Before proceeding further, it is necessary to revert to the year 1649. In this year the Common Council of London set up a rival post of their own on the several roads leading from London, and, as a report of Prideaux states, they "have employed a natural _Scott_ into the north who has gone into Scotland and hath settled postmasters (others than those for the State) on all that road." The alleged reason for this proceeding was, that the Common Council required another weekly conveyance of letters for their uses. They were pressed to come before Parliament in order that they might set forth their claim to the right of setting up an independent post, but they declined to do so. Prideaux represented that his rivals, besides "intrenching upon the rights of Parliament," would cause a decrease of his revenue; and, under these circumstances, he could not be expected to carry on the business of the Posts; for under the arrangement then existing, the "charge of all the postmasters of England were taken off the State." These representations were made by Prideaux in March 1650. The Government was more arbitrary than particular as to the strict observance of precedents in law, and the Posts of the Common Council of London were promptly put down. But shortly after Witherings' death, in 1651, a combination of men, relying upon the votes of the Parliament of 1642, under which it was declared that the Secretaries of State and Witherings had no exclusive monopoly in the carriage of letters, succeeded in setting up a system of posts in opposition to the officially recognised posts of Prideaux, and actually drove the latter from the field. The men who conducted this campaign against Prideaux were--Clement Oxenbridge, Richard Blackwall, Francis Thomson, and William Malyn. Oxenbridge was Checkmaster to the Collector for Prize Goods (1652); Blackwall was at the same period a Collector for Prize Goods; Thomson is probably a man of the name who, in 1654, resigned his interest in Windsor Little Park and other property (of course, for a consideration), which he had purchased some time before from the State; Malyn appears to have been connected with one or other of the public offices. These men called themselves "the first undertakers for reducing letters to half the former rates." They tell us that Prideaux continued to exact the high rate of 6d. for every letter. In the account given by them of their proceedings, they say that:--"The undertakers, observing this extortive rate to be held up, as well in Witherings' lifetime as after his death,--when the pretence of that illegal grant was ended in point of limitation--and observing that the whole benefit went into one private hand, ... they conceived it would be a work both acceptable to the State and beneficial to the people, to contrive the abatement of those excessive rates; and therefore, maugre all oppositions and abuses of the monopolizer and his interest, they at first dash adventured on postage at the rate of 3d.