These letters afford a fair idea of the measures which were being applied to the service under Lord Arlington's Postmaster-Generalship. The paucity of information left to us of the internal working of the Post Office in its earlier years, is doubtless due to the fact that the books in use under the various Farmers of the Post were removed at the termination of each farm, being the property of the farmer, and in most cases these books have disappeared with time. Fortunately, however,[5] one set of books remains, that referring to the period from 1672 to 1677, when, under Lord Arlington, Colonel Roger Whitley was Deputy Postmaster-General. These books contain the correspondence with the deputy postmasters throughout, the country, and afford much interesting information as to the state of the posts in that limited term. Colonel Roger Whitley, as appears by the _Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports_, was either the individual of that name who, when Governor of Aberystwith Castle, had to surrender to the Parliamentary troops, or a son of that person. He was, at anyrate, an attendant upon King Charles II. during his exile, and, in the semblance of a Court then maintained, he held the position of a member of the Privy Chamber. A letter is extant in which the king begs from Whitley the loan of £100. At the Restoration, Whitley received the appointment of Harbinger to the King, and now the appointment of Deputy Postmaster-General. It is not improbable that he was a Cheshire man, from the facts that his daughter was married to Sir John Mainwaring of Peover, in that county, and that Colonel Whitley himself, or his son, was Mayor of Chester in 1693. During the time of Whitley's Deputy Postmaster-Generalship, he represented Flint in the House of Commons. Andrew Marvell says of him that by the farm of the Post Office "he got a vast estate." In some loose sheets prefaced to the first volume of Whitley's office letter-books, referring apparently to the year 1667, is a schedule showing a rearrangement of the salaries of the deputy postmasters in the country, when Lord Arlington assumed the farm of the Post Office. The fragment of the document on the opposite page shows how the matter was arranged. For the renewal of their deputations under the new Postmaster-General, the postmasters were mulcted in a fine or payment equal to one year's salary as adjudged to be proper to the several offices, the rate allowed being about 30s. per mile per annum. Now, as the mails, as a rule, at this time travelled three times a week, the rate per single-journey mile carrying the mail works out at about twopence and one-third of a penny.