In Elizabethan England "the writer's troubles were not over when he had
written his book, gone through the difficulty of finding a publisher, and
finally come to terms with him for the sale of it. He still had to face the
many and stringent regulations of the press by political and ecclesiastical
authorities, and the fact that he had sold the manuscript did not exempt him
from responsibility for what was in it. . . .
"An example of the regulation which reached back of the publisher to the
author himself can be seen in the history of John Stubbs, who protested
against the French marriage scheme in a pamphlet called The Discovery of a
Gaping Gulf (1579). For writing this pamphlet, Stubbs was condemned to have
his right hand cut off with one stroke of a butcher's cleaver. When the
execution had taken place, Stubbs took off his hat with his left hand and
cried 'God save the Queen!'"
[from page 7 of The Golden Hind, An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose and
Poetry, revised edition, selected and edited by Roy Lamson & Hallett Smith]
