For the regulation of the posts the earliest instructions of which we have any record were issued by Queen Elizabeth. Every "post" was to keep and have constantly ready two horses at least, with suitable "furniture." He was to have at least two bags of leather well lined with baize or cotton, and a horn to blow "as oft as he meets company" or four times in every mile. He was, after receiving a packet, to start within fifteen minutes, and to run in summer at the rate of seven miles an hour and in winter at the rate of five. The address of the packet and the day and the hour at which he received it were to be carefully entered in a book to be kept for the purpose. But the packets which were thus to be treated were only such as should be on the Queen's affairs or the affairs of State. "All others" are dismissed in a word. These, the instructions state, are "to passe as by-letters." To pass as by-letters probably means that the letters were to go when and as best they might, but that the post was not to go for the purpose of taking them. This view is confirmed by an order of the subsequent reign, that "no pacquets or letters," except such as were on the King's affairs, should "binde any poste to ride therewith in post." But be the meaning what it may, the expression seems to shew that even in the reign of Elizabeth letters other than State letters had begun to be sent to the post-houses, and that such letters, if barely recognised, were yet not excluded. But the conveyance of the Sovereign's letters was not the only purpose which the posts as originally established were designed to serve. Another and hardly less important purpose was that there should be stationed and in constant readiness, at given distances along the chief roads of the kingdom, a relay of horses by which persons travelling on their Sovereign's concerns, even though not the bearers of letters, might pass between one part of the country and another. Of this second purpose a few words implanted in the English language, such as post-horse, post-boy, and travelling-post, are all that we have now left to remind us. But long after the public had been admitted to the free use of the post, the two objects of providing for letters and providing for travellers continued to be treated as inseparable. Hence the history of the posts during the seventeenth century and far into the eighteenth becomes complicated with the history of travelling.[2] [2] The two posts were, at first, distinguished by different names. The travellers' post was called "The thorough poste," and the letter post was called "The Poste for the Pacquet."