COTTON AND FRANKLAND
_Inland Service_
1685-1705
In 1685, on the death of Charles the Second, the revenue of the Post
Office was settled on James, his heirs and successors. Rochester, the
High Treasurer, became postmaster-general; and for the actual discharge
of the duties a deputy was appointed under the title of Governor.
Two years before, the panic caused by the discovery of the Rye-House
Plot had led to the issue of a Proclamation which, if differing little
from others that had gone before, acquires importance from the
circumstances under which it appeared. Unauthorised posts had again
sprung up in all directions, simply, no doubt, because there was a
demand for the accommodation they afforded; but the Government, no less
than the persons who denounced Dockwra's undertaking as a Popish
contrivance, seem to have been possessed with the idea that these posts
were mere vehicles for the propagation of treason. To prevent
treasonable correspondence was the avowed object of the present
Proclamation, and the means by which the object was sought to be
attained was the suppression of private and irregular posts, for by
these, the Proclamation went on to declare, the conspirators had been
materially assisted in their designs. Mayors, sheriffs, justices of the
peace, constables and others were enjoined to make diligent search for
letters passing otherwise than through the regular post. Special
officers were to be appointed for the same purpose. All such letters,
wherever discovered, were to be deemed to be "of dangerous consequence";
and not only were they to be seized and carried to the Secretary of
State or the Privy Council for the purpose of being opened and
inspected, but both the bearers and senders of them were to be proceeded
against at law.
On James's accession to the throne the Proclamation of 1683 was
succeeded by another in almost identical terms; and it is certain that
during his reign the liberties taken with post letters were hardly less
than they had been in the worst days of the Commonwealth. Only a few
months before Rochester's dismissal, for no better reason than to
gratify curiosity, orders were given that the bags from Scotland should
be transmitted to Whitehall, and during a whole week not a single
private letter from beyond the Tweed was delivered in London. Happily,
however, this state of things was soon to cease. After the Revolution
the appointment of postmaster-general was conferred upon persons who
were otherwise unconnected with affairs of State, and the effect of this
change was, as William no doubt intended, at once to lift the Post
Office out of the region of politics. In the eyes of the Rochesters, the
Arlingtons, and the Thurloes, busied as they were in the detection of
conspiracies against the State, the Post Office had been little else
than an instrument which might be usefully employed as a means to that
end. With plain citizens unversed in the ways of government, the only
consideration was how best they could accomplish the object for which
they had been appointed; and this object was so to manage and improve
the posts of the country as to secure to their Sovereign the highest
possible revenue.
But, before William could give effect to his views, there was an
adherent to be provided for. This was Colonel John Wildman, who was
appointed postmaster-general in July 1689. Of Wildman's career at the
Post Office little is known, except that he was profuse in making
promises which he never performed. He might, perhaps, himself have
pleaded that he was not given time to perform them, for after eight
months' tenure of the appointment he was dismissed for some reason which
is, and will probably continue to be, a mystery. Far different is the
record left behind them by Wildman's immediate successors. These were
Sir Robert Cotton and Mr.--afterwards Sir Thomas--Frankland, who became
joint postmasters-general in March 1690, and served in that capacity for
nearly twenty years. They had sat in James's Parliament, the one for
Cambridgeshire, and the other for the borough of Thirsk, and these seats
they retained under William. From the writings they have left behind
them we are able to see these two men not as a biographer might dress
them up, but as they really were. Everything about them, their virtues,
their foibles, their habits, their ailments, their devotion to duty,
their unwillingness to believe evil of any one, their hatred of
injustice or oppression, their unbounded credulity, their anxiety about
their re-election, their gratitude for any little scrap of news which
they might carry to Court, their fondness for a glass of port wine,
their attacks of gout, their habit of taking snuff, even the hour of
their going to bed--all this and more is there revealed, and makes up a
record of simplicity and benevolence which it is a delight to read.
The establishment over which these two simple gentlemen were called upon
to preside had recently received a considerable addition. Out of London,
the Post Office servants remained much as they had been ten years
before, at about 239 in number, of whom all but twelve were postmasters;
but in London the force employed at the General Post Office had been
raised from 77 to 185. The Penny Post Office, which had now been wrested
out of Dockwra's hands, accounts for the greater part of the difference.
This gave employment, exclusive of receivers, to 74 persons--a
comptroller, an accomptant, and a collector, 14 sorters and 57
messengers--at a total charge for salaries of L2000 a year. Another part
of the establishment, and by no means the least important or the least
difficult to manage, consisted of the packet boats. These, in 1690,
were eleven in number, viz.--two for France, two for Flanders, two for
Holland, two for the Downs, and three for Ireland. Owing to the war,
however, the boat-service to France was now in abeyance.
Little more than half a century had elapsed since the introduction of
postage, and meanwhile the revenue had risen by strides which were for
those times prodigious. In 1635 the posts were maintained at a cost to
the Crown of L3400 a year. Within fifteen years not only had they become
self-supporting, but a rent was paid for the privilege of farming them.
This rent was, in 1650, L5000 a year; in 1653, L10,000; in 1660,
L21,500; and some time before 1680, L43,000. In 1690 the net revenue was
probably about L55,000. In 1694, according to a return made to the House
of Commons two years later, it was L59,972.
The headquarters of the Post Office were at this time in Lombard Street.
Here the postmasters-general resided; and here, far from shutting
themselves up, they were to be found at all hours by any one who might
wish to consult them on business connected with their office. Freedom of
communication with those among whom they lived, and not inaccessibility,
appears indeed to have been a part of their policy. With the foreign
merchants especially they maintained the most friendly intercourse, and
were wont to defer to their wishes and suggestions in the arrangement of
the packets. Besides giving constant attendance during the day, the
postmasters-general sat as a Board every morning and night. To these
Board-meetings they attached the highest importance, especially on the
nights of Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, when mails were despatched
into all parts of the country. These were known as the "Grand Post
Nights," and the others as "Bye-Nights."
The Post Office building appears to have been not ill adapted to its
purpose. A massive gate opened into a court of oblong shape. This court
was paved from end to end for the merchants to walk in while waiting to
receive their letters. On the right was the Board-room with the
residence of the postmasters-general attached; on the left the office
for foreign letters; and in front, immediately facing the entrance, was
the sorting office. The office for the letter-carriers was in the
basement. The rest of the building was devoted to the use of the Post
Office servants, who, owing to their unseasonable hours of attendance,
were required to live in the office itself or else in its immediate
vicinity.
The machinery for the dispersion of letters was very simple. For Post
Office purposes the kingdom was divided into six roads--the North Road,
the Chester or Holyhead Road, the Western Road, the Kent Road, and the
Roads to Bristol and to Yarmouth; and these roads were presided over by
a corresponding number of clerks in London whose duty it was to sort the
letters and to tax them with the proper amount of postage. At the
present time, when, owing to the system of prepayment, there is
comparatively little taxing to be done, no less than 2800 clerks and
sorters are engaged every evening in despatching the letters into the
country. Two hundred years ago the whole operation was performed, both
sorting and taxing together, by the six clerks of the roads, and they
had not even a sorter to assist them until 1697.
The letters, as soon as they had been sorted, were despatched into the
country, the usual hour of despatch being shortly after midnight; but,
of course, with a force to prepare them of only six persons, a rigid
punctuality such as that which now distinguishes the operations of the
Post Office could hardly be observed. An instance remains on record of
the disturbance caused by any unusual pressure. The 25th of February
1696, we are told, was a foreign post night, and it happened that the
letters for the country as well as abroad were more than ordinarily
numerous. On this occasion the mails which should have gone out before
three o'clock in the morning could not be despatched until between six
and seven.
Once clear of London, the letters passed into the hands of the
postmasters, who were alone concerned in their transmission and
distribution. At the present time, multifarious as the duties of a
postmaster are, it is not one of them to transport the mails from town
to town. But such was not the case in 1690. The post roads were then
divided into sections or, as they were commonly called, stages; and
these stages were presided over by a corresponding number of
postmasters, whose duty it was to carry the mails each over his own
stage. This had been the original object of their appointment, the
object for which they had been granted the monopoly of letting
post-horses, and it still remained their primary duty, to which every
other was subordinate. And yet traces of this original function were
already beginning to disappear. The posts settled on the six main roads
of the kingdom had not been long in extending themselves to other roads;
and on these branch roads one postmaster would be charged with the
carrying of the mails over two or more stages, leaving another without
any transport duty at all. Kendal, for instance, lay on a branch road
leaving the Holyhead Road at Chester; and from Wigan the letters for
Kendal were fetched by the postmaster of Preston, who passed not only
his own town but the town of Lancaster on his way.
In 1690 no provincial town had a letter-carrier of its own, as that term
is now understood. Even at Bristol and at Norwich, which ranked next to
the capital in size and importance, there was for all Post Office
purposes one single agent, and that was the postmaster. Upon him and him
alone devolved all the duties which now, at all but the smallest towns,
a body of sorters and letter-carriers is maintained to perform. Whether
out of London there was any settled mode of delivery is uncertain; but
there seems little doubt that, soon after the establishment of the Post
Office, to deliver letters in his own town had come to be a part, though
a secondary part, of a postmaster's duty. At Maidstone, indeed, the
delivery appears to have reached a high state of perfection. The
postmaster there fetched the mails from Rochester and carried them to
Ashford, dropping the letters for his own town as he passed through.
These were at once taken out by two men of his own and delivered, so
that, as he took pride in relating, a letter from London arriving by the
morning post at noon could he answered by the return post, which left
Maidstone at six o'clock in the evening.
But this must have been an exceptional case. Except perhaps at the
largest towns, letters were yet too few to make such an arrangement
necessary; and it seems probable that the hour at which the delivery was
made and the area over which it extended were very much in the
postmaster's discretion. One check there was, and, so far as appears,
one only. This was the letter bill which accompanied the letters, and in
which was inserted the postage which a postmaster had to collect and
bring to account; but it frequently happened that he advanced the amount
himself, and of course, where this was so, there was nothing to shew
that any particular letter had been delivered, still less that it had
been delivered within a particular time. Far more effective, it may well
be believed, than any official check was the desire, the natural desire,
to stand well with his neighbours; and the substantial marks of kindness
which they seldom failed to bestow upon him whenever he was so
unfortunate as to get into trouble, preclude the idea that, in the
matter of delivery or otherwise, remissness or inattention can have been
at all general.
In London, owing to recent malpractices there, attention had been
directed to the salaries, and these had been improved. The six clerks of
the roads received four of them L60 a year, one L50, and one as much as
L100. The sorters received L40 a year, and the general post
letter-carriers 11s. a week. The wages of the penny post letter-carriers
or messengers, as for distinction's sake they were called, were 8s. In
addition to their salaries the clerks of the roads enjoyed the privilege
of franking newspapers or, as they were then called, gazettes. This
privilege, which dated from the first establishment of the Post Office,
had arrested the attention of James when Duke of York, and he had
desired to take it away; but, on learning that compensation would have
to be given, he decided to let it continue. By post the gazettes would
have cost from 4d. to 6d. apiece. The clerks of the roads supplied them
for 2d. The emoluments from this source kept steadily growing during
William's reign. At first the longer and more frequent sessions of
Parliament, and, later on, the war in which England was engaged, excited
an appetite for news to which the two previous reigns afford no
parallel. A statement which the postmasters-general made to the Treasury
about this time, while evincing perhaps some little credulity, evinces
also how keen, in the judgment of two shrewd and intelligent men, was
the hunger after early intelligence. "In England," they say, "there are
many postmasters, who some of them serve without salary, others for less
than they would otherwise do, in consideration of their being allowed
gazets by the office ffrank."
Another curious custom prevailed in 1690, and continued indeed for
nearly a century afterwards. This was the distribution among the Post
Office servants in London of a certain sum annually as "drink and feast
money." The sum so distributed in 1685 had been no less than L60; and
this was in addition to two "feasts" which were given them at the
expense of the Crown, one at midsummer and the other at Christmas.
In the country, where there was no one to watch over the postmasters'
interests, the salaries were merely nominal. The postmaster of Sudbury
in Suffolk received a salary of L26 a year; and for this he had, three
times a week, to carry the letters to Braintree and back, a distance of
thirty-two miles, over a road that was barely passable. At Maidstone, in
order to keep the delivery up to his own standard of excellence, the
postmaster expended 2s. a day in what he called "horse-meate and
man's-meate," yet his salary was only L5. Many postmasters received no
salary at all. Even at Bristol, which stood next to London in population
and wealth, the salary was only L60, having been recently raised to that
amount from L50.
Nor was it only in the matter of salary that the postmasters were
objects of compassion. The disturbed state of the country during the
last few years had brought back old abuses. Officers of the army and
others who had not the officers' excuse of urgency would override the
post-horses, and when, as frequently happened, these were lamed or
killed, no compensation appears to have been given. Another class of
persons infested the roads, persons who, taking advantage of the general
confusion, would hire post-horses and not return them. During the last
twelve or thirteen years of the seventeenth century many postmasters
were languishing in prison through inability to pay what they owed for
postage; and among these there were few who did not trace their
misfortunes to the fact that immediately before and after William's
accession to the throne their horses had been killed or spoiled through
reckless riding or else run away with.
But neither the loss of their horses nor the inadequacy of their
remuneration was so galling to the postmasters as the liability to which
they now became subject, of having soldiers quartered upon them. A
standing army had been recently authorised, and there was little or no
barrack accommodation. Hence a liability, which in our own time might be
little more than nominal, was, in 1690, tantamount to a heavy tax. Under
Charles and James[12] the postmasters had been exempt from this
annoyance; but the exemption had been granted by virtue of the royal
prerogative, and William could not be induced to continue it. In vain it
was urged that, if a burden were cast upon them as novel as it was
oppressive, justice demanded that their salaries should be increased.
The King resolutely refused to make a distinction which the law did not
recognise, and, except in a few isolated cases, the salaries remained
unchanged.
[12] In the reigns of Charles II. and James II. the practice of
billeting, illegal as it then was, was necessarily resorted to in order
to provide quarters for the troops they maintained in time of peace; and
even billeting in private houses was not unknown. An Act of 1689, the
second Mutiny Act, as it is called, while forbidding billeting in
private houses, authorised it at "inns, livery stables, ale houses,
victualling houses, and all houses selling brandy, strong waters, cyder
or metheglin, by retaile, to be dranke in their houses."
Despite these drawbacks, there is no reason to think that the
appointment of postmaster was not eagerly sought for, or that when
obtained there was any general disposition to throw it up. The
explanation is obvious. In the first place the appointment carried with
it the exclusive right of letting post-horses. This monopoly, at all
events on the more frequented roads, must have been remunerative; and it
must have been especially remunerative where, as appears to have been
generally the case, the postmaster was also innkeeper. Travellers were
drawn to his house, for it was only there that they could procure horses
to pursue their journey. He was, in a word, assured of custom. Other
sources of emolument were--1st, gratuities, varying according to
distance, from 1d. to 3d., on every letter he collected or delivered;
and 2nd, what were technically called "Bye-letters." This term, whatever
may have been the case a century before, had now a distinctive meaning.
It meant letters which stopped short of London,[13] letters upon which
at that time there was no check. In 1690 the postage on these letters
was probably not large; but, large or small, the whole or all but the
whole of it found its way into the pockets of the postmasters, and it
was one of the first cares of the new postmasters-general to consider
how the diversion might be stopped.
[13] In the agreement with Ralph Allen, dated thirty years later,
bye-letters are defined to be "letters not going or coming from, to, or
through London."
Such, in England, was the condition of the Post Office when Cotton and
Frankland assumed the direction of it in the month of March 1690. In
Scotland the posts were under separate direction, the direction of the
Secretary of State for that part of the kingdom, and subject to the
control of the Scotch Parliament. For purposes of convenience, however,
an arrangement had been made between the two Post Offices. On letters
between London and Edinburgh in both directions the English Post Office
took not only its own share of the postage but the whole; and, in
return, it paid the salaries of all the postmasters and defrayed the
cost of all expresses between the Border town of Berwick-on-Tweed and
Edinburgh. The correspondence at this time passing between the two
capitals was of the slightest. It is true that for the three years
ending March 1693 the amount due to the London office for postage on
letters to Edinburgh was L1500, or at the rate of L500 a year; but the
correspondence of the Secretary of State for Scotland, or "Black-box" as
it was called, from the colour of the box in which it was carried, would
probably account for nearly the whole. In 1707, which no doubt was a
busy year in consequence of the Act of Union, the cost of carrying this
box to and fro averaged L66 a month.
In Ireland the Post Office was managed by a deputy-postmaster, who was
directly responsible to the postmasters-general in London. The method of
business was the same as in England. Instead, however, of six "roads,"
there were only three--the Munster Road, the Ulster Road, and the
Connaught Road. The Dublin establishment, clerks and letter-carriers
included, consisted of twelve persons, of whom five received L20 a year,
and no one, the deputy-postmaster excepted, more than L80. The
deputy-postmaster himself received L400. Such at least was the normal
establishment; but all was now confusion. The battle of the Boyne had
not yet been fought, and Tyrconnel was still Lord Deputy. By his
direction the Post Office servants in Dublin, down to the youngest
letter-carrier, had been turned out of their appointments; and the mails
from England, instead of being opened at the Post Office, were being
carried to the castle and opened there.
The new postmasters-general had not long taken up their quarters in
Lombard Street before they began to feel serious alarm for the revenue
committed to their charge. It was in the matter of bye-letters that
their apprehensions were first aroused. London, as the metropolis, sent
and received more letters than any other town, more probably than all
the other towns of the kingdom put together. Through London, too, as the
centre of the Post Office system, many letters passed in those days
which would not so pass now, because there were no cross-posts. Still
there was a residue, a residue considerable in the aggregate,
consisting of letters which did not touch London in any part of their
course; and of these comparatively few were accounted for. Some thirty
years later, after a check had been established, the revenue derived
from bye-letters was only a little over L3000 a year. At the end of the
seventeenth century it probably did not amount to as many hundreds.
It was, however, not the letters that fell into the post, but those that
were kept out of it, the illicit traffic in fact, that caused the
greatest concern. This traffic was assuming larger proportions every
day. Under Charles and James searchers had been appointed, men who
searched for letters as baggage is searched at the Custom House. No
suspected person, no suspected vehicle, was safe from inspection. But
there was no legal sanction for the practice, and it had ceased on
William's accession. Early in the present reign it had been mooted
whether a prosecution should not be undertaken, at all events against
the principal offenders; but the King refused to consent to a step which
he regarded as impolitic and calculated to excite discontent. License
waxed bolder with impunity. Along the road from Bristol to Worcester and
from Worcester to Shrewsbury men might be seen openly collecting and
delivering letters in defiance of the law. Openly or clandestinely the
same thing was being done in other parts. "Wherever," wrote the
postmasters-general, "there are any townes which have commerce one with
another so as to occasion a constant intercourse by carryer or
tradesman, there we do find it a general practice to convey at the same
time a considerable number of letters."
But the illicit traffic between one part of the country and another,
large as were the dimensions it had assumed, was insignificant as
compared with that which was taking place between the country and
London. This was the natural result of the establishment of the penny
post. At the first introduction of postage care had been taken so to fix
the rates that for single letters the post should be cheaper than the
common carrier. But the common carrier, in competition with the State,
had one enormous advantage. He could reduce his terms at will. So long,
therefore, as there was a profit to be made, the relative cheapness of
the post had proved only an imperfect check.
A far more efficient check, in the case of the metropolis at least, had
been the difficulty of dispersion. It was one thing to bring letters to
London and another to deliver them. In a maze of streets consisting of
houses which bore no numbers, a comparative stranger to the town
attempting anything in the shape of a general delivery would have been
simply bewildered. But all this was now altered. The penny post supplied
the very machinery, the want of which had hitherto kept the illicit
traffic within bounds. Once within the orbit of that post, a letter
consigned to any one of Dockwra's four or five hundred receiving offices
would be delivered in any part of what was then known as London for 1d.,
and in the suburbs for 2d. And these charges would carry up to one pound
in weight; whereas a quarter of one pound by the general post, even from
places no further distant from London than Croydon or Kingston, would be
charged 2s. 8d.
Of course, under such conditions, to carry letters across the
border-line, the line which separated the general post from the penny
post, had soon become a regular traffic; and this traffic, in
consequence of the impunity it enjoyed, was now being carried on with
little concealment. No stage-coach entered London without the driver's
pockets being stuffed with letters and packets, and he was moderate
indeed if he had not a bagful besides. The waggoner outstripped his
waggon and the carrier his pack-horse; and each brought his
contribution. The higgler's wares were the merest pretext. It was to the
letters and packets he carried that he looked for profit. So notorious
had the abuse become that two private persons, unconnected with the Post
Office, offered their services with a view to its correction. These
persons were gentlemen by birth, and yet it is difficult to conceive an
office more odious than the one which they were prepared to assume.
They proposed to erect stands or barriers in Westminster, Southwark, and
other places in the outskirts of London, and there to demand of
suspected persons as they passed any letters they might have about them
which did not concern their private business. They further proposed to
deliver these letters by messengers of their own, and to collect the
postage, and to proceed against the bearers of them for the recovery of
the penalties. It is significant of the extent to which the traffic had
grown, that in return for their services they asked no more than
two-thirds of the postage they should collect, and even pleaded the
heavy expenses to which they would be put as an apology for asking so
much. The remaining third they would undertake to make over to the
postmasters-general. They did not explain, however, how it was proposed
to distinguish letters which concerned the private business of the
bearers from those which did not, or how, while checking others, they
were to be checked themselves. Nor indeed was any such explanation
needed, for the postmasters-general very clearly discerned that the
proposed remedy would be worse, far worse, than the disease.
Cotton and Frankland were sorely perplexed. They knew perfectly well
that the true policy was to supplant and not to suppress; and experience
had taught them that to facilitate correspondence was to increase it.
These views they never ceased to inculcate; but their power of giving
effect to them was extremely limited. They could not lower the rates of
postage, for these were fixed by Act of Parliament. They could not set
up a new post nor alter an old one without the King's permission.
Neither was this permission so easy to obtain as it had been. The Post
Office revenue was settled upon William just as it had been settled upon
James; but while James kept the control in his own hands William left it
to his ministers.[14] Constitutionally sound as the change of practice
was, it had its drawback. James might care little for the convenience of
trade and commerce; but self-interest would prompt him not to withhold
facilities where these might be given at small cost and with the
prospect of comparatively large returns. Ministers, on the contrary,
even the most enlightened, concerned themselves mainly with the
balance-sheet of the year, and no promise of future and remote profit
would easily reconcile them to a diminution of present receipts. That
the Post Office must sow before it can reap is a truism which those who
hold the purse-strings have, at all times, found it hard to accept.
[14] Occasionally, even after William's accession, the
postmasters-general addressed the King direct. The remonstrance against
quartering soldiers upon postmasters was so addressed. This document is
dated the 1st of February 1692/3.
The ministers charged with the control of the Post Office were the Lords
of the Treasury. How little the postmasters-general were left to act on
their own responsibility will best be shewn by examples. Warwick,
according to the computation of those days, was sixty-seven miles from
London; but letters for that town passed through Coventry, thus
traversing a distance of eighty miles. And not only was the route a
circuitous one but it involved an additional charge for postage, the
rates for a single letter being, for eighty miles, 3d., and for less
than eighty, 2d. The postmasters-general desired to send the letters
direct; but even so simple a matter as this they were not competent to
decide for themselves. A change of route involved a reduction of charge;
and a reduction of charge might affect the King's receipts. Before,
therefore, the route could be altered, the King's assent had to be
signified through his appointed ministers. In 1696 a post was
established between Exeter and Bristol. This was the first cross-post
set up by authority in the British Isles. It ran twice a week, leaving
Exeter on Wednesdays and Saturdays at four in the afternoon, and
arriving at Bristol at the same hour on the following days. From Bristol
the return post, which went on Mondays and Fridays, started at ten in
the morning. But in this case as in the other, the postmasters-general
had not the power to act of their own motion. Hitherto letters between
the two towns had passed through London, and so had been liable to a
double rate of postage, to one rate of 3d. from Exeter to London, and to
another rate of equal amount from London to Bristol, or 6d. altogether.
For the future, the towns being less than eighty miles apart, the charge
would be 2d. Large as this reduction was, the postmasters-general
strongly advocated it. The existing post, they said, was both tedious
and costly, and had been little used in consequence. A direct post, it
was true, would require a small outlay to start it; but, this outlay
notwithstanding, the post was certain to prove remunerative. Increase
facilities for correspondence, and correspondence would assuredly
follow. Besides, it would promote trade and be an inestimable boon to
the public generally. To these representations the Treasury yielded; and
before three years were over, the postmasters-general had the
satisfaction of reporting that the new post was producing a clear profit
of more than L250 a year. But complaisant as the Treasury had been on
this occasion, their co-operation was fitful and uncertain. The Post
Office could not advance a step without incurring some trifling expense;
and the Treasury only too often acted as if to save expense, however
trifling, were the highest proof of statesmanship.
The postmasters-general were indeed heavily handicapped. Even with a
free hand their position would have been one of great embarrassment. But
bound hand and foot as they were, what could they do? They did what was
perhaps the very best thing that could have been done in the
circumstances. They grouped large numbers of post offices together and
let them out to farm. These groups, or branches as they were called,
spread over a wide area. The Buckingham branch, for instance, not only
included the county of Bucks but extended as far as Warwick. The
Hungerford branch comprised sixteen post offices in the counties of
Berks, Wilts, and Somerset. The Chichester branch covered a large part
of Surrey as well as Sussex; and the six remaining branches, for
eventually there were nine altogether, were equally extensive.
This, though by no means a perfect remedy for the existing evils, went
far to mitigate them. The farmer, of course, could not alter the rates
of postage; but with this single exception he was free from the
restraints which hampered the postmasters-general. Within the area over
which his farm extended he had only to consult his own interests; and,
happily, his own interests and the interests of the public were
identical. He improved and extended the posts, because to improve and
extend the posts added to the number of letters and made his farm more
profitable. He stopped the practice of levying gratuities on the
delivery of letters, because this practice, by adding to the cost of the
post, and so deterring persons from using it, diminished his own
receipts. For the same reason he took good care that no agent of his own
should omit to account for bye-letters, and, if other than his own
agents continued to send letters by irregular means, that it should not
be for want of facilities which he could himself supply.
To this community of interest as between himself and the public may be
ascribed the exceptional feelings with which, at the close of the
seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, the Post Office
farmer was regarded. The very name of farmer in connection with other
branches of the revenue had become a by-word for all that was rapacious
and extortionate. Only recently the farmer of the customs and the farmer
of the hearth money had been stamped out as moral pests. The Post Office
farmer, on the contrary, was welcomed wherever he came as a public
benefactor. In his case outrages and exactions such as had disgraced the
others were impossible. Before he could collect a single penny he had a
service to perform; and according as this service was performed well or
ill, he repelled or attracted custom.
The real secret of his welcome, however, was that he supplied an urgent
demand; and how urgent this demand was may best be judged by the
conditions on which he was glad to accept his farm. These conditions
were a lease of no more than three years, and a rent equivalent to the
highest amount which the post offices included in his farm had in any
one year produced. For his profits he had nothing to look to but the
increase of revenue resulting from his own management; and even of this
he received the whole only in the first year, when he would, presumably,
be establishing his plant. In subsequent years he received two-thirds,
the remaining third going to the Post Office. If under such conditions
as these it were possible to toil and grow rich, great indeed must have
been the field of operation.
Among those who were commissioned to supply the accommodation which the
postmasters-general were precluded from supplying themselves was one who
deserves to be specially mentioned. This was Stephen Bigg of Winslow, in
Buckinghamshire. Bigg farmed the Buckingham branch. He appears to have
possessed and to have deserved the confidence of the postmasters-general.
Of ample means, and endowed with no ordinary powers of organisation,
he had probably embarked on his undertaking less with a view to
profit than from a desire to improve the posts. Be that as itmay,
the same means which conduced to the one end conduced also to the
other; and when the time arrived for him to render an account of his
proceedings, he not only made over to the Post Office a handsome sum as
one-third share of the profits, but had earned for himself the gratitude
of the large district over which his farm extended.
His success in his own county encouraged him to enlarge the sphere of
his operations. Passing through Lancashire in the last year of the
century, he was struck with the wretched accommodation which the posts
afforded. As compared with those under his own control, they were slow,
irregular, and, owing to the system of gratuities, costly. On his return
to London he offered to take in farm the post offices of the whole
county. The offer was accepted, and a lease was signed fixing the rent,
as ascertained in the usual manner, at L2826. The history of this farm
is curious. Bigg had not long been engaged in his new undertaking before
the cross-post which had some few years before been set up between
Exeter and Bristol was extended to Chester. It is not very clear how
this interfered with Bigg's proceedings; but, as a matter of fact, it
appears to have tapped an important source of supply. On this being
pointed out to the postmasters-general, they at once, with that high
sense of justice which distinguished all their proceedings, released him
from his engagement and cancelled the lease.
The next county to which Bigg turned his attention was Lincolnshire. If
Lancashire had bad posts, Lincolnshire had next to none. Five post towns
were all of which Lincolnshire could boast--Stamford and Witham and
Grantham, Lincoln and Boston; and of these only two were off the great
north road which ran through the extreme west of the county. It is true
that other towns received letters; but they received them only by virtue
of a private arrangement, and heavily had they to pay for the luxury.
From Lincoln, for instance, the postmaster went twice a week to
Gainsborough and to Brigg, to Horncastle, Louth, and Grimsby, charging
as his own perquisite on each letter he collected or delivered the sum
of 3d. over and above the postage; but, so far as depended on any
official post, these and all the intervening towns were absolutely cut
off from the rest of the world.[15] Bigg procured a farm of the district
in favour of his son, and the lease was signed on the 4th of August
1705. On the 1st of October in the same year posts began to run, and
gratuities on the delivery of letters had become a thing of the past.
One penny on each letter collected was the only charge that remained
over and above the postage.
[15] In the case of Grimsby it is the more surprising that this should
have been so, because out of the only five towns in the kingdom which
the Act of 1660 mentions by name Grimsby is one. According to this Act
the post was to go there once a week.
It would be less than justice not to recognise the important part which
about this period the farmer played in the history of the Post Office;
nor is it possible not to admire the sagacity of those who, when they
found the posts to be slipping through their fingers, summoned this
extraneous agency to their aid. It was no mere venture which by a happy
accident happened to turn out well. The postmasters-general had foreseen
and foretold exactly what would be the result--that under a system of
farming the public would be better served, letters would become more
numerous, and the revenue, when it should revert to the Crown at the
termination of the lease, would be higher than when the lease began.
Next to Lincolnshire in poverty of the means of correspondence stood
Cornwall. Until 1704 the post to Falmouth, after leaving Exeter, ran
through Ashburton to Plymouth and thence along the south coast. Of the
towns in Mid Cornwall Launceston alone possessed a post office. At
others, indeed, letters were delivered, but only by virtue of a private
arrangement and on payment of a gratuity of 2d. apiece. No farmer,
unfortunately, offered his services here. But, what was perhaps the next
best thing, the gentry of the county, headed by Lord Granville, took the
matter up. Thus supported, the postmasters-general proceeded to concert
their arrangements. They desired the postmasters of Exeter, Plymouth,
and Launceston to meet together and prepare some scheme for facilitating
the correspondence of the midland towns. Such a scheme was soon
submitted, and, although it involved a cost of L260 a year, authority
for its adoption was not withheld. Henceforth the post for the extreme
west of England was to go, not by way of Plymouth, but direct from
Exeter to St. Columb, and thence through Truro to Falmouth. A single
post through a wide extent of country might ill accord with our present
views of what the public convenience requires; and yet at the beginning
of the eighteenth century Mid Cornwall, by the mere alteration of the
route for the Falmouth mails, obtained facilities for correspondence not
inferior to those enjoyed by other parts of the country.
The speed at which the post travelled at the end of the seventeenth
century only slightly exceeded four miles an hour. This slow rate of
progress, added to the fact that, except to the Downs, the post left
London only on alternate days, gave occasion for the not infrequent use
of expresses. These were mounted messengers sent specially for the
occasion. Whether for expresses there was any prescribed rate of speed
is not known; but it seems probable that their instructions were to go
as fast as they could. The charge for an express was 3d. a mile and 6d.
a stage, a stage being on the average about twelve miles. The total sum
which the Post Office received on this account during the half-year
which ended the 29th of September 1685 was L337.
Occasionally several expresses would be required at one time. In 1696,
on the discovery of Barclay's plot to assassinate the King, orders were
given to close the ports; and these orders the postmasters-general sent,
as they were instructed to do, by express. Some twenty years afterwards
similar orders were given, and an account is still extant shewing how on
the later, and probably the earlier, occasion they were carried into
effect. The English ports were sixty-two in number; and to only ten of
these were expresses sent direct from Lombard Street, the others being
either taken by the way or reached by branch expresses furnished by the
towns through which the expresses from London passed. Altogether the
distance traversed was 2526 miles, the number of stages 202, and the sum
which the Post Office received for the service from the Commissioners of
Customs L36:12:6.
From expresses it seems almost natural to pass to flying packets,
although between the two there is, so far as we are aware, no necessary
connection. What was a flying packet? The term "flying," at the end of
the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, was, no
doubt, used in the sense of running. For this season, writes Lord
Compton's private tutor to Lady Northampton, under date September 1734,
"the coach has done flying." In like manner "flying post," a term as old
as the Post Office itself,[16] meant nothing more than what in Scotland
was called a runner. Possibly because the idea of expedition was
conveyed by the term "flying," flying packet came to be regarded as
synonymous with express. "I despatch this by a flying pacquett," writes
Lord Townshend to the Duke of Argyll in 1715; and again, "My lord, after
writing what is above, a flying packet brings letters from Edinburgh of
the 12th." "By the flying pacquett which arrived last night," writes
Secretary Stanhope about the same date, "I received the honour of your
Grace's of the 21st inst." Here, by flying packet is obviously meant
express. And yet, curiously enough, this is a sense in which the
postmasters-general never employed the term. By them it was always
designed to signify the thing transmitted, and not the means of
transmission. What they called a flying packet might be sent by ordinary
post no less than by express; and when sending one by express they never
failed to state that it was being so sent. "You are therefore," they
write in 1706, "on the receipt of the bag so delivered to your care
[_i.e._ a small bag containing letters for the Court], to dispatch the
same imediately by a flying packet from Harwich to this office, and to
send a labil therewith expressing the precise time of the arrival and
your having dispatched the same per express." On receipt of the Holland
mail, they write again in the following year, "You are to take out the
Court letters, and to forward the same express by a flying packet
directed to Mr. Frankland at the Post Office at Newmarket." "The
inclosed box being recommended to our care by His Grace the Duke of
Queensberry, one of Her Majesty's principall Secretarys of State, we do
send the same by a flying pacquet.... You are to send us advice by the
first post of the safe comeing of this pacquet to your hands." In
short, flying packet, in its original sense, appears to have meant
simply a packet of which the enclosures were designed for some other
person than the one whose address the packet bore. Within the Post
Office it is occasionally necessary to employ technical terms which
would not be intelligible to persons without; but this, so far as we are
aware, is the only instance of the same term being used within and
without in two totally different senses.
[16] 1661. Feb. 3rd. Robert Reade to Charles Spellman. "Att the right
honourable my Lord Townshend's in the Old Palace Yard, Westminster." The
writer says that he has as yet received no command from Mr. Spellman or
from Lord Townshend, "nor do I wonder at it, because the flying post lay
drunke last Friday at Fakenham (being the day that he should have binn
at Thetford to take those letters then there which he should bring
hether on Saterday), and had not changed his quarter yesterday as I am
informed by one of Scott's men who saw him pittyfully drunke. The cuntry
complaines of him."--Historical Manuscripts Commission, Eleventh Report,
Appendix, Part iv. p. 25.
Of the state of the roads about this period the Highway Act 1691
affords, perhaps, not the least trustworthy evidence. To incidents which
have resulted in nothing more than temporary inconvenience travellers
are apt to give a touch of humorous exaggeration. An Act of Parliament,
on the contrary, deals with facts as they are, and concerns itself not
with imaginary ills. What, then, is to be thought of the condition of
the roads when provisions such as these were necessary?--No causeway for
horses was to be less than three feet in breadth, nor was the breadth of
any cartway leading to a market town to be less than eight feet. In
highways of less breadth than twenty feet no tree was to be permitted to
grow, or stone, timber, or manure to be heaped up so as to obstruct
progress; and hedges were to be kept trimmed, and boughs to be lopped
off, so as to allow a free passage to travellers, and not to intercept
the action of the sun and wind. Of any breach of these and other
provisions the road-surveyor was, on the Sunday next after it became
known to him, to give public notice in the parish church immediately
after the conclusion of the sermon.
Long after the passing of the Act of 1691, and perhaps in consequence of
it, the causeway formed an important feature of the roads. This
causeway, or bridle-track, ran down the middle; while the margin on
either side was little better than a ditch, and being lower than the
adjoining soil, and at the same time soft and unmade, received and
retained the sludge. But, in truth, the state of the roads concerned the
Post Office far less at the close of the seventeenth century than it
did at the close of the eighteenth. The mails were carried on horseback;
and, even so, they were carried mainly over the six great roads of the
kingdom. These roads, as compared with others, were good; and execrably
bad as we might now think them, they were probably not altogether ill
adapted to riding. The disasters which history refers to this period, as
illustrating the difficulties of travelling, occurred generally on the
cross-roads, and always with wheel traffic. For both wheel traffic and
horse traffic the six great roads had, probably from the earliest times,
been kept in some sort of repair. On the great Kent Road, nearly a
hundred years before, a young Dane, with his attendants, had on
horseback accomplished the distance between Dover and London in a single
day.[17] In 1642 couriers had ridden from London to York and back, a
distance of about 400 miles, in thirty-four hours,[18] a feat barely
possible except on the assumption that the road was in tolerable order.
Now and again, indeed, some postmaster, pleading for the remission of
his debt to the Crown, would urge the losses he had sustained in
horse-flesh by reason of the badness of the roads; but these roads were
always cross-roads--roads along which, if he had delivered letters, he
had delivered them on his own account. Of the six great roads as a means
of transit for the mails there were no complaints.
[17] The Forty-Sixth Annual Report of the Deputy-Keeper of the Public
Records, Appendix ii. p. 69.
[18] _Clarendon's Life_, vol. i. p. 135.
It was when the Post Office required something to be done which involved
transmission from place to place otherwise than on horseback that its
troubles began. Such an event occurred in 1696. Sir Isaac Newton was
then busy at the mint, devoting to the coinage those powers of intellect
which were soon to astonish the world. The clipping of the coin had gone
to such lengths that within the space of one year no less than four Acts
of Parliament were passed with a view to abate the evil. Milled money
was to take the place of hammered money. The clipped pieces had already
been withdrawn from circulation, and now a date was fixed after which no
broad pieces were to be received in payment of taxes except by weight.
This date was the 18th of November, and collectors of the public revenue
were allowed until the 18th of the following month to pay them over to
the Exchequer. If not paid over by the 18th of December they were to be
taken by weight and not by tale, and the collectors were to lose the
difference.
Here was a clear month's grace, and the postmasters were under a strong
inducement to see that the period was not exceeded. From Oxford the
hammered money was sent by barge. No sooner had it started than a severe
frost set in, and lasted for six weeks, the consequence being to delay
the arrival in London until the 7th of January. To take the money by
weight and not by tale would have been equivalent to a fine of about
L23. From this, however, the postmaster was excused on the ground that
the barge was the safest means of conveyance he could have employed. As
a "flying coach"--a coach which travelled at the speed of about four
miles an hour--had for many years been running between Oxford and
London, it must be assumed either that it had stopped for the winter or
else that for some cause or other, possibly on account of highwaymen, it
was not considered safe. From Sandwich, in Kent, the hammered money was
sent by hoy, which did not reach the Thames until the 20th of January.
Again the postmasters-general urged that the delay might be overlooked
on the ground that no earlier means of conveyance would have been safe.
Altogether, when the 18th of December arrived, more than L1000 of
hammered money was still outstanding in the postmasters' hands; and in
every case the want of conveyance or the badness of the roads was
assigned as the cause.
The penny post office, since it had passed into the hands of the
Government, had undergone but little change. Its headquarters had been
removed from Dockwra's house to seven rooms prepared for the purpose,
not, indeed, at the Post Office in Lombard Street, where want of space
was already beginning to be felt, but probably in the immediate
neighbourhood. It had also, in the language of the time, been eased from
a multitude of desperate debts. But the conditions on which it was
conducted remained as they had been,--the same limit of weight, the same
frequency of delivery, and the same rule as to compensation in case of
loss. Dockwra, with the view, no doubt, of propitiating the authorities,
had provided for the conveyance to Lombard Street of all general post
letters left at his receiving offices; and this duty, when he was
dispossessed, passed to the persons by whom those offices were kept. The
result was not satisfactory. The receivers, in their desire to get the
work done as cheaply as possible, employed to do it the most needy and
most worthless persons, persons who could not get employment elsewhere.
At length the miscarriages and losses became so frequent that the Post
Office appointed its own messengers to go round and collect the letters.
Nor is it by any means certain that the character of the receivers
themselves was above suspicion. The plain truth is that they were, with
few exceptions, keepers of public-houses. The collector who called there
periodically to adjust accounts complained that often four and even five
visits were necessary before he could obtain payment, and that the
opportunity was taken to pass upon him bad money.
Times have changed indeed. With public-houses for receiving offices,
with inn-keepers for postmasters, and with a considerable sum expended
annually on drink and feast money, it can hardly be denied that the Post
Office at the end of the seventeenth century was a good friend to the
licensed victualler. At the present time no postmaster may keep an inn;
no receiving office may be at a public-house; and not many years ago,
when a hotel with its stock-in-trade was purchased with a view to the
extension of the Post Office buildings in St. Martin's-le-Grand, some
excellent persons were shocked because, under the sanction of the
postmaster-general, were exposed for sale by auction some few dozen
bottles of port.
Of the extent to which the penny post was used at this period we are
not, so far as the suburbs are concerned, without some means of judging.
According to the original plan, which had been adhered to in its
integrity, one penny was to carry a letter within such parts of London
as lay within the bills of mortality. Beyond these limits one penny more
was charged; and this penny, which was technically called the second or
deliver penny, constituted the messengers' remuneration. As this soon
proved to be more than enough for its purpose, the messengers were put
on fixed wages, and the second pennies were carried to the credit of the
Post Office. Of the amounts derived from this source during the sixteen
years from 1686 to 1702 a record is still extant. The lowest amount for
any one year was L310, and the highest L377, the average being L336. It
would hence appear that for such parts of London as lay outside the
bills of mortality, for what in fact were at that time the suburbs, the
number of letters at the end of the seventeenth century was about 80,640
a year, or, counting 306 working days to the year, about 263 a day.
On one point the postmasters-general were determined, that the penny
post office should not be let out to farm. All overtures to this effect
they resolutely declined. The penny post and the general post had become
so interwoven, and, outside London, so short a distance separated the
limits within which the one ceased and the other began to operate, that
it was considered of the highest importance, both on the score of
convenience and as a protection against fraud, that the two posts should
not be under different management. The same considerations were not held
to apply to Dublin. In Dublin, rapidly as that city was now growing in
size[19] and population, a penny post, it was thought, could not
possibly answer. Yet in 1703 a spirited lady sought permission to set
one up. This was Elizabeth, Countess-Dowager of Thanet. A desire to
supplement a jointure, originally slender and now reduced by the
taxation consequent on the war, was the simple reason assigned for the
enterprise, and yet with the highest professions of public spirit it
might have been difficult to render to the community a more signal
service. The Duke of Ormonde, who was then Lord Lieutenant, approved the
proposal, and the postmasters-general had made preparations for carrying
it into effect. The new post was to extend for ten or twelve miles in
and around Dublin; no receiving office was to be within two miles of the
first stage of the general post; the lease was to be for fourteen years;
and one-tenth part of the clear profits was to go to the Crown. At the
last moment, however, the Treasury withheld their assent, and for no
less than seventy years from this time Dublin remained without a penny
post.
[19] Writing in 1709, Mr. Manley, the postmaster-general's deputy in
Dublin, says, "There are not less than a thousand more houses now than
there were at my first coming here [_i.e._ in 1703]. Besides, there are
many new streets now laid out and buildings erecting every day."
Of the internal affairs of the Post Office during the first fifteen
years of Cotton and Frankland's administration of it little need be
said. At first their only assistant was a clerk at L40 a year to copy
their letters. In 1694 they procured a new appointment to be created,
the appointment of Secretary to the Post Office. The Secretary to the
Post Office at the present time has duties to discharge, of the variety
and importance of which his mere title gives a very inadequate idea. In
1694 he was little more than a private secretary. One thing indeed he
had to do, to which a private secretary of our own time might perhaps
demur. During the night, if an express were wanted, he had to rise from
his bed and prepare the necessary instructions. The salary of the
appointment, originally L100, was raised to L200 in 1703. In this year a
solicitor was appointed, also at a salary of L200.
Two years later a transaction was completed on which the
postmasters-general had long set their hearts. This was the purchase of
a part of the Post Office premises in Lombard Street. As far back as
1688 Sir Robert Viner, the owner, had offered the freehold for sale, but
the Revolution had put a stop to further proceedings. In 1694, after
Sir Robert's death, his nephew and executor again proposed to sell, and
Sir Christopher Wren, on behalf of the Crown, surveyed the property with
a view to its purchase. On examination, however, the title proved to be
defective, and it was not until 1705, after the defect had been remedied
by Act of Parliament, that the Crown secured the freehold for the sum of
L6500. At the present time it matters not where Post Office servants
reside, so long as they attend punctually. At the beginning of the
eighteenth century it was considered important on account of the
unseasonable hours of attendance that they should reside "in and about"
the Post Office. The Post Office was, in effect, a barrack, and, except
the premises in Lombard Street, there were none in the immediate
neighbourhood that would well answer the purpose. Hence the anxiety to
purchase the freehold; and the anxiety was all the greater because it
had been threatened that if not purchased by the Crown the property
would be sold to the speculative builder or, as he was then called, the
projector.