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 60,000_l._ 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!" FOOTNOTES: [26] There were many exceptions, of course. Numbers of innkeepers were also the postmasters of the period. Taylor, the water-poet, travelling from London into Scotland in the early part of the century, has described one of these men, in his _Penniless Pilgrimage_, as a model Boniface. [27] "The Grand Concern of England explained in several Proposals to Parliament."--Harl. MSS. 1673. [28] Chamberlayne's Present History of Great Britain. 1673. [29] Private coaches were started in London at the time when the stage- or hackney-coaches were introduced, and Mr. Pepys secured one of the first. Mightily proud was he of it, as any reader of his _Diary_ will have learnt to his great amusement.