Her Majesty's Mails

FOOTNOTES: [1] Xenophon. [2] Herodotus. [3] Travels of Marco Polo, pp. 139, 140. [4] Camden's Annals. [5] Froude's History, Vol. III. p. 185. [6] Surveye of London, Vol. II. [7] Froude's History, Vol. III. p. 94. [8] Smiles's Lives of the Engineers, Vol. I. [9] Historian of Craven, speaking of the close of the sixteenth century. CHAPTER II. THE RISE OF THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE. It was reserved for the Stuarts to organize for the first time in England a regular system of post communication, the benefits of which should be shared by all who could find the means. England was behind other European nations in establishing a public letter-post. It was not until the foreign post had been in existence a hundred years, and until the foreigners had drawn particular attention to their postal arrangements by their constant disputes, that the English government established a general post for inland letters, similar to the one whose benefits "the strangers" had enjoyed even prior to the reign of Henry the Eighth. Little progress towards this end was made in the reign of the first James, if we except a better organization for the conveyance of official despatches. At the same time, it ought to be stated, that the improved organization here referred to was the groundwork for the subsequent public post.