After Rood, printing connected with the university remained sporadic for over half a century. Records of surviving work are few, and Oxford did not put its printing on a firm footing until the 1580s; this succeeded the efforts of Cambridge University, which had obtained a licence for its press in 1534. In response to constraints on printing outside London imposed by the Crown and the Stationers' Company, Oxford petitioned Elizabeth I of England for the formal right to operate a press at the university. The chancellor, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, pleaded Oxford's case. Some royal assent was obtained, since the printer Joseph Barnes began work, and a decree of Star Chamber noted the legal existence of a press at "the universitie of Oxforde" in 1586.