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Conceived in Liberty Companion · Volume I, chapter 64 · summer 1692, before the proclamation against Keith at the end of August

William Bradford’s printing press is seized · a street in Philadelphia near the Delaware waterfront, outside Bradford's printing shop

The press seizure has no recorded day or month in the sources used here; the narrative places it in summer 1692 before the end-of-August proclamation.

Philadelphia’s only press, seized

How can control of printing tools restrict public disagreement?

A young man in a plain brown coat stands on a shop doorstep in a sunlit street of brick and timber houses, watching officers carry a heavy wooden printing press and cases of type down the steps.
Modern AI-assisted reconstruction. Philadelphia, summer 1692. Quaker officers carry William Bradford’s press and cases of type out of his shop. The printer, under arrest, stands on his own doorstep and watches them go. His crime: he printed the Keithians’ paper without a license. Rothbard says the Quaker officials, once the persecuted, had become the persecutors. Chapter 64 of Conceived in Liberty.

Before this scene

Pennsylvania’s Quakers divided in 1692 over George Keith’s religious position. William Bradford, a printer who supported Keith, printed the group’s statement. Authorities arrested Bradford and John McComb, who distributed the pamphlet, and confiscated the press and type. Type means the individual pieces used to compose printed words. The dispute therefore concerned both religious authority and the practical means of circulating arguments. Rothbard places the seizure before a proclamation at the end of August; the sources used here do not establish its exact day. [1] [2]

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The story, from several sources

This account blends Rothbard’s chapter with the other sources listed below and has not yet been separated into Rothbard’s own account and the fuller story. Read Rothbard’s chapter 64 for his account.

In 1692 the Quakers of Pennsylvania split. George Keith and his followers, the Keithians, drew up a statement of their position, and William Bradford, the only printer in Philadelphia and a Keithian himself, printed it. The Quaker magistrates answered the way governments do. Rothbard tells it: they arrested Bradford and John McComb, who distributed the pamphlet, for printing unlicensed books without the printer’s name on them, confiscated Bradford’s press and type, and took away McComb’s license as a retailer (CiL, p. 488). The press and the cases of type, the only means of printing in the whole province, were carried off and lodged in Samuel Jennings’ house. Bradford was tried that year, argued his own case, and the jury could not agree. He said afterward that he was held until Governor Fletcher freed him in April 1693 and ordered the sheriff to give his tools back. Rothbard’s point is that a people who had fled persecution in England were now doing the persecuting, and he calls it the first sign that the Quakers were beginning to abandon the principles of individual liberty for the perquisites of power. Bradford got his press back and took it to New York.

Why it matters

Interpretation: Freedom to express a view depends partly on access to the tools that carry it. Seizing a press can restrict other people’s ability to encounter an argument as well as the printer’s ability to publish it. [1] [2]

Examine and discuss

  1. Which people and materials were targeted by the authorities?
  2. How would confiscating type affect the circulation of a religious argument?
  3. Compare this seizure with Williams’s banishment: what does each action remove from public discussion?

About the reconstruction

This is an AI-assisted adaptive companion inspired by Murray N. Rothbard’s Conceived in Liberty. It draws on sources beyond the book and is not Rothbard’s original text or a condensation of it. Each scene identifies whether its narration combines sources or separates an account of the book from additional context.

The sources establish the event and accounts of it. The painting’s poses, expressions, lighting, and arrangement are artistic choices rather than a surviving visual record.

Suggest a correction to this companion scene. Notes about the original book are recorded separately.

Full sources and reuse information

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. I, ch. 64, pp. 485-496. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. Alexander J. Wall, Jr., ‘William Bradford, Colonial Printer: A Tercentenary Review’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, Oct. 1963, quoting Bradford’s petition (pp. 367-368): tools ‘taken away’, lodged in Samuel Jenings’ house; the sheriff John White ordered to return them; Jennings’s and McComb’s contrary claim that they were paroled. Secondary source
  3. Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises: or, the Doctrine of Handy-works Applied to the Art of Printing (London, 1683-84), the standard period description of the wooden hand press and the type cases; consulted for the form of the press, not re-read in this pass. Primary source
  4. ‘William Bradford (printer, born 1663)’, Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-29): born 20 May 1663; arrested, tried and jailed in 1692 for printing Keith’s writings without an imprint; America’s first trial about freedom of the press; the trial ended in a hung jury. Secondary source
  5. ‘Middle Colony 1600s/1700s Clothing: Pennsylvania’, AmericanRevolution.org (accessed 2026-09-29): Quaker plain dress. Secondary source
  6. ‘Front Street (Philadelphia)’, Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-29): the first street surveyed and built, 1682. Secondary source
  7. ‘Slate Roof House’, Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-29): brick Jacobean mansion on Second Street from about 1687. Secondary source
  8. ‘Traditional House Forms’, Pennsylvania Architectural Field Guide, PHMC (accessed 2026-09-29): early buildings of stone, brick or wood with gable or gambrel roofs. Secondary source

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Painting and companion additions: CC BY 4.0, credit freecapitalists.org. How to credit.

Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0. External sources retain their own terms.

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