Stephens was apprenticed to London Stationer and printer Thomas Ratcliffe on 5 April 1658. He completed his apprenticeship in 1666 and worked briefly as a journeyman printer. Stephens was elected to the Livery of the Stationers’ Company in 1682 to general outrage, in a move by the Stationers’ Company to manipulate Lord Mayor elections. He rose to notoriety as a 'Messenger of the Press', simultaneously serving the office of Secretary of State and enforcing the rights of the Stationers' Company to search and seizure. Midnight raids upon the premises of his colleagues, earned him the nickname of 'Robin Hog'. Stephens was known for his corruption, violence, and taking bribes. Stephens also served the Company as an all-round handyman. He was performing search and seizure duties from 1677, and first appeared with the title of Messenger in 1679. He was active as Messenger of the Press between 1679 and 1684, and again between 1689 and 1712.

L’Estrange was born into landed gentry in Norfolk in 1616. He proceeded to Sidney Sussex College (1634) and thereafter Gray’s Inn (1637). Having fought on the Royalist side in the English Civil War, L'Estrange was arrested by the Commonwealth in 1644 and sentenced to death. This sentence was commuted to imprisonment in Newgate, from where he absconded in 1648. Following his involvement in the abortive Kentish uprising of May that year, he fled to Holland. In August 1653 he took advantage of an amnesty offered by Cromwell and returned to England. Cromwell's death in 1658 allowed L'Estrange to establish himself as a political pamphleteer for the Royalist cause. The Stuart Restoration of 1660 brought increased surveillance of the press, in the form of the 1662 Licensing Act, and in 1663 L'Estrange was appointed Royal Surveyor and Licenser. When the Act lapsed in 1679, he returned to political journalism. The changing political climate prompted him to flee England again that year, first for Edinburgh and then for the Hague. He returned in 1681, at a time when the Stuart dynasty was enjoying a brief respite from Whig opposition. L’Estrange experienced renewed royal favour under James II and was elected MP for Winchester and knighted in 1685. However, after the revolution of 1688, he was removed from government service, and his last years were blighted by poverty and failing health.

Mearne was born in Reading in 1624, served Robert Bates as an apprentice 1637-1646, and had set up his own book bindery in Little Britain by 1653. Upon the Restoration, Mearne was appointed Bookbinder to the King and enjoyed royal favour for the remainder of his life. In 1668, Charles II intervened to see Mearne appointed to the Company’s Court of Assistants. In 1675 Mearne’s position as Binder to the King was expanded to the life-long offices of Bookbinder, Bookseller, and Stationer to the King, which he held with his son Charles. At the same time, Mearne consolidated his influence in the Stationers’ Company, serving as under-warden for two terms (1672-1674), upper-warden (1676-1677), and finally Maser of the Company (1679-1680, 1682-1683). He was particularly known in both the Company and to the King for being involved in searches for illicit printing activity. Mearne remains famous in the book trade to this day for his elaborate and highly desirable bindings. He is credited with creating the “cottage style”, often found in red and black leather.

Andrew Sowle was the most prolific printer of Quaker works in late seventeenth-century England. Three of his daughters went on to become Quaker printers too, in both London and Pennsylvania. Sowle served his apprenticeship to the widow Ruth Raworth 1646-1653. Although Sowle’s name does not appear in any imprints until 1680, he was printing for the Society of Friends from at least 1672. Sowle faced imprisonment and persecution as both a Quaker and an illicit printer. Undeterred, he printed over eighty works for the Society of Friends, including the writings of George Fox, Robert Barclay, George Whitehead, Isaac Pennington, and William Penn. He died at home in Shoreditch in 1695, leaving his printing business to his wife and daughter Tace.

Although Thompson’s personal faith has never been confirmed, he is remembered as a major printer and publisher of Catholic texts in the seventeenth century. Born in Ireland in the 1640s, Thompson was apprenticed to Dublin bookseller, and former lord mayor, William Bladen. By 1668, he had moved to London and was freed of the Stationers’ Company in 1669. Between 1672 and 1678, Thompson partnered with fellow printer Thomas Ratcliffe, whose daughter, Mary Daniel he married (widow of Thomas Daniel). Together, Thompson and Ratcliffe engaged in the printing of dissenting religious works, which practice Thompson continued after leaving Ratcliffe for new premises in Fetter Lane. Mary Thompson, a professed Catholic, was notedly active in these aspects of the business too. Thompson’s career was marked by a string of conflicts, imprisonments and examinations for printing Catholic devotional texts and tracts. In 1680, he was even arrested for treason, though the charges were later dropped. Leading Tory publisher, With his newssheet, the True Domestick Intelligence, he became known as the leading Tory publisher of the age. The Thompsons experienced a reversal of fortunes following the accession of James II and though Thompson died in 1687, first his widow, and then his stepdaughter and her husband, Mary and David Edwards, continued the printing business.