In the matter of political censorship, Lyons was, of course, in form at least, subject to the same regulations that controlled the presses of Paris. It was, however, evidently much more difficult to exercise any strict and continuous supervision over the printers of the provinces than over those of the capital, and in politics, therefore, as well as in theology, the publishers of Lyons enjoyed a greater freedom of action. “The freedom of action,” of which their Paris competitors made the sharpest criticism and the most reiterated complaints, was shown in the practice of the Lyons competitors, of promptly appropriating for their own profit and reproducing, with more or less closeness of imitation, such of the Paris publications as they found available for the markets within their reach. The “privileges” issued by the Crown and the special authorisations given by the University appear to have availed but little to repress this appropriating enterprise on the part of the publishers of Lyons. It was no consolation to the organised publishers, _les libraires jurés_, to know that their Lyons competitors utilised, with precisely the same freedom, the available publications of Venice, Milan, Mayence, and Basel, and, later, of Geneva. For this class of reprinting there was, as a rule, not even the nominal obstacle of the State privilege. As a result of their favourable commercial position, the publishers of Lyons were not infrequently able to secure for their unauthorised reprints of the classic editions of the Paris Press a much larger proportion of the foreign sales than was obtained by the original publishers. The enterprise of these early Lyons publishers was manifested also in another and more legitimate direction. They gave attention to the production of books in light literature, such as popular romances, legends, folk-songs, etc., printed, of course, in the vernacular, at a time when the printers of Paris and, for that matter, the printers of nearly all the other book-manufacturing cities of Europe were devoting their presses exclusively to theology and to the classics. Other cities the printers of which interested themselves in light literature were Bruges and London, the records of which are referred to in another chapter.