The copyright registry was first established by the Company at the commencement of the sixteenth century or even earlier. It would appear from the ancient records that a register of copies had existed previous to the incorporation. In 1565 rules were made by the Company regulating the transmission of copies upon the decease of the owner, and requiring them to be entered in the books of the Company. In 1584 the Privy Council (through the Lord Mayor) ordered that all copies should be entered in the Company’s register, and copyrights were from time to time transferred by entries in these registers. Between 1580 and 1615, there are letters from the Lords of the Council and the Lord Mayor calling attention to the publication of certain books of a traitorous or mischievous tendency. There is no mention of any power or authority belonging to the Stationers Company for the suppression of these books. On one occasion the Wardens of that Company are ordered to produce the printer of a certain pamphlet with the person who was circulating it. Various orders were from time to time issued by the Lords of the Privy Council and High Commissioners, regulating printing. In 1660 a committee of the House of Commons was appointed to prepare a Bill regulating printing, and in 1662 the Bill was passed, and was known as the Licensing Act. It required all printed works to be registered at Stationers’ Hall. This Act expired in 1681, and in 1710 the first copyright Act was passed, which has been superseded by the Act of 1842. The Act of 1710 required copies to be entered at Stationers’ Hall before publication, and the Act of 1842 makes entry at Stationers’ Hall a condition precedent to the title to sue for protection against infringements. As a printer, not as a novelist, Samuel Richardson was a member. The most ancient hall stood in Milk Street, Cheapside, but in 1553 the Company moved to St. Peter’s College, near the Deanery of St. Paul’s, and in 1611 they purchased Abergavenny House in Stationers’ Court. This was burnt in the Great Fire. The present building was erected in 1670, and in 1805 the exterior was cased in Portland stone, according to a design by the Company’s architect, Robert Mylne, F.R.S. The present livery is 284; the Corporate Income is but small, and the Trust Income £1200. The Company formerly published almanacks, primers, “A.B.C.’s,” psalters, and school books, in which they maintained a valuable monopoly until the middle of the eighteenth century, when it was declared illegal. The Company established a school at Bolt Court, Fleet Street, in 1861; this is now at Ridge Road, Hornsey. The school has accommodation for more than three hundred boys.