[24] Minutes of council, Virginia, January 12, 1693, _Cal. S. P. Col. Am. and W. I._, 1693-1696, no. 21; minutes of council, Maryland, September 24, 1694, _ibid._, no. 1339. [25] Minutes of council, Maryland, _ibid._, no. 1816. [26] Hening's _Statutes at Large_, I. 436. [27] Minutes of council, Virginia, _Cal. S. P. Col. Am. and W. I._, 1693-1696, no. 20. [28] Hening's _Statutes at Large_, III. 112; _Journals of the House of Burgesses_, 1659/60--1693, pp. 444-446. [29] Minutes of council, Virginia, May 25, November 10, 1693; October 19, 25, 1694; May 3, July 25, 1695; _Cal. S. P. Col. Am. and W. I._, 1693-1696, nos. 371, 671, 1430, 1454, 1804, 1975. [30] _Spottswood Letters_ (published by Virginia Hist. Soc.), I. 22. [31] Minutes of council, New Hampshire (_N. H. Prov. Papers_, 1686--1722), p. 100. [32] G.P.O., _Treasury_, II. 256. [33] _Cal. Treasury Papers_, 1697-1702, p. 289 [34] G.P.O., _Treasury_, II. 253. [35] G.P.O., _Treasury_, VI. 205. John Hamilton was appointed deputy postmaster general by the queen in 1707. [36] _Coll. Mass. Hist. Soc._, third series, VII. 69. CHAPTER II Colonial post office under Queen Anne's act--Early packet service. For some years various circumstances had been arising which made it necessary that the post office in Great Britain and the colonies should be established on a footing different from that on which it then stood. The legislative union between England and Scotland in 1707 called for a uniform postal service throughout Britain; but without additional legislation the postmaster general of England could not dispose of the revenues of the post office in Scotland. The colonies were in their infancy when the English law of 1660 was enacted, and they were not mentioned in it at all. The only clause in that act which affected the colonies in any way was that which required all masters of ships who brought letters with them from beyond the seas, to deposit them at the nearest post office. There was no penalty attached to the disregard of this clause, and the attempt to induce the shipmasters to obey the law by paying them a penny for every letter they delivered in the English post office was pronounced by the auditors to be illegal, and there was a threat made that these payments would be disallowed in the accounts.