Almost all Tottel’s colophons and title-pages include the phrase ‘cum privilegio’ or ‘cum privilegion ad impremendum solum’ meaning with the exclusive right to print.
Richard Tottel’s privilege to print common law titles meant that he had a monopoly to print all legal books except for statutes for almost his entire career. Most likely because of his connections within the legal community, he first obtained his privilege under Edward VI in 1553. In 1559 it was renewed by Elizabeth I for life or, for as long ‘as he shall behave and demesne him selfe well in using of the said priviledge’. This suggests that the majority of influential judges and lawyers were satisfied with the quality of his printing up to this point. Although many of the non-legal books Tottel printed sold well, the commercial success of Tottel’s printing house was probably mostly due to the benefits of his privilege. Printing law books didn’t provide immediate profits but it was a very steady market and lucrative in the long term.
A disadvantage for legal printing arising from the privilege was that Tottel was not required to print any common law text if he decided not to. Authors could not go elsewhere, for if another printer printed their work it would be an infringement of Tottel’s privilege. Tottel’s contemporaries seem to have felt that he exploited his patent as much as he could. Records from around 1577 show there was a petition from the unprivileged stationers complaining about the system in general. One of the their grievances was that Tottel had, ‘the printinge of all kindes of lawe bookes, which was common to all Printers/ who selelth the same books at excessive prices, to the hinderance of a greate number of pore studentes.” This was just one of a number of complaints that were aimed at the patent system and continued until the making of the 1586 Star Chamber Decrees which refined the regulatory system further.
However, it is worth noting that unlike other privileges granted to printers, legal printing was specialised work and it did make sense for it to be concentrated in one printing house. In his History of English Printing (1965) Colin Clair described Tottel’s monopoly to print law books as the “least obnoxious of all the monopolies or privileges”. Legal printing was highly specialised and unsuited to many printing houses because many legal books were written in Law French and the manuscripts from which they came were full of legal contractions and legal help was frequently necessary.
Richard Tottel 