564 POST-OFFICE [HISTORY. Cr ?, m " 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 Wither- ings s patent (assigned to Lord Warwick), and they pro nounced 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." l It is evident, therefore, that any prohibition to carry letters must be by Act of Parliament, to have force of law. Under In 1650 an attempt was made by the common council f 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 Attorney- General 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 in trenching on the rights of the parliament, some other means would have to be devised for payment of the post masters. 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. There upon 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 John 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 event ually 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. 2 The new letter-carriers were 1 Journals of the House of Commons, ii. 81, 82, 95, 470, 493, 500, 501, 658 sq, ; Journals of the House of Lords, v. 343, 387, 450, 469- 473, 500 sq. ; Report from Secret Committee on the Post-Office, Appendix, 60-69. 2 Some instructive illustrations of this may be seen (in the state- paper department of the General Record Office) among the correspond ence between secretary Sir John Coke and Lord Conway, and also in many other state letters, as well after the outbreak of the great rebel lion as before it. And there is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford (MS. llawlinson, A. 477) a curiously minute account of the methods alleged to have been pursued in the systematic and periodical examination of letters entrusted to the post-office. The paper is not authenticated by any signature, and is undated. But it is an original document of the time of Charles II., addressed to Mr Bridgman, clerk of the council, and drawn up in order to recommend the adoption of a like practice, but with greater dexterity in the manipulation than was used by Dr Dorislaus and Samuel Morland, who, according to this narrative, formed the Cromwellian board of examiners for post-office letters, and who read without exception all that were addressed to foreign parts. reforms. (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 A Penny Post : or a Vindication of the Liberty and Birthright of every English man in carrying Merchants and other Man s letters, against any Restraint of Farmers, &c. It is very probable that this publication 3 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. 4 The Government of the Restoration continued to farm Uude the post-office upon conditions very similar to those im- Charl posed by the Act of 1657, but for a larger sum. Henry II- 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 pro posing to frank all letters addressed to or sent by members of parliament during the session was, after considerable debate, ultimately Dejected by the Lords. But the indent ure 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 5 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 postmaster- general, 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 com prising 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." 6 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 postmaster- general should " take effectual care for the conveyance of all bye-letters, by establishing correspondences ... in all considerable market -towns with the next adjacent post- stage," and the rights of the postmasters as to hiring horses were again emphasized. 3 There is a copy in the library of the British Museum, from which Mr II. B. Wheatley has given the abstract quoted above. 4 Journals of the House of Commons, vii. 627. 5 The trusted friend but not always the trusted adviser of the duke of Ormonde. O Neill s correspondence exists among the duke s papers, in part at Kilkenny Castle, in part (extensively) amongst the Carte MSS. in the Bodleian ; and it abounds in incidental illustrations of postal administration in both England and Ireland.
6 Quoted in Gent. Mag. (1815), xxxv. pp. 309, 310.