Her Majesty's Mails
William Lewins53[22] Stowe's Survey of London. [23] Stark's Picture of Edinburgh, p. 144. [24] "Letters and Despatches relative to the taking of the Earl of Ormond, by O'More. A.D. 1600." [25] In 1784, the line of Milford Haven packets was re-established, the rates of postage between London and Waterford to be the same as between London and Dublin, viâ Holyhead. The packets were, however, soon withdrawn. CHAPTER III. ON OLD ROADS AND SLOW COACHES. If we seem in this chapter to make a divergence from the stream of postal history, it is only to make passing reference to the tributaries which helped to feed the main stream. The condition of the roads, and no less the modes of travelling, bore a most intimate relationship, at all the points in its history, to the development of the post-office system and its communications throughout the kingdom. The seventeenth century, as we have seen, was eventful in important postal improvements; the period was, comparatively speaking, very fruitful also in great changes and improvements in the internal character of the country. No question that the progress of the former depended greatly on the state of the latter. James the First, whatever might be his character in other respects, was indefatigable in his exertions to open out the resources of his kingdom. The fathers of civil engineering, such as Vermuyden and Sir Hugh Myddleton, lived during his reign, and both these eminent men were employed under his auspices, either in making roads, draining the fen country, improving the metropolis, or in some other equally useful scheme. The troubles of the succeeding reign had the effect of frustrating the development of various schemes of public utility proposed and eagerly sanctioned by James. Under the Commonwealth, and at intervals during the two succeeding reigns, many useful improvements of no ordinary moment were carried out.