Parliament allowed the Licensing of the Press Act to expire in England in 1695 after declining to renew it. Printers no longer needed prior government approval for every publication, although laws against treason and seditious libel remained. The change encouraged a larger and more diverse commercial press centred on London.

The lapse partially fulfilled the opposition to pre-publication censorship expressed by Milton during the Civil War. It opened the way for expanded journalism, literary periodicals, political controversy and the public culture of eighteenth-century writers.