Shrewsbury September 10th & 11th, 2011 Elizabethan Period: 1558 to 1603 Fun pirate documents Detecting the Truth. "Fakes, Forgeries and Trickery" An interesting abstract Merchants and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean World Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers Printing gradually displaced manuscript production and, by the time that the Guild received a royal charter of incorporation on May 4, 1557, it was in effect a Printers' Guild. In 1559, it became the 47th livery company. It was based in Peter College, which it bought from St Paul's Cathedral. During the Tudor and Stuart periods, the Stationers were legally empowered to seize "offending books" that violated the standards of content set by the Church and State; its officers could bring "offenders" before ecclesiastical authorities, including the Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury. Thus the Stationers played an important role in the culture of England as it evolved through the intensely turbulent decades of the Protestant Reformation and toward the English Civil War.