It was renewed for only two years.

It appears, from an entry in the journals of the Commons which unfortunately is defective, that a division took place on an amendment about the nature of which we are left entirely in the dark.
The votes were ninety-nine to eighty.

In the Lords it was proposed, according to the suggestion offered fifty years before by Milton and stolen from him by Blount, to exempt from the authority of the licenser every book which bore the name of an author or publisher.

This amendment was rejected; and the bill passed, but not without a protest signed by eleven peers who declared that they could not think it for the public interest to subject all learning and true information to the arbitrary will and pleasure of a mercenary and perhaps ignorant licenser.

Among those who protested were Halifax, Shrewsbury and Mulgrave, three noblemen belonging to different political parties, but all distinguished by their literary attainments.