EDMUND PRIDEAUX AND CLEMENT OXENBRIDGE
1644--1660
Hardly had Prideaux assumed the direction of the letter office before he
gave public notice that there would be a weekly conveyance of letters
into all parts of the kingdom. There is reason to doubt, however,
whether under his rule as much or nearly as much as this was
accomplished. Next to Norwich, Yarmouth was then, as it is now, the
chief town in the eastern counties; and yet it is certain that a post to
Yarmouth was not established until after Prideaux's rule had ceased; and
more than fifty years later we find his successors lamenting that, while
Lincolnshire generally was ill provided with posts, there were several
towns in that county which had no post at all.
But to whatever extent Prideaux's professions exceeded his performance,
it is beyond question that he spared no effort to extend the posts, and
that he is justly entitled to the credit, not indeed of improving upon
Witherings's scheme, but of carrying that scheme into more general
effect. Despite his exertions, however, he failed to keep pace with the
wants of the time. Indeed, what facilities for intercourse had been
given already seem to have created a demand for more. In 1649 the Common
Council of the city of London, not content with a post only once a week
to Scotland, established a post of their own. Along the whole line of
road between London and Edinburgh they appointed their own postmasters
and settled their own postage, and the same plan they proceeded to
adopt in other parts. Prideaux, who to his office of Master of the Posts
had recently added that of Attorney-General, was highly incensed. Only a
few years before, the State monopoly of letters, when the State was
represented by the Crown, had been the object of his fiercest
denunciation, and now this same monopoly was a cherished possession to
be defended at all hazards. First he remonstrated. Then he threatened.
And neither threats nor remonstrances having any effect upon the city
authorities, he reported their proceedings to the Council of State, and
the Council of State reported them to Parliament. Parliament was in no
mood for concession. The city posts were promptly suppressed, and more
than thirty years elapsed before private enterprise again embarked upon
a similar venture.
The report which Prideaux made to the Council of State had another
result, which probably he little contemplated. In that report he had
taken credit to himself that, although the charges of management had
risen to L7000 a year, or about twice the amount they had been in
Witherings's time, he had relieved the State from the whole of this
burden. In other words, the posts had become self-supporting, but, so
far as appeared from the report, were nothing more. The House of Commons
was not satisfied. Accordingly the Council was instructed to examine and
report whether the terms on which the letter office was held were the
best that could be obtained. The investigation was soon made.
Heretofore, in consideration of his defraying the charges, Prideaux had
been allowed to receive the postage and make what he could out of it.
For the future, besides defraying the charges, he was to pay to the
State a fixed rent of L5000 a year. This was the introduction of the
system of farming, a system which, as regards the posts generally,
continued to nearly the end of the seventeenth and, as regards the
by-posts, beyond the middle of the eighteenth century.
In 1653 Prideaux ceased to be Master of the Posts. Two years before he
had been elected a member of the Council of State, and shortly after his
election, and probably as a consequence of it, the arrangements for
communicating with the army had reached a high state of perfection.
Between the Council and the forces in Scotland messengers, we are told,
were passing almost every hour. But, useful as he may have made himself,
Prideaux seems to have been altogether wanting in those qualities which
are calculated to inspire confidence. At the Treaty of Uxbridge, where
he was one of the commissioners, even his own colleagues had regarded
him as a spy. This feeling of distrust may possibly explain how it
happened that, after the expulsion of the Long Parliament, he was forced
to content himself with his appointment as Attorney-General. The Council
of State, as then reconstructed, did not include him among its members,
and one of the first acts of the new Council was to relieve him from the
responsibilities of the letter office. Grasping as he was, it is
impossible to suppose that this can have been done by his own wish, for
the appointment of Master of the Posts, though weighted with a rent of
L5000 a year, was still a very lucrative one. His successor paid a rent
of double that amount, and is reputed to have derived from his farm an
enormous profit.
After Prideaux's death in August 1659, it transpired that his interest
in the letter office had not ceased when he ceased to administer it.
What was the interest he retained we do not know; but the matter seems
to have been considered sufficiently serious to call for parliamentary
inquiry. In the following February the House of Commons ordered "that
the whole business concerning the Post Office, and what has been
received by Mr. Prideaux, late Attorney-General, out of the same, and
what account hath been made thereof he referred to a committee to
examine, and to state matter of fact and report it to the Parliament and
their opinion therein." To this order, however, no return appears to
have been made. It is probable that at the Restoration the committee had
not concluded its labours.
Oldmixon speaks of Prideaux as "a very fierce republican, who got a
great estate by his zeal against the Church and Churchmen"; and it is
certain that to that estate his zeal for the Post Office brought him no
inconsiderable addition. Of the destination of a part of his wealth we
are not left uninformed. Towards the close of the century a judge,
before whose ferocity even Prideaux's pales, set out on a circuit, the
infamy of which will endure to the end of time. Arrived in
Somersetshire, he found residing at Ford Abbey, in the neighbourhood of
Axminster, an inoffensive country squire, son of the former Master of
the Posts, and named after him, Edmund Prideaux. From this gentleman,
apparently because he was his father's son, and for no better reason,
Jeffreys under threat of the gallows extorted L15,000, and he bought
with the money an estate "to which," Lord Macaulay tells us, "the people
gave the name of Aceldama, from that accursed field which was purchased
with the price of innocent blood."
In 1653 the posts were farmed to Captain Manley at a rent of L10,000 a
year; and in 1655, Manley's contract having expired, Cromwell on the
advice of his Council placed them in the hands of Mr. Secretary Thurloe,
on his giving security to the same amount. The change of management was
followed two years later by an important step in advance. This was the
passing of an Act of Parliament intituled an Act for settling the
postage of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Legislative sanction was now
given to what had hitherto rested on no better authority than
Proclamation or Order in Council. A general office, to be called the
Post Office of England, was to be established for the receipt and
despatch of letters; and under the title of Postmaster-General and
Comptroller of the Post Office an officer was to be appointed who was to
have the exclusive right of carrying letters and of furnishing
post-horses. At the Restoration the Act of 1657, the "pretended" Act as
it was now called, could not of course be recognised as possessing any
legal validity, and so it was replaced by another; but the later Act was
little more than a re-enactment of the earlier one. Virtually, it is to
the Act of 1657 that the General Post Office owes its origin, although
the Act of 1660, as being unimpeachable, has been commonly called its
charter.
Similar as the two Acts are in the main, there is one important
difference between them. The Act of 1657 gives as a reason for making
the posts the subject of parliamentary enactment that they are and have
been "the best means of discovering and preventing many dangerous and
wicked designs which have been and are daily contrived against the peace
and welfare of this Commonwealth, the intelligence whereof cannot well
be communicated but by letter of escript." To the odious practice here
implied no countenance is given in the Act of 1660. But, indeed, it
needed not this evidence to prove that during the Commonwealth the Post
Office was largely used as an instrument of police. Thurloe's
"intercepted" letters are matter of history; and the journals of the two
Houses of Parliament shew that the foreign mails, both inward and
outward, were stopped for whole weeks together, and committees appointed
to open and read the letters. On one occasion the Venetian ambassador,
whose letters had shared the same fate as the rest, entered an indignant
protest. "He could not persuade himself," he said, "that the Government
of England, so noble and generous, should have so inferior a mind as to
open the letters of an ambassador, and by this means to violate the
laws, and to give an example to the world so damnable, and of so little
respect towards the minister of the Serenissima Respublica." Nor was his
indignation appeased until four peers had waited upon him in the name of
the House of Lords, and tendered an ample apology.
The rates of postage prescribed by the Act of 1657 were only slightly
varied by the Act of 1660. As finally adjusted, they were as follows:--
+--------------------------------+--------------+--------------+----------+
| | On | On | |
| |Single Letter.|Double Letter.|Per Ounce.|
+--------------------------------+--------------+--------------+----------+
|80 miles and under | 2d. | 4d. | 8d. |
|Above 80 miles | 3d. | 6d. | 12d. |
|To or from Berwick | 3d. | 6d. | 18d. |
| From Berwick within Scotland--| | | |
| 40 miles and under | 2d. | 4d. | 8d. |
| Above 40 miles | 4d. | 8d. | 12d. |
|To or from Dublin | 6d. | 12d. | 24d. |
| From Dublin within Ireland-- | | | |
| 40 miles and under | 2d. | 4d. | 8d. |
| Above 40 miles | 4d. | 8d. | 12d. |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
How these rates compare with those which had gone before we have no
means of judging. We only know that during Prideaux's management the
postage on a single letter was 6d.; that at some time between 1655 and
1657 it was reduced to 3d.; and that the credit of this reduction was
due to Clement Oxenbridge. Oxenbridge, after acting as deputy first to
Prideaux and then to Manley, appears to have taken a farm under Thurloe;
and, rightly or wrongly, he affirmed that, as soon as he had improved
the posts at a cost to himself of more than L5000, and had made his farm
profitable, he was turned adrift by Cromwell.
If the comparison be carried forward instead of backward, and the rates
of 1660 be contrasted with those of later years, there is an important
consideration which cannot be too carefully borne in mind. It is this,
that in 1660 cross posts did not exist. Between two towns not being on
the same post road, however near the towns might be, letters could
circulate only through London; and the moment London was reached an
additional rate was imposed. Hence the apparent charges, the charges as
deduced from the table of rates, might be very different from the actual
charges. Bristol and Exeter, for instance, are less than eighty miles
apart; but in 1660 and for nearly forty years afterwards letters from
one to the other passed through London, and would be charged, if single,
not 2d. but 6d., and if double, not 4d. but 1s. That is to say, the
postage[7] or portage, as it was then called, would consist of two
rates, and each of these rates would be for a distance in excess of
eighty miles. David Hume, writing more than a hundred years later,
observes that before 1657 letters paid only about half as much postage
as they did in his own time. This, no doubt, is true if rate be compared
with rate according to the distance; but the fact we have mentioned very
materially qualifies the force of the remark.
[7] The term "postage," in the sense of a charge upon a letter, is
comparatively modern. The Act of 1764 is the first so to use it. The
term is indeed used in the Act of 1660, but there it signifies the hire
of a horse for travelling. "Each horse's hire or postage."
On foreign letters the rates ranged from 4d., the lowest rate for a
single letter, to 2s., the highest rate for a double letter, and from
1s. 6d. to 4s. an ounce for letters of greater bulk. No provision was
made for any charge except on letters from Europe. Letters came indeed
from other parts; but as the Post Office did not bring them and paid
nothing for their carriage, no postage was demanded. From India, for
instance, a letter brought to England and posted there would pay only
the home postage.
For post-horses the charge was fixed at 3d. a mile for each horse,
besides 4d. to the guide of every stage. Two concessions were made to
the public. Horses were no longer to be seized without the consent of
the owners; and a traveller if kept waiting half an hour without being
supplied might hire a horse wherever he could. That the seizure of
horses had been a source of intense annoyance seems beyond question. In
a Proclamation of 1603, as a reason for helping the postmasters to keep
horses in sufficient number for the service of the posts, the townships
are reminded of "the ease and quiet they reape thereby"; and long after
the immunity from seizure had been granted, the allusions to the former
practice leave no room for doubt that, though the sore was healed, the
recollection of it still rankled.
According to Lord Macaulay, a part of the Post Office revenue was
derived from post-horses.[8] With all deference to that eminent
authority, and with all modesty we venture to think that such was not
the case. The Proclamation of 1603, which was the origin of the
monopoly, while giving to those who horsed the posts "the benefit and
preheminence of letting horses" to all comers, expressly provided that,
except for the service of the posts or for the use of persons travelling
on affairs of State, no postmaster need keep horses unless he pleased,
and that, if he did so, he should be at liberty to make his own terms.
On this last point the words are, "But of all others riding Poste with
horne and guide about their private businesses, the hire and prices are
left to the parties discretions to agree and compound within
themselves." Again, an account is still extant, dated 1623, or twenty
years after the monopoly had been established, and giving in minute
detail the particulars of the expenses of the posts as they then were;
records also exist extending in almost unbroken succession over more
than eighty years of the period during which the monopoly lasted, and
dealing with every variety of Post Office question; and neither in the
records nor the account is there the remotest allusion to the receipt of
any sums on account of post-horses. Yet one reason more for the opinion
we hold. About the middle of the eighteenth century, as the result of
legislation which then took place, the roads were measured, and the
measured mile proved to be shorter than the computed mile. As a
consequence of this discovery the charge for post-horses was raised. A
distance which had hitherto been reckoned as eight miles proved to be
ten miles, and a charge as for ten instead of eight miles was made.
Travellers were up in arms, and complained that the Post Office had
raised its charges. The answer was that the Post Office had nothing to
do with the matter; that the postmasters were entitled by law to so much
a mile; and that the whole of the charge went into their own pockets.
For these reasons we think that no part of the Post Office revenue was
derived from the letting of post-horses. Indirectly, no doubt, the
monopoly was a source of profit because, except for it, those who horsed
the posts would not have been content with the wages they received.
These, according to the account of 1623, ranged from 3s. a day to 6d. a
day. To supplement the postmasters' pay without expense to the Crown
was, we make bold to suggest, the object with which the monopoly was
granted. And, of course, the better the object was secured, the more
carefully would the monopoly be guarded.
[8] Lord Macaulay's words are:--"The revenue of this establishment was
not derived solely from the charge for the transmission of letters. The
Post Office alone was entitled to furnish post-horses; and, from the
care with which this monopoly was guarded, we may infer that it was
found profitable."
In May 1660 Clement Oxenbridge, to whose exertions the Act of 1657 would
seem to have been largely due, petitioned the Council of State to
reimburse him the expenses to which he had been put in improving the
posts, and the Council of State, after investigating the claim, reported
the particulars to the House of Commons for directions. It was not,
however, until after William and Mary had ascended the throne that any
further step was taken. Oxenbridge, whose necessities had become greater
as his age advanced, was then by the King's direction given an
appointment under the Post Office of the annual value of L100; and this
salary he continued to draw, although too old to discharge the duties
for which it was paid, until his death in 1696.