Gooch and the King. In dedicating the work to the
governor, the deference is apparent, and the author credits Gooch with bringing the
art of printing to the colony:
From whom Virginia’s Laws, that lay
In blotted Manuscripts obscured,
By vulgar Eyes unread,
Which whilome scarce the Light endur’s,
Begin to view again the Day,
As rising from the Dead. 88
By printing the laws, instead of merely distributing manuscript copies, this early
pamphlet recognized they would now be more readily available to more people.
Ancient laws were brought back to life by printing; it brought order out of
confusion. Printing brought learning, this ode claimed, detected the gloss of errors,
and functioned to circulate royal power. While the author saw the printing of laws
as advancing royal power, and the authority of the governor, it appears that—at
least in the long term—he would be proved mistaken. 89
University Press, 1975), 166, observes, “that printers were not necessarily seditious, and indeed
could even serve to enhance the authority of local government.”
87 From 1714-1768, resident governors (technically lieutenant governors) ruled while the
actual royal governors were absentees merely collecting the salary. William Gooch, Alexander
Spotswood, Robert Dinwiddie, and Francis Fauquier are each referred to here and in
contemporary writings as “governor,” when in fact they were lieutenant governors acting as
governor.
88 Typographia, (Williamsburg: Parks, 1730). J. Markland is identified as John Markland by
several sources; see Berg, Williamsburg Imprints, 1-3. “Whilome” presumably is an alternative
spelling for “whilom,” now an archaic word meaning “having once been” or “one-time.”
89 Eisenstein, in Printing Revolution, 79-84, notes that printed laws meant that, for the first
time, lawyers could actually know what the law said, and this had great effect on the evolution of
law. Legal precedents become more difficult to break. She refers to this influence as the fixity of