On Saturday nights the penny post closed, in winter at six, and in summer at seven. On other nights of the week, Sundays excepted, it must have remained open to at least 9 o'clock, for at that hour the country letters were collected from the receiving offices and carried to the General Post Office. Besides Sundays, there were eight days in the year on which the post did not go, viz. three days at Christmas, two days at Easter, two days at Whitsuntide, and also the 30th of January, the anniversary of the death of King Charles the First. In spite of the enormous advantages it conferred, the penny post was not at first received with unqualified satisfaction. Some fanatics denounced it as a Popish contrivance; and Lord Macaulay tells us how the porters complained that their interests were attacked, and tore down the placards on which the scheme was announced to the public. Even unprejudiced persons and persons who had no interests to protect complained that a large number of things were posted and not delivered. This Dockwra himself admitted, explaining that it was due to the illegible writing of the address or to the omission of some important particular by which the persons addressed might be identified, the omission of their trade, or of the signs which their houses bore, or of some well-known place or object in their vicinity. The manifest utility of the enterprise, however, soon bore down all opposition; and in little more than a year from its introduction the penny post, though weighted with a scheme of insurance, was very nearly paying its own expenses. The establishment of the penny post had one effect which had probably not been contemplated. It increased largely the number of letters for the country. Every man had now a post office at his own door. It is true that Dockwra's four or five hundred receiving offices were intended primarily for town letters; but country letters might be posted there, and, as we have seen, were collected at a stated hour every evening. Hitherto the case had been very different. Up to the 1st of April 1680, incredible as it may appear, the General Post Office in Lombard Street was the only receptacle for letters in the whole of London. There and nowhere else could letters be posted. Little wonder if, before 1680, persons whom the cost of postage might not deter from writing were yet deterred by their distance from the Post Office.