this was available to publishers, not authors, and did not exist by default; it only applied to books which had been accepted and published by the Company. A member of the Company would register the book, and would then have a perpetual copyright over its printing, copying and publication, which could be leased, transferred to others or given to heirs upon the member's death. The only exception to this was that, if a book was out of print for more than 6 months and the publisher ignored a warning to make it available, the copyright would be released and other publishers would be permitted to copy it. Authors themselves were not particularly respected until the 18th century, and were not permitted to be members of the Company, playing no role in the development or use of its licences despite the Company's sovereign authority to decide what was published. There is evidence that some authors were recognised by the Company itself to have the right to copy and the right to alter their works; these authors were uniformly the writers of uneconomical books who were underwriting their publication. The Company's monopoly, censorship and failure to protect authors made the system highly unpopular; John Milton wrote Areopagitica as a result of his experiences with the Company, accusing Parliament of being deceived by "the fraud of some old patentees and monopolisers in the trade of bookselling". He was not the first writer to criticise the system, with John Locke writing a formal memorandum to the MP Edward Clarke in 1693 while the Licensing Act was being renewed, complaining that the existing system restricted the free exchange of ideas and education while providing an unfair monopoly for Company members. Academic Mark Rose attributes the efforts of Milton to promote the "bourgeois public sphere", along with the Glorious Revolution's alterations to the political system and the rise of public coffee houses, as the source of growing public unhappiness with the system. At the same time, this was a period in which clearly defined political parties were taking shape, and with the promise of regular elections, an environment where the public were of increasing importance to the political process. The result was a "developing public sphere [which] provided the context that enabled the collapse of traditional press controls". Lapse of the Licensing Act The result of this environment was the lapse of the Licensing Act. In