Mark Rose, in Authors and Owners (Harvard University Press, 1993), quotes from a 1586 French petition on behalf of an author’s monopoly:
In the same way, the author of a book is wholly its master, and as such he can freely do with it what he wills; even keep it permanently under his private control as he might a slave; or emancipate it by granting it common freedom; giving that freedom either purely and simply, without holding anything back, or else imposing some limits, by a kind of right of patronage, so that no one but he will have the right to print it after a certain time.