[47] Lord Sandwich was postmaster-general in 1768.
[48] This, although unknown probably to the postmasters until now, was no new discovery. As far back as 1674 John Ogilby had called attention to the erroneous reckonings in vogue. Ogilby had been commissioned by Charles the Second to survey and measure the principal roads of England, and having performed his task he published the result of his labours in a large folio volume. In the preface to an abridgment of this work, published in 1711, he thus wrote: "The distances are all along reckoned in measur'd miles and furlongs, beginning from the Standard in Cornhil, so that the reader must not be surprized when he finds the number of miles set down here exceed the common computation. For example, from London to York are computed but 150 miles, whereas by measure the distance is 192 miles. And computation being very uncertain, it must be granted that no exactness could be observed but [by] adhering constantly to the standard-mile of 1760 yards, which contains eight furlongs."
[49] This explains why in the Road Books of the time the distance between two places is stated differently in two parallel columns under the initials C and M, the one being the computed and the other the measured distance.
[50] 26 Geo. II. cap. xiii. sec. 7.
[51] The box into which the letters fell was at this time an open one, i.e. without a cover and movable. It was not until 1792 that the letter-box was closed, fixed, and locked.
[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.
[53] Elsewhere we have expressed a desire to avoid, as far as possible, the use of technical terms, and the propriety of this course will probably not be disputed when we state that the charge against Bell was that having "crowned the advanced letters" he failed to account for the proceeds. An "advanced" letter was one on which the postage had been advanced, a letter which, having been undercharged in the country, was surcharged in London. To "crown" a letter was to impress it with the stamp of the Crown, denoting that the surcharge had been made. Virtually, therefore, the charge against Bell was that he had embezzled the surcharges.