[52] Among these robberies there was, so far as we are aware, only one which possessed any feature of interest; and in this case the interest was of a psychological nature. Gardner, a postman, was stopped by three highwaymen on Winchmore Hill, and, on his refusing to give up his letters, they murdered him. Atrocities of this kind had been frequent, and executions had failed to check them. But the resources of civilisation were not exhausted. Lord Lovell--or the Earl of Leicester, as he had now become--waited upon the King and procured His Majesty's assent that, after execution, the highwaymen's bodies should be hung in chains. To be hanged was one thing; after hanging, to have one's body suspended in chains was another. This was an indignity to which no respectable criminal should be called upon to submit. Such would seem to be the idea conveyed in the following letter which Leicester received:-- To the Right Hon. the EARL OF LEICESTER, at HOLKHAM, NORFOLK. THURSDAY, _Oct. 1753_. MY LORD--I find that it was by your orders that Mr. Stockdale was hung in chains. Now, if you don't order him to be taken down, I will set fire to your house and blow your brains out the first opportunity. Stockdale was clerk to a proctor in Doctors Commons. An important legal decision, with which the Post Office had only the remotest concern, an improved system of expresses following as a natural consequence from circumstances over which the Post Office had no control, a simple contrivance to facilitate the posting of letters, and an acceleration of the mail between London and Edinburgh--this as the record of forty or fifty years' progress is assuredly meagre enough; and yet we are not aware of any omission. The plain truth is that during these years, except in the matter of bye and cross-post letters, the Post Office had retrograded rather than advanced. The rates of postage were higher now than at the beginning of the century. More, probably, than one-half of the public Acts of Parliament which passed during the reigns of the first two Georges were Acts for repairing and widening the roads. The roads had kept steadily improving; and the posts had failed to keep pace with them. While travellers travelled faster than in the reign of Queen Anne, letters were still being conveyed at a speed not exceeding five miles an hour. The friendly relations which had existed between the postmasters-general and the merchants existed no longer. These had been replaced by feelings of estrangement and animosity. Under Cotton and Frankland and under Frankland and Evelyn the Post Office enjoyed a reputation for personal integrity; but even this claim to distinction had now disappeared. Barbutt, the secretary, had recently retired under a cloud. Bell, the comptroller of the inland office, had been arrested on a charge of fraud.[53] Denzil Onslow, the