Her Majesty's Mails

Accounts survive of the Post-Office as it existed towards the close of the seventeenth century, an outline of which, contributed to the Gentleman's Magazine by a correspondent in the early part of the present century, we must be excused for here presenting to the reader. The Postmaster-General of the period, under the Duke of York, was at that time the Earl of Arlington. The letters, it would seem, were forwarded from London to different parts on different days. For instance: Every Monday and Tuesday the Continental mails were despatched, part on the former day, the remainder on the latter. Every Saturday letters were sent to all parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland. On other days posts were despatched to the Downs, also to one or two important towns and other smaller places within short distances of London. The London Post-Office was managed by the Postmaster-General and a staff of twenty-seven clerks.[33] In the provinces of the three countries, there were 182 deputy-postmasters. Two packet-boats sailed between England and France; two were appointed for Flanders, three for Holland, three for Ireland, and at Deal two were engaged for the Downs. "As the masterpiece," so our authority winds up, "of all these grand arrangements, established by the present Postmaster-General, he hath annexed (sic) and appropriated the market-towns of England so well to the respective postages, that there is no considerable one of them which hath not an easy and certain conveyance for the letters thereof once a week. Further, though the number of letters missive was not at all considerable in our ancestors' day, yet it is now so prodigiously great (and the meanest of people are so beginning to write in consequence) that this office produces in money 60,000l. a year. Besides, letters are forwarded with more expedition, and at less charges, than in any other foreign country. A whole sheet of paper goes 80 miles for twopence, two sheets for fourpence, and an ounce of letter for but eightpence, and that in so short a time, by night as well as day, that every twenty-four hours the post goes one hundred and twenty miles, and in five days an answer to a letter may be had from a place distant 200 miles from the writer!"