[5] The Proclamation enjoined that on letters "to Plymouth, Exeter, and with the two other places in that road," Witherings should "take the like port that now is paid, as near as possibly he can."
[6] Her Majesty's Mails, by William Lewins, p. 19.
[7] The term "postage," in the sense of a charge upon a letter, is comparatively modern. The Act of 1764 is the first so to use it. The term is indeed used in the Act of 1660, but there it signifies the hire of a horse for travelling. "Each horse's hire or postage."
[8] Lord Macaulay's words are:—"The revenue of this establishment was not derived solely from the charge for the transmission of letters. The Post Office alone was entitled to furnish post-horses; and, from the care with which this monopoly was guarded, we may infer that it was found profitable."
[9] Curiously enough, the Post Office Report for 1854 gives the year as 1683; but this is an error.
[10] Here also the Post Office Report for 1854 is in error. It says that at first there was no limit to the weight of a packet.
[11] The exact date of incorporation is uncertain. The decision in the Court of King's Bench was given in Michaelmas term 1682; but the first public advertisement of the penny post does not appear to have been issued by the Postmaster-General until the 11th of March 1684/5.
[12] In the reigns of Charles II. and James II. the practice of billeting, illegal as it then was, was necessarily resorted to in order to provide quarters for the troops they maintained in time of peace; and even billeting in private houses was not unknown. An Act of 1689, the second Mutiny Act, as it is called, while forbidding billeting in private houses, authorised it at "inns, livery stables, ale houses, victualling houses, and all houses selling brandy, strong waters, cyder or metheglin, by retaile, to be dranke in their houses."
[13] In the agreement with Ralph Allen, dated thirty years later, bye-letters are defined to be "letters not going or coming from, to, or through London."
[14] Occasionally, even after William's accession, the postmasters-general addressed the King direct. The remonstrance against quartering soldiers upon postmasters was so addressed. This document is dated the 1st of February 1692/3.