Note 342 — Chapter V

"Combien que ... nous eussions prohibé et défendu que nul n'eust dès lors en avant à imprimer ou faire imprimer aulcuns livres en nostre royaulme, sur peine de la hart." As neither of these disgraceful edicts was formally registered by parliament, they are both of them wanting in the ordinary records of that body, and in all collections of French laws. The first seems, indeed, to have disappeared altogether. M. Crapelet, Études sur la typographie, 34-37, reproduces the second, dated St. Germain-en-Laye, February 23, 1534/5, from a volume of parliamentary papers labelled "Conseil." Happily, the preamble recites the cardinal prescription of the previous and lost edict, as given above in the text. M. Merle d'Aubigné carelessly places the edict abolishing printing after, instead of before, the great expiatory procession. Hist. of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, iii. 140.