The postage or carriage of letters was by no means neglected, and grew into a regular system by slow degrees. Edward IV. stationed men every twenty miles, whose duty it was to carry despatches as fast as they could gallop for this distance, and to hand them on to the next man. Edward I. had messengers, who took charge of the despatches of the Officers of State, the Constables of Castles, and the Sheriffs of Counties. The messenger was paid at the rate of a shilling a day. Some tenants held their land on the condition of carrying the lord’s letters. There was a regular mail sent off by the Venetians from London to Venice every month. It included the letters of the merchants of both cities. Private gentlemen also sent their servants to carry letters. In this way the Paston correspondence was carried on. If this correspondence be taken as an average example of the letter-writing of the time, there must have been great need of an organised postal system. The internal trade was managed in the summer by means of long strings of pack-horses; in the winter there was very little travelling and no traffic. Probably messengers were sent about at least on the King’s service, which could not be stopped, all the winter, but the state of the roads forbade any but the most necessary travelling. Yet they were not so bad in the fourteenth century as they were in the seventeenth, three hundred years later. Here are a few notes:— It was customary after the arrest of criminals and disorderly persons, at the dragging of a man on a hurdle, or at the putting of a man in pillory, to precede the prisoner and his guards with music—trumpets, pipe, and tabor. The object, of course, was to call general attention to the culprit, and to increase the shame of his punishment. Lovers gave and exchanged a true-love-knot; some of these knots had four loops, for which reason the herb paris, which had four leaves set against each other, was known as True Love. A great feast was continued for three days, during which the company continued to eat, drink, sing, dance, and look on at games. It was a common practice with friends to take oaths of fraternity and friendship one with another; sometimes even to die for each other if the occasion should demand this proof of friendship.