HE germ of the modern postal systems of the world is to be looked for, obviously, in the earliest organized establishment of a staff of Government couriers. When, or under what precise circumstances, such an establishment was first made available by a state for the carriage of the letters of private persons there is no satisfactory evidence to show. That there must have been, even in early times, a connexion, more or less authorized, between the transmission of public and of private correspondence is highly probable. Even financial reasons would soon dictate a formal permission to Government couriers to carry letters for individuals—under regulation and restriction, of course —although at the outset such a practice may well have been rather connived at than allowed. In the postal system of Spain and the German empire there is express record of such a permission in the month of April 1544; and within fifteen or sixteen years that permission had grown into a legalized and regulated monopoly, whence the counts of Taxis drew part of their profits as postmasters-general. For the purposes of this article, however, it is enough to note that in Great Britain existing private letters of the 15th century—some, perhaps, of the 14th—bear endorsements which show that they were conveyed by relays of men and horses maintained under the control of the Government, and primarily intended for its special service. In several Continental states the universities had inland postal establishments of a rudimentary sort at an early date. The university of Paris, for example, organized a postal service almost at the beginning of the 13th century, and it lasted in a measure until the year 1719. In various parts of Europe mercantile guilds and brotherhoods λvere licensed to establish posts for commercial purposes. But everywhere—as far as the accessible evidence extends—foreign posts were under state control.

Great Britain. Early History (c. 1533-1836).

As early as the middle of the 13th century entries occur in the wardrobe accounts of the kings of England of payments to royal messengers—variously designated “cokinus,” “nuncius,” or “garcio ”—for the conveyance of letters to various parts of the country. In the supervision of these royal messengers lies the germ of the office of postmaster-general. The first English postmaster of whom a distinct account can be given is Sir Brian Tuke, who is described (1533) in the records as “Magister Nunciorum, Cursorum, sive Postarum,” “both in England and in other parts of the king’s dominions beyond the seas.” But long subsequent to this appointment of a postmastergeneral the details of the service were frequently regulated by proclamations and by orders in council. Thus, in the curious collection of royal proclamations in the library of the Society of Antiquaries there is one of Philip and Mary (undated, but apparently of 1555) which regulates the supply of horses for the conveyance of letters to Dover. Again, in July 1556 the lords of the council ordered “that the postes betweene this and the Northe should eche of them keepe a booke, and make entrye of every lettre that he shall receive, the tyme of the deliverie thereof unto his hands, with the parties names that shall bring it unto him.” Much of the business of the foreign postal service to and from England during the earlier years of Queen Elizabeth was managed by the incorporated “merchant strangers,” who appointed a special postmaster amongst themselves. When that office chanced to fall vacant in 1568 they quarrelled about a successor; and the quarrel cost them their privilege.

The accession of James I. to the English throne, by necessitating a more frequent communication between London and Scotland, led to improvements in the postal service. Some years earlier special posts had been established by the magistrates of certain Scottish towns for the conveyance of their despatches to and from the court. Thus in 1590 a messenger was appointed by the magistrates of Aberdeen with the title of “council-post.” The new royal orders of 1603 directed (1) that the postmasters at the various stages should enjoy the privilege of letting horses to “those riding in post (that is to say) with horn and guide,” by commission or otherwise, and to that end they were charged to keep or have in readiness a sufficient number of post-horses; (2) that the lawful charge for the hire of each horse should be, for public messengers, at the rate of 2∣d. a mile, “besides the guides’ groats,” private travellers being left to make'their own agreements. Finally, it was directed that every postmaster should keep at least two horses for the express conveyance of Government letters, and should forward such letters within a quarter of an hour of their receipt, and that the posts should travel at the rate of not less than 7 miles an hour in summer and 5 miles in winter.

In 1607 the king granted to James Stanhope, first Lord Stanhope of Harrington, and to his son Charles Stanhope, afterwards second Lord Stanhope, jointly and to the survivor of them, the postmastership of England under the title of “Master of the Posts and Messengers,” with a fee of 100 marks a year, together with all “avails and profits” belonging to the office. In 1619a separate office of “postmaster-general of England for foreign parts” was created, by new letters patent, in favour of Matthew de Quester • and Matthew de Quester the younger. The new office was regarded by the existing postmaster-general, Charles, Lord Stanhope, as an infringement of his own patent. A long dispute ensued in the King’s Bench and before the Lords of the Council. In 1626 by an order in council liberty was granted to all companies of merchants, including the Merchants Adventurers, to send their letters and despatches by messengers of their own choosing. A year afterwards this liberty was revoked, except for the Company of Merchants Adventurers. Lord Stanhope, however, continued to carry letters abroad by his agents, and obtained a warrant prohibiting De Quester from interfering. It shows strikingly the confusion of postal affairs at this period to find a statement addressed to the privy council by the postmasters of England to the effect that they had received no payments “ever since the last day of November 1621 till this present time, June 1628,”—the arrears amounting to <£22,626.

The rights of the postmasters were also infringed by private individuals, as by one Samuel Jude in 1629 in the west of England. In 1632 the foreign postmastership was assigned by the De Questers to William Frizell and

Thomas Witherings. Letters-patent were granted to them jointly, 15th March 1633. Witherings took the labouring oar, and probably ought to rank as the first of the many conspicuous postal reformers in the long history of the British post-office. Under him one Bichard Poole obtained a special postmastership for the service of the court. A petition subsequently presented by him to the House of Lords contains curious proof of the jealousies which Witherings’s successful administration of his office excited. Among the earliest measures of improvement taken under the new patent was an acceleration of the Continental mail service. For this purpose the patentees made a contract with the count of Thurn and Taxis, hereditary postmaster of the empire and of Spain. At this time there was still but one mail weekly between London, Antwerp, and Brussels, and the transit occupied from four to five days. By a subsequent contract with Count Thurn two mails weekly were secured and the transit made ordinarily in two days. In June 1635 Witherings submitted to the king a proposal (still preserved in the StatePaper Office) “for settling of staffets or pacquet-posts betwixt London and all parts of His Majesty’s dominions, for the carrying and re-carrying of his subjects’ letters,” which contains some curious incidental notices of the state of the internal communication of the kingdom at that time. The nett charge to the crown of the existing posts is stated to be <£3400 per annum. Letters, it is said, “being now carried by carriers or footposts 16 or 18 miles a day, it is full two months before any answer can be received from Scotland or Ireland to London. If any of His Majesty’s subjects shall write to Madrid in Spain, he shall receive answer sooner and surer than he shall out of Scotland or Ireland.” By the new plan it was proposed that all letters for the northern road should be put into one “portmantle,” and directed to Edinburgh, with separate bags directed to such postmasters as lived upon the road near to any city or town corporate. The journey from London to Edinburgh was to be performed within three days. The scheme was approved of on 31st July 1635, the proclamation establishing eight main postal lines,— namely, the great northern road, to Ireland by Holyhead, to Ireland by Bristol, to the marches of Wales by Shrewsbury, to Plymouth, to Dover, to Harwich, and to Yarmouth. The postage of a single letter was fixed at 2d. if under 80 miles, 4d. if between 80 and 140 miles, 6d. if above 140 miles, 8d. if to Scotland. And it was further provided that from the beginning of this service no other messengers or footposts should carry letters to any places so provided, except common known carriers, or a particular messenger “sent on purpose with a letter by any man for his own occasions,” or a letter by a friend, on pain of exemplary punishment. In February 1638 another royal proclamation ratified an agreement between Witherings and De Noveau, postmaster to the French king, for the conveyance of the mails into France by Calais, Boulogne, Abbeville, and Amiens.

But in 1640 the active postmaster was accused of divers abuses and misdemeanours, and his office sequestrated into the hands of Philip Burlamachi of London, merchant, who was to execute the same under the inspection of the principal secretary of state. Witherings then assigned his patent to Robert Rich, earl of Warwick, and a long contest ensued in both Houses of Parliament. The sequestration was declared by a vote in parliament in 1642 to be illegal. Nevertheless the dispute gave repeated occupation to both Houses during the period from 1641 to 1647, and was diversified by several affrays, in which violent hands were laid upon the mails. In 1643 the post-office yielded only £5000 a year. In 1644 the Lords and Commons by a joint ordinance appointed Edmund Prideaux “to be master of the posts, messengers, and couriers.” In 1646 the opinion of the judges was taken on the validity of Witherings’s patent (assigned to Lord Warwick), and they pronounced that “the clauses of restraint in the said patent are void and not good in law; that, notwithstanding these clauses be void, the patent is good for the rest.” It is evident, therefore, that any prohibition to carry letters must be by Act of Parliament, to have force of law.

In 1650 an attempt was made by the common council of London to organize a new postal system on the great roads, to run twice a week. This scheme they temporarily carried into effect as respects Scotland. But Mr AttorneyGeneral Prideaux speedily obtained the intervention of the council of state. He urged on the council of state that, if the new enterprise - were permitted, besides intrenching on the rights of the parliament, some other means would have to be devised for payment of the postmasters. Both Houses resolved (1) that the offices of postmasters, inland and foreign, were, and ought to be, in the sole power and disposal of the parliament, and (2) that it should be referred to the council of state to take into consideration all existing claims in relation thereto. Of these there were no less than five under the various patents which had been granted and assigned. Thereupon the Protector was advised that the management of the post-office should be entrusted to John Thurloe by patent under the broad seal of the Commonwealth immediately upon the expiration of John Manley’s existing contract. Thurloe was to give security for payment of the existing rent of £10,000 a year. Ultimately the posts, both inland and foreign, were farmed to John Manley for £10,000 a year, by an agreement made in 1653. Meanwhile, and pending the decision of the council upon the question so submitted to it, a remarkable step in postal reform -was taken by an attorney at York, named John Hill, who placed relays of post-horses between that city and London, and undertook the conveyance of letters and parcels at half the former rates of charge. He also formed local and limited partnerships in various parts of the kingdom for the extension of his plan, which aimed to establish eventually a general penny postage for England, a twopenny postage for Scotland, and a fourpenny postage for Ireland. But the post-office was looked upon by the Government of the day as, first, a means of revenue, and secondly, a means of political espionage. The new letter-carriers were

(literally) “trampled down” by Cromwell’s soldiery. The inventor had a narrow escape from severe punishment. He lived to publish (1659) the details of his plan, at the eve of the Restoration, in a pamphlet entitled Λ Penny Post: or a Vindication of the Liberty and Birthright of every Englishman in carrying Merchants and other Man's letters, against any Restraint of Farmers, &c. It is very probable that this publication helped to prepare the way for those measures of partial but valuable and far-reaching reform which were effected during the reign of Charles II. The rates of postage and the rights and duties of postmasters were settled under the Protectorate by an Act of Parliament of 1657, c. 30. In 1659 the item, “by postage of letters in farm, £14,000,” appears in a report on the public revenue.

The Government of the Restoration continued to farm the post-office upon conditions very similar to those imposed by the Act of 1657, but for a larger sum. Henry Bishop was the first postmaster-general in the reign of Charles II., and he contracted to pay to the king a yearly rent of £21,500, these new arrangements being embodied in the Act 12 Charles II. c. 35, entitled “An Act for Erecting and Establishing a Post-Office.” A clause proposing to frank all letters addressed to or sent by members of parliament during the session was, after considerable debate, ultimately ^ejected by the Lords. But the indenture enrolled with the letters-patent contained a proviso for the free carriage of all letters to or from the king, the great officers of state, and also the single inland letters only of the members of that present parliament during the continuance of that session. It also provided that the lessee should permit the secretaries of state for the time being, or either of them, from time to time, to have the survey and inspection of all letters at their discretion. Bishop - was succeeded by Daniel O’Neill in 1662, on similar terms. In the consequent proclamation, issued on 25th May 1663, it was commanded that “no postmasters or other officers that shall be employed in the conveying of letters, or distributing of the same, or any other person or persons, . . . except by the immediate warrant of our principal secretaries of state, shall presume to open any letters or pacquets not directed unto themselves.” In 1677 the general post-office comprised in the chief office, under Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, as postmastergeneral, seventy-five persons, and its profits were farmed for £43,000 a year. There were then throughout England and Scotland 182 deputy postmasters, and in Ireland 18 officers at the Dublin office and 45 country postmasters. “The number of letters missive,” says a writer of the same year, “is now prodigiously great. . . . A letter comprising one whole sheet of paper is conveyed 80 miles for twopence. Every twenty-four hours the post goes 120 miles, and in five days an answer may be had from a place 300 miles distant.”

By an Act of the 15th Charles II. (“An Act for Settling the Profits of the Post-Office on H.R.H. the Duke of York, and his Heirs-Male ”), and by a subsequent proclamation issued in August 1683, it was directed that the postmastergeneral should “take effectual care for the conveyance of all bye-letters, by establishing correspondences . . . in all considerable market-towns with the next adjacent poststage,” and the rights of the postmasters as to hiring horses were again emphasized.

It was during the possession of the post-office profits by the duke of York that a London penny post was established by the joint enterprise of William Dockwra, a searcher at the customs house, and of Robert Murray, a clerk in the excise office. The working-out of the plan fell to the first-named, and in his hands it gave in April 1680—although but for a short time—far more extensive postal facilities to the Londoners than even those so memorably afforded 160 years later by the plans of Sir Rowland Hill. The London of that day was small, and easily manageable. Dockwra carried, registered, and insured, for a penny, both letters and parcels up to a pound in weight and £10 in value. He took what had been the mansion of Sir Robert Abdy in Lime Street as a chief office, established seven sorting and district offices (thus anticipating one of the most recent improvements of the present time) and between 400 and 500 receiving-houses and wall-boxes. He established hourly collections, with a maximum of ten deliveries daily for the central part of the city, and a minimum of six for the suburbs. Outlying villages, such as Hackney and Islington, had four daily deliveries; and his letter-carriers collected for each despatch of the general post-office throughout the whole of the city and suburbs. Suits were laid against him in the court of King’s Bench for infringing on the duke of York’s patent, and the jealousies of the farmers eventually prevailed. The penny post was made a branch of the general post. Dockwra, after the Revolution of 1688, obtained a pension of £500 a year (for a limited term) in compensation of his losses. In 1697 he was made comptroller of the London office. Eleven years later his improvements were outvied by Charles Povey, the author of schemes for improving coinage, and also of a very curious volume, often wrongly ascribed to Defoe, entitled The Visions of Sir Heister Ryley. Povey took upon himself to set up a footpost under the name of the “halfpenny carriage,” appointed receiving-houses, and employed several persons to collect and deliver letters for hire within the cities of London and Westminster and borough of Southwark, “to the great prejudice of the revenue,” as was represented by the postmaster-general to the lords of the treasury. Povey was compelled to desist.

At this period the postal system of Scotland was distinct from that of England. It had been reorganized early in the reign of Charles II., who in September 1662 had appointed Patrick Grahame of Inchbrakie to be postmaster-general of Scotland for life at a salary of £500 Scots. But it would seem from the proceedings of the Scottish privy council that the rights and duties of the office were ill defined; for immediately after the appointment of Grahame the council commissioned Robert Mein, merchant and keeper of the letter-office in Edinburgh, to establish posts between Scotland and Ireland, ordained that Linlithgow, Kilsyth, Glasgow, Kilmarnock, Dumboag, Ballantrae, and Portpatrick should be stages on the route, and granted him the sum of £200 sterling to build a packetboat to carry the mail from Portpatrick to Donaghadee.

The colonial post-office at this period was naturally more rudimentary still. Perhaps the earliest official notice of it is to be seen in the following paragraph from the records of the general court of Massachusetts in 1639. “It is ordered that notice be given that Richard Fairbanks his house in Boston is the place appointed for all letters which are brought from beyond the seas, or are to be sent thither to be left with him; and he is to take care that they are to be delivered or sent according to the directions; and he is allowed for every letter a penny, and must answer all miscarriages through his own neglect in this kind.” That court in 1667 was petitioned to make better postal arrangements, the petitioners alleging the frequent “loss of letters whereby merchants, especially with their friends and employers in foreign parts, are greatly damnified; many times the letters are imputed (?) and thrown upon the Exchange, so that those who will may take them up, no person, without some satisfaction, being willing to trouble their houses therewith.” In Virginia the postal system was yet more primitive. The colonial law of 1657 required every planter to provide a messenger to convey the despatches as they arrived to the next plantation, and so on, on pain of forfeiting...