Locke contributed to the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695 , whereupon the press needed no license . Still , many libels were tried throughout the 18th century , until " the Society of the Bill of Rights " led by John Horne Tooke and John Wilkes organized a campaign to publish Parliamentary Debates . This culminated in three defeats of the Crown in the 1770 cases of Almon , of Miller and of Woodfall , who all had published one of the Letters of Junius , and the unsuccessful arrest of John Wheble in 1771 . Thereafter the Crown was much more careful in the application of libel ; for example , in the aftermath of the Peterloo Massacre , Burdett was convicted , whereas by contrast the Junius affair was over a satire and sarcasm about the non-lethal conduct and policies of government
Peterloo Massacre
Peterloo Massacre
Freedom of the press