The abuses identified with the letters of members of Parliament were of wider scope. Lavishly as members might use their names as a means of franking, the use was not confined to themselves and their friends. On the part of the London booksellers and other persons who might hesitate to incur the risk of imitating another man's signature it had become a common practice to assume the name of some member of Parliament, and under that name to have their letters addressed to them at particular coffee-houses; and as their correspondents in the country adopted a similar device, the letters passing to and fro escaped postage. Cotton and Frankland had not been long at the Post Office before this practice arrested their attention, and in 1698 the warrant which granted to the members of the new Parliament the usual exemption from postage was expressly designed to check the abuse. "To prevent abuses," thus the warrant ran, "that were formerly practised[39] to the prejudice of our revenue by divers persons who, though they were not members, yet presumed to indorse the names of members of Parliament on their letters and direct their letters to members of Parliament which really did not belong to them," our will and pleasure is that members "will constantly with their owne hands indorse their names upon their owne letters, and not suffer any other letters to pass under their ffrank, cover, or direction but such as shall concerne themselves." Successive warrants issued between 1698 and 1711 were expressed in the same or nearly the same terms, what little variations there were only serving to shew that the practice against which the warrants were directed had become more general. [39] In documents intended for the public eye it was the practice of the postmasters-general--and it was by them that these warrants were prepared--to speak of an existing abuse as an abuse that was past. This was, of course, to avoid giving offence. But now the postmasters-general could no longer conceal from themselves that, unwarrantable as might be the liberties taken with members' names, the members themselves were by no means blameless. That they were scattering their franks with boundless profusion was beyond doubt; and the question which the postmasters-general set themselves to solve was, How was this profusion to be checked? As the best expedient they could devise, they prepared for the Queen's signature a fresh warrant which, as a hint to members for the regulation of their own conduct, referred to Her Majesty's condescension in allocating a portion of the Post Office revenue towards defraying the expenses of the war. Of previous warrants copies had been posted up in the lobby of the House and in the Speaker's chamber. Of the present warrant copies were to be distributed with the votes so as to secure that every member should have a copy.