The political goals of the government

As well as controlling the presses and enriching the Stationers, the Star Chamber decrees added to the existing censorship system, since in spite of the role of the Church Court of High Commission in censorship, the members of the Stationers’ Company continued to constitute a formidable power for censorship in their own right.

As well as serving the needs of the state and the Stationers, introducing the Church Court of High Commission into the censorship of written English was logical. Before the printing press, the pulpit was one of the best forms of mass communication,and the Church Court of High Commission had long exercised control over the pulpit.The addition of a second level of censorship of printed materials in the form of an established and successful mechanism for the regulation of the mass media—the Church Court of High Commission—was clearly quite a logical step to take.