In 1695, with the expiry of the licensing act, state censorship of the press ceased. The end of the licensing system coincided almost exactly with the passing of the triennial act (in December 1694). From the outset the connection between electoral activity and the rise of a virulent political press can be discerned. During the succeeding twenty years there were ten general elections. This heated the political environment, and contributed enormously to the conflict between whig and tory which characterised, in particular, the years from 1701 to 1715. Daniel Defoe recognised that, with all its advantages, the triennial act had one great drawback: ‘the certainty of a new election in three years is an unhappy occasion of keeping alive the divisions and party strife among the people, which otherwise would have died of course’. The combined effect of the triennial act and the abandonment of the licensing system was a tremendous growth in the production of political literature.

Understandably enough, contemporaries were bewildered by the development of a ‘fourth estate’. They were astonished by the sheer volume of political propaganda that the party presses managed to turn out. Successive administrations were at a loss when it came to dealing with the problems raised by a free press, and they were reduced to proclaiming impotently against the licentiousness of pamphlets and newspapers. But in the course of the reign of Queen Anne a government press policy began to emerge.