The Irish mail service was the first to boast a regular sailing packet.[430] The postal expenditure for the year 1598 included £130 for a bark to carry letters and despatches between Holyhead and Dublin, and an additional vessel was hired occasionally for the same purpose.[431] At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Queen Elizabeth ordered packets to be established at Milford Haven and Falmouth to ply between England and Ireland. This order was probably temporary, being intended to furnish a means of communication only during Essex's expedition.[432] In 1649 the port of departure for the Irish packets was changed from Holyhead to Portinllain in Carnarvon and at the same time the land stages were altered to meet the new conditions.[433] Prideaux reported the same year that the cost of these packets averaged £600 a year.[434] [430] _Cal. S. P. Ire._, 1574-85, p. 401. [431] _Rep. Com._, 1844, xiv, app., p. 37 (15). [432] _Cal. S. P. D._, 1598-1601, p. 107. [433] _Ibid._, 1648-49, p. 210. [434] _Jo. H. C._, 1648-51, p. 385. In 1653 the Council of State gave orders for the revival of the old packet service between Milford and Waterford. At the same time Chester was substituted for Portinllain as the point of departure on the English side, and mails were carried weekly between the two countries by the Milford and Chester Packets.[435] The establishment of these boats was made one of the conditions under which the post was farmed in the same year.[436] The situation of Holyhead, however, was so much in its favour that in 1693 a contract was signed for the conveyance of the mails between Holyhead and Dublin. Mr. Vickers, the contractor, agreed to maintain three packet boats for this purpose for £450 a year. He also undertook to provide two boats for the mail service between Portpatrick and Donaghadee. When the Scotch was separated from the English Post Office in 1695, three packet boats came under the control of Scotland.[437] Upon the separation of the British and Irish Posts in 1784, it was provided that each office should receive its own proportion of the inland postage collected on letters passing between the two countries. The packet service between the two countries continued to be managed by the English Postmaster-General, to whom all receipts were forwarded. In return for this they were required to pay to the Irish Office a sum not exceeding £4000 a year. This was to be the rule until Ireland had established packet boats of her own.[438] [435] _Cal. S. P. D._, 1644, pp. 6, 29; 1641-43, p. 501. [436] _Cal. S. P. D._, 1652-53, pp. 312, 449. [437] _Cal. T. P._, 1557-1696, p. 308. [438] 24 Geo. III, c. 6.