This uncompromising Act was continued from time to time, with temporary lapses, until 1693,[222] when, in the tide of liberty following the Revolution, it disappeared. Despite its stern provisions, we find from a petition entitled _The Case of the Free Workmen Printers_, presented to the House about 1665, praying for its renewal, that the number of printing-houses had already grown to seventy, with one hundred and fifty apprentices; and in 1683 we have the evidence of Moxon that the number of founders, as well as of printers, was grown “very many.” It does not, however, appear that at any time during the continuance of the Act, that the number of founders ever exceeded four. How far they complied with the regulation requiring them to account to the Company for all type cast, we are unable, in the absence of any register of such accounts, to say; but that a register was duly kept is evident from the following important minute of the Court in 1674:― “All the Letter-founders to give timely notice to the Master and Wardens, of all such quantities of letter as they shall cast for any person; which notice shall be entered by the Clerk in a register book to be provided for that purpose.—1674.” In 1668, as will be seen in a subsequent chapter, the Company had, in discharge of their authority, nominated Thomas Goring to the Archbishop of Canterbury as “an honest and sufficient man” to be one of the four founders allowed by the Act, there being then a vacancy in the number. And that the penal clauses were not neglected is equally evident from the resolution of the Court in 1685, withholding Godfrey Head’s dividend until he should comply with the Act by giving an account to the Company of what type he was casting. {134} The latest minute on the Court Books relating to letter-founding was in 1693—the year in which the Act expired—when the following order was made:― “Printed papers to be delivered to all Founders, Press Makers and others concerned, requiring obedience to that Clause in the Act for preventing abuses in Printing, whereby all Letter Founders, Press Makers, Joiners, and others are commanded to acquaint the Master or Wardens what Presses or Letters they shall at any time make or cast.—1693.” After 1693, letter-founding came from under all restraint. Laws of copyright and patent still clung to printing,[223] but, except for a proposal made about 1695 by one W. Mascall[224] that every printer, letter-founder and press-maker should enter with a statement on oath the number of his presses, the weight of his letter and the extent of his other utensils, we find no reference to letter-founding in the Public Records for upwards of a century. Notwithstanding this liberty, the number of founders during the eighteenth century appears rarely to have exceeded the figure prescribed by the Star Chamber Decree of 1637, and occasionally to have been less.