The History of the Post Office, from Its Establishment Down to 1836Joyce, Herbert
History
The History of the Post Office, from Its Establishment Down to 1836
Joyce, Herbert
Postal service -- Great Britain -- History
The inward mails, as soon as they reached the port of arrival, were
forwarded to London by express. From Harwich the letters for the Court,
or State letters,[24] as they were now beginning to be called, were sent
in advance of the ordinary mail, arrangements having been made at the
Brill to put these letters into a special bag by themselves. From
Falmouth, where no provision had been made for distinguishing one class
of correspondence from another, the same express carried the whole.
When, as was sometimes the case, packets of documents reached the port
unenclosed with the rest of the letters, these were to be chained to the
"grand mail"; and on the label was always to be inserted the number of
passengers that had arrived by the boat, so that the postmasters along
the line of road might know for how many persons they had to provide
horses. Between Falmouth and London the mails when sent express
travelled at the rate of about five miles an hour; and this speed
appears to have been regularly maintained. Expresses to carry a single
letter or a message, or to overtake the Lisbon mail, were continually
passing to and fro, and these of course went faster. From Harwich the
mails would sometimes reach London in eleven hours, being at the rate of
six and a half miles an hour; but on this line of road there was so much
irregularity that the time ordinarily occupied in the journey cannot be
stated with certainty.[25]
[24] In 1706, Court or State letters, for at this time the terms were
used indiscriminately, were defined to be letters directed to "the
Queen, His Royal Highness the Prince, the Lord High Treasurer, and the
two principal Secretarys of State and their clarks." Sometimes, but more
rarely, they were called "Queen's letters."
[25] Here is one among many similar complaints addressed by the
postmasters-general to the packet agent at Harwich: "We admire to find
the two Bags with the States letters brought over by the Prince and
Dispatch which arrived at Harwich June 21st at 7 in the morning should
not be dispatcht till 10 the same day; as also at the comeing in of the
Mayls, one of which being dispatcht at 12 arrived here at 11 at night,
yet the other came not till 7 next morning."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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