The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

From Dowgate Hill the General Post Office was removed, at some date in the first half of the seventeenth century, to the sign of the Black Swan in Bishopsgate. These were most probably what we now call licensed premises: at any rate Pepys has recorded that on one occasion he went “to the musique-meeting at the Post Office.” Then happened the Great Plague of 1664-1665, and we have the benefit of a report from the senior officer as to the way in which the visitation affected the Post Office. “That dureing the late dreadfull sickness when many of the members of the office desert the same and that betweene 20 and 30 of the members dyed thereof, your petitioner, considering rather the dispatch of your Majesty's service than the preservation of himself and family, did hazard them all, and continued all that woefull tyme in the said office to give dispatch and conveyance to your Majesty's letters and pacquetts, and to preserve your revenue arising from the same.” The writer was evidently a pushful official who expected recognition of his services, and in yet a fuller petition for a reward for keeping the Post Office open during the Plague he begs that he may have an order to the Commissioners of Prizes to deliver to him some brown and white sugar granted to him by His Majesty from the ship Espérance of Nantes, condemned as a prize at Plymouth. I hope he obtained his sugar: in our days we should have made him a K.C.B. Then came the Great Fire of 1666, and the Post Office was burnt out. In an old newspaper of 1666 may be seen this advertisement: “The General Post Office is for the present held at the Two Black Pillars in Bridges Street over against the Fleece Tavern, Covent Garden, till a more convenient Place can be found in London.”