Her Majesty's Mails

It does not appear why Prideaux's connexion with the Post-Office was dissolved, nor yet exactly when. Probably his more onerous duties as first law officer of the Government demanded all his time and energy. However it was, we hear no more of him after his victory over the then formidable City magnates. During the remaining years of Cromwell's life, the revenues of the Post-Office, wonderfully augmented by Prideaux's management, were farmed for the sum of 10,000l. a year to a Mr. John Manley. During Manley's tenure of office, the proceeds must either have increased with marvellous rapidity, or the contracts were under estimated; for when, in 1659, Manley left the Post-Office, he calculated that he had cleared in that and some previous years the sum of 14,000l. annually. A Parliamentary Committee instituted a strict scrutiny into the proceeds of the office in the first year of the Restoration, at which period it became necessary that a new Postmaster-General should be appointed. It was agreed by the members of this Committee to recommend that a much higher sum be asked from the next aspirant to the office, inasmuch as they found that Mr. Manley, instead of over-estimating his receipts, had erred on the other side, and that they could not have come far short of the annual sum of 20,000l. The result of the Committee's investigation was, that Mr. Henry Bishop was only appointed to the vacant place on his entering into a contract to pay to Government the annual sum of 21,500l. In estimating the increase of Post-Office revenue from year to year, it must be borne in mind that a considerable item in the account was derived from the monopoly in post-horses for travelling, which monopoly had been secured under Cromwell's ordinances, and re-secured under 12 Car. II. c. 35. By this Act, no traveller could hire horses for riding post from any but authorized postmasters.[17] This statute remained in force, under some limitations, till 1779.