ARCHBISHOP PARKER _to_ SIR W. CECIL. SIR, According to the Queen's Majesty's pleasure, and your advertisement, you shall receive a form of prayer, which, after you have perused and judged of it, shall be put in print and published immediately, &c. &c. From my house at Croyden, this 22d July, 1566, at four of the clock, afternoon. Your honour's alway, MATTHEW CANT. This letter is thus endorsed by successive postmasters, according to the existing custom. Received at Waltham Cross the 23d of July, at nine at night. Received at Ware the 23d of July at 12 at night. Received at Croxton the 24th of July, between 7 and 8 of the morning. So that his Grace's letter, which would appear to have been so important as that one or more messengers were required to travel night and day in order to deliver it at the earliest possible moment, took 40 hours to travel 63 miles. 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.