"Having obtained an Order, dated 24th February 1630, from this Board for the weekly carriage of letters between London and Plymouth, the settling whereof had cost them £400, besides their great and daily charge in keeping men and horses. Neither Lord Stanhope, nor Mr. Dolliver, the Paymaster of the Posts, had given any encouragement to this business, but rather opposed it; Lord Stanhope going about to assume the benefit of the merchants' letters, and raising the valuation of the post places of the Western road from £20 to £100. Pray their lordships to require Lord Stanhope and the Paymaster of the Posts to answer wherefor they should raise the post places from £20 anciently given, and for what cause they (Stanhope and the Paymaster) should have the benefit of the merchants' letters. Pray also that Edward and Joseph Hutchins may, for £20, have the place filled by their father and grandfather for seventy years, or else the benefit of the merchants' letters, which their father had." Lord Stanhope's answer was to the effect that he doubted the statement as to the "great sums alleged to have been given for obtaining the merchants' letters," that he did not "take notice of disposing any place in that road, nor aim at any profit by reason of those letters; he only takes upon him the appointment of the posts." The meaning of this answer is not very clear; but the two papers taken together show that the postmasters were in the habit of buying their offices, paying £20 for them, and that it was now attempted to raise the charge to £100. Stanhope's salary was only £66, 13s. 4d. per annum, and, in consonance with the shameful traffic of the age, he made his profit in his own position by requiring his subordinates to purchase their places.
When Witherings set up the new plan of "estafette" posts in 1633, the men who had up to that time performed the post service between England and the Continent were all dismissed. They, like the deputy postmasters, had purchased their places, and upon being turned off received no compensation. Aggrieved as they felt themselves to be, they had recourse to a petition to Lord Cottington. They were Sampson Bates, Enoch Lynde, Jarman Marsham, Job Allibon, Abraham van Solte, and Samuel Allibon "heretofore ordinary posts for the Low Countries." "At their first entrance into their places," says the petition, "they paid great sums of money for the same, and they were granted for term of life, some of petitioners having served twenty-six years, and others various other long periods. About April 1633 petitioners were all dismissed without restoring any of their moneys, or giving them any allowance towards their maintenance, so that they have been driven to pawn their household stuff, and, if not relieved, are like to perish. The ordinary posts beyond the seas likewise dismissed have been allowed £80 yearly, although their places were not so good as petitioners'. Pray that, upon a new election of a Postmaster, petitioners may be admitted to their several places again, or each of them receive a pension from the office of the Postmaster."
Besides the constant stream of horse posts passing from London to Dover in connection with the continental mail service, there was a service by foot messenger between these two towns. At this period there was a prohibition against the carrying of gold out of the country. In Moryson's Itinerary, 1617, the following limitation is stated to have been in force:—"In England the law forbids any traveller, upon paine of confiscation, to carry more money about him out of the kingdom than will serve for the expenses of his journey, namely, about twenty pounds sterling." In 1635, the prohibition was still in force. On the 29th June of that year, the foot post between London and Dover, Edward Ranger, was examined as to the exporting of gold before Sir John Bankes, the Attorney General. Ranger deposed "that within two years last past he had carried from London to Dover gold and silver, to the value of several thousand pounds in the whole, for Cæsar Dehaze, Edward Buxton of Lime Street, Jacob Deleap, Roger Fletcher, Walter Eade, and John Terry of Canning Street, Charles French of Wallbrook, Peter Heme of Love Lane, Lucas Jacob of Botolph's Lane, and John Fowler of Bucklersbury, and Isaac Bedloe, and had delivered the same, in various sums, severally to John Parrott, Nathaniel Pringall, Mark Willes, John Demarke, David Hempson, David Neppen, John Wallop, and Henry Booth, at Dover; that he had after the rate of five shillings for every hundred pounds he carried; and that he believes that the greatest part of the gold was sent beyond the seas by such persons as he delivered the same unto at Dover." This man Ranger was still foot post for Dover down to 1649; but in that year he was superseded in his place in consequence of certain irregularities. In the Council of State's proceedings of the 17th December of that year, the Mayor and Jurats of Dover were to be advised that the Council approved of another appointment being made, "as it would not have been safe for the State to suffer him (Ranger) to continue in that employment."
The king's posts at this period (1633) were not remarkable for their great speed. On the 27th June, Secretary Coke and the king received letters at Edinburgh which had taken five days in coming from Greenwich. On 9th July, Sir Francis Windebank writes to Secretary Coke, that "your several letters of the 2nd and 3rd of this present, written from Lithco (Linlithgow) and Stirling, and sent by Davis, came to my hands upon Sunday the 7th, late in the evening. I send these by Davis again because of the slowness of the posts, some of your letters being ten days upon the way, and never any packet yet dated at the stages as they ought to be." A Captain Plumleigh, writing from Kinsale, apparently to the Lord Deputy, complains that "your lordship's letters unto me seldom come to my hands under fourteen days' time. I beg that the despatch of this of mine may come on towards Kinsale day and night, for otherwise we shall haply lose the opportunity of a fair wind," etc.
The condition of the roads in these times was an important factor in causing the posts to travel slowly; and the through couriers, after riding during the day, would necessarily rest during the night. The following letter, dated 20th December 1633, from Sir Gervase Clifton to Sir John Coke the younger, at Selston, Nottinghamshire, describes a journey by road:—"I will be bold to trouble you with a discourse of my perambulation. I came on Tuesday to Dunstable, somewhat, albeit not much, within night. On Wednesday to Northampton, almost three hours after daylight, yet with perpetual fear of overturning or losing our way, which without guides hired, and lights holding in, I had undoubtedly done. On Thursday to Leicester, a great deal later, and so much more dangerously, as the way (you know) was worse at the end of the journey. On Friday we were the most of all troubled with waters, which so much covered the causeways, and almost bridges, over which we were to pass, as made me nearer retiring than coming forward; which, nevertheless, at length I ventured to do, and am (God be thanked), with my wife, safely got to Clifton (near Loughborough), where I remain yet, the worse of the two, by reason of a great cold I have taken." Even a good many years later the roads were in a bad way. In 1678, Lady Russell writes to her husband from Tunbridge Wells: "I do really think, if I could have imagined the illness of the journey, it would have discouraged me: it is not to be expressed how bad the way is from Seven Oaks; but our horses did exceeding well; and Spence very diligent, often off his horse to lay hold of the coach." Smiles, in his Lives of the Engineers, gives an account of the great North road, the principal thoroughfare into Scotland, from a tract published in 1675 by Thomas Mace, one of the clerks of Trinity College, Cambridge:—
"The writer there addressed himself to the king, partly in prose and partly in verse, complaining greatly of the 'wayes, which are so grossly foul and bad,' and suggesting various remedies. He pointed out that much ground 'is now spoiled and trampled down in all wide roads, where coaches and carts take liberty to pick and chuse for their best advantages; besides, such sprawling and straggling of coaches and carts utterly confound the road in all wide places, so that it is not only unpleasurable, but extreme perplexin and cumbersome both to themselves and all horse travellers.'
"But Mace's principal complaint was of the innumerable controversies, quarrellings, and disturbances, caused by the pack-horse men in their struggles as to which convoy should pass along the cleaner parts of the road. From what he states, it would seem that these disturbances, daily committed by uncivil, refractory, and rude Russian-like rake-shames, in contesting for the way, too often proved mortal, and certainly were of very bad consequences to many. He recommended a quick and prompt punishment in all such cases. 'No man,' said he, 'should be pestered by giving the way (sometimes) to hundreds of pack-horses, panniers, whifflers (i.e. paltry fellows), coaches, waggons, wains, carts, or whatsoever others; which continually are very grievous to weary and loaden travellers; but more especially near the city and upon a market-day, when, a man having travelled a long and tedious journey, his horse well-nigh spent, shall sometimes be compelled to cross out of his way twenty times in one mile's riding, by the irregularity and peevish crossness of such-like whifflers and market-women; yea, although their panniers be clearly empty, they will stoutly contend for the way with weary travellers, be they never so many, or almost of what quality soever.' 'Nay,' said he further, 'I have often known travellers, and myself very often, to have been necessitated to stand stock-still behind a standing cart or waggon, on most beastly and insufferable deep wet wayes, to the great endangering of our horses, and neglect of important business; nor durst we adventure to stir (for most imminent danger of those deep rutts and unreasonable ridges) till it has pleased mister carter to jog on, which we have taken very kindly.'"
These were the sort of roads the posts had to travel in the seventeenth century; but fortunately the horses were suited to the conditions. With respect to these, Moryson says, in his Itinerary (1617), that: "The horses are strong, and for journies indefatigable; for the English, especially northern men, ride from daybreak to the evening without drawing bit, neither sparing their horses nor themselves." In considering the speed of the posts and the endeavours made to accelerate them, it is well to bear in mind the condition of the highways.