a letter beyond eighty miles, and 2d. a letter within or to eighty miles; and to make return three times weekly." The "undertakers" thus started upon their venture by reducing the minimum rate for a letter from 6d. to 2d., and by running the mails three times a week instead of once as hitherto. Prideaux tried to put down this combination by reducing his rates and establishing extra mails, but without avail; for the public were so grateful for the reform introduced by the undertakers, that they gave him no encouragement, and he was obliged eventually to give up the business. As Prideaux was written to by the Council of State about neglects on the Portsmouth Road on the 23rd May 1652, his giving up the Posts must have been subsequent to this date. The rival concerns were carried on, as might be supposed, in a spirit of bitter antagonism, in which the deputy postmasters had their share. Prideaux's agents on one occasion murdered a mounted post riding with the opposition mail, and threw his body into a river; and near the same place a son of one of the old postmasters assaulted another of the rival messengers with a drawn sword. The account goes on to say, that "these practices not accomplishing his (Prideaux's) aim, an Order from the Council of State was procured--not to stop us or our mails, that being too apparently illegal, but in such doubtful terms as might affright the weak from sending their letters to us. Libels also were posted up and down the city by him or his agents, signifying that our mails should be stopped, but his go free. This project failing, Mr. Prideaux, out of a hypocritical pretence of keeping the Sabbath day, by his own warrant commanded his postmasters to require the justices of peace in the several counties to stop our mails on the Sabbath, whereas his own went free." ... "Whilst we were labouring amidst these difficulties, it pleased God to devolve authority on such worthy persons as had from the beginning countenanced us in our work; who, in their first entrance on their management of public affairs, intrusted us with their ordinary and extraordinary despatches." This appears to refer to the period of the breaking up of the Long Parliament, 20th April 1653, when the undertakers "were the only persons who performed the service of conveying the State's despatches."