Her Majesty's Mails

No inconsiderable part of the Committee's time was taken up in the production and examination of records, acts, and precedents bearing on the subject. The officers of the State Paper Office and other high Government functionaries produced records and State papers of great importance, from which we learn many interesting particulars of early postal history. At some risk of being charged with anachronism, we have thought it desirable to introduce these details in the order of the subject under treatment. James I. in establishing a foreign post, was more anxious that Government secrets should not be disclosed to foreign countries, "which cannot be prevented if a promiscuous use of transmitting foreign letters and packets should be suffered," than that the post should be of use to traders and merchants. There was a motive for the jealous monopoly of postal communications; and if the proclamation from which the above is taken (Rymer's Foedera) is not clear on the subject, the following extract from a letter written by the one of James's secretaries to the other, Lord Conway, is sufficiently explicit: "Your Lordship best knoweth what account we shall be able to give in our place in Parliament of that which passeth by letters in and out of the land, if every man may convey letters as he chooseth." Sir John Coke, the writer of the above, would seem to have got rid of the difficulty in a thorough manner, if we may believe an English letter-writer addressing a friend in Scotland, when he wrote, "I hear the posts are waylaid, and all letters taken from them and brought to Secretary Coke."[118]