FWIW, the most obvious Google search found this within a few seconds:

https://www.techdirt.com/2010/08/11/the-cycle-of-copyright-o...

Which references this:

http://web.archive.org/web/20110616151937/http://www.telerea...

As its source for this:

https://open-spaces.com/articles/the-purpose-of-copyright/

Where we find an explanation:

> In 1557, the desires of the booksellers and the desires of the crown coincided. The crown perceived the need to gain greater control over “the dangerous possibilities of the printed word” and so granted a royal charter to the Stationers’ Company that limited most printing to only members of the company. This charter also empowered the company to search out and destroy “unlawful” books, which gave the guild the public enforcement mechanism for its private law. If a nonmember was printing a work that had been registered with the company by a member, the nonmember could now be stopped. It also meant that if a work which was disagreeable to the crown was being published, it too could be stopped. This arrangement provided the crown with added policemen to enforce its goal to control printed works. Censorship was born.

But like, once I found that, I immediately realized that we can just look at Wikipedia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_copyright

> The origin of copyright law in most European countries lies in efforts by the church and governments to regulate and control the output of printers.[9] Before the invention of the printing press, a writing, once created, could only be physically multiplied by the highly laborious and error-prone process of manual copying by scribes. An elaborate system of censorship and control over scribes did not exist, as scribes were scattered and worked on single manuscripts.[10] Printing allowed for multiple exact copies of a work, leading to a more rapid and widespread circulation of ideas and information (see print culture).[9] In 1559 the Index Expurgatorius, or List of Prohibited Books, was issued for the first time.[10]

Which cites:

[9]: MacQueen, Hector L; Charlotte Waelde; Graeme T Laurie (2007). Contemporary Intellectual Property: Law and Policy. Oxford University Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-19-926339-4.

https://www.google.com/books?id=_Iwcn4pT0OoC&dq=contemporary...

[10]: de Sola Pool, Ithiel (1983). Technologies of freedom. Harvard University Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0-674-87233-2.

https://books.google.com/books?id=BzLXGUxV4CkC&q=Areopagitic...

There is another, much more detailed paragraph, which starts a bit later with:

> As the "menace" of printing spread, governments established centralized control mechanisms,[16] and in 1557 the English Crown thought to stem the flow of seditious and heretical books by chartering the Stationers' Company. The right to print was limited to the members of that guild, and thirty years later the Star Chamber was chartered to curtail the "greate enormities and abuses" of "dyvers contentyous and disorderlye persons professinge the arte or mystere of pryntinge or selling of books." The right to print was restricted to two universities and to the 21 existing printers in the city of London, which had 53 printing presses. The French crown also repressed printing, and printer Etienne Dolet was burned at the stake in 1546.

Citing a different page of the same source as 10:

[16]: de Sola Pool, Ithiel (1983). Technologies of freedom. Harvard University Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-674-87233-2.

https://archive.org/details/technologiesoffr00ithi/page/15