The correspondence of the period shows when the post became an established fact. About 1700, letters begin not with the names of the bearers, but with expressions such as the following: “The post is just blowing his horn and cannot help it that I write no more particularly.”[78] “I had not time to say more by the last post than I did.” “Sent by post last week.” “Having no letter from you by the post.” Individual bearers were still made use of, often probably for the reason which Logan gives in a letter to Penn, written February, 1708.[79] “I send this chiefly to accompany the enclosed to Wm. Aubrey, I therefore request thee to peruse it ... and to let it be sealed up, directed in some hand like mine, as J. Jeffreys, and delivered. I send it thus without cover to save postage, which is now very high to Boston.” It is to be hoped that Lovelace’s description of the first post as “active, stout and indefatigable,” would apply equally to his successors, for they too went laden with “letters, portable goods and divers bags.” Wait Winthrop writes from Boston to Fitz-John Winthrop, “Govr of his Majts Collonye of Conecticott in New London,” “I have had yours by the post with little bundle;” “If Sudance can bundle up John’s freise Jacket & Mingoe’s cloth Jacket in an old towell pray let the post bring them.” “Post will bring you a pair of Simpsons ... could not goe to direct the man about the glass, or els it had gone by this Post” and “If Anthony has lamed the horses he may dispatch them quite that they may be no further trouble; but if their legs are fit to bring them, I desire they may be sent by the post, unless some safer opportunity present in two or three days.”[80]
The early history of the colonial post office ends in 1710. With Queen Anne’s Act of that year a new era began, introducing a system of greater uniformity, of greater detail and of closer connection with the home government.
Mary E. Woolley.
PATENT TO THOMAS NEALE.
[The preceding pages were reprinted from the Publications of the Rhode Island Historical Society, January, 1894. Subsequently there was received from the Public Record Office in London, by the kindness of Hubert Hall, Esq., F.S.A., a copy of the patent to Thomas Neale, mentioned on [page 8], preceding. The document is of fundamental importance to the history of the colonial post office. It instituted, for the first time, a royal intercolonial post, an American post office; and the American post office was the first of American executive departments, the first continental institution, and contributed, in its way, toward the unification of America. The patent is therefore given in full below. It is believed that it has never before been printed. It is designated, “Patent Roll (Chancery) 4 William and Mary, Part I, No. 3.” Its date proves to be February 17, 1691/2, not February 7.
The patent to Thomas Neale was a piece of court favor. A few facts respecting the man himself may be of interest. Thomas Neale was an amusing person. All that the editor has been able to discover respecting him shows, with the utmost consistency, the confirmed office-holder, the determined and adventurous speculator, quick to seize any opportunity for personal profit. In the first place, as to his marriage. Pepys, January 1, 1663/4, mentions that there was much talk at the coffee-house about a very rich widow, said to be worth £80,000, and young and handsome. Her husband, Sir Nicholas Gold, a merchant, had not been dead a week yet, and already great courtiers were looking after her. She was the daughter of Sir John Garrard (Burke, Extinct and Dormant Baronetage, 214). June 20, 1664, Pepys tells a remarkable story of the bold manner in which Neale had won this prize, Lady Gold and he having been married in spite of her brother’s opposition. By 1684 Neale had become installed in the palace, in the doubtless lucrative office of groom porter (London Gazette, July 28, 1684; Malcolm, “Anecdotes of London down to 1700,” i. 378, iii. 50). The duties of this office are described by Pepys under date of January 1, 1667/8. “They were,” says Macaulay (iv. 391), “to call the odds when the Court played at hazard, to provide cards and dice, and to decide any dispute which might arise on the bowling-green or at the gaming table.” Neale organized lotteries after the Venetian manner, and in 1694 built extensively, for speculative purposes, about the Seven Dials (Evelyn’s Diary, Nov. 14, 1693; Oct. 5, Nov. 22, 1694). In that same year he was employed by the government to conduct the lottery loan for the State, though some, says Macaulay, thought the treasury lowered itself thereby. But, after all, he was more of a personage than would, perhaps, be gathered from Macaulay’s description. If he was not identical with the Thomas Neale who represented Petersfield in the Parliament of 1661-78 (Parl. Hist., iv. 198), he was certainly member for Ludgershall in all the subsequent parliaments of Charles II., in that of James II., and in the second and third parliaments of King William (5 W. & M., c. 7, sec. 69; letter of F. Bonnet to the Elector of Brandenburg, in Ranke, vi. 238; Parl. Hist., iv. 1082, 1157, 1301, 1346, v. 544, 961; Grey’s Debates, viii. 380). Moreover, a list in Harl. Misc. viii. 512, prepared in July, 1698, identifies him with Thomas Neale, the master of the mint, Sir Isaac Newton’s predecessor in that office. No doubt he was the author of a pamphlet on “Mending the Coin,” London: 1695, which Allibone mentions. In fact, Neale was master of the mint from 1679 to 1699 (Ruding, Annals of the Coinage, i. 29, 35, ii. 30, 33, 46, 466). As the office was for life, and Newton succeeded upon a vacancy (Brewster’s Sir Isaac Newton, ii. 193), it is probable that Neale died in 1699. He should have died rich, for a report in the Commons’ Journals in 1697 (xi. 447, 453) gives us the characteristic touch that by his percentages on coinage he made apparently above £14,000 a year, while a deputy, paid £400, did almost all the work in his absence. Yet it seems that he died insolvent, and failed to carry out a large building contract into which he had entered with Sir Walter Clarges (Malcolm, Londin. Rediv., iv. 328). Malcolm also says (Anecdotes of London in the Eighteenth Century, i. 36) that he left money for a charity school. The “Gentleman’s Magazine” (ii. 631), mentions, under date of Feb. 17, 1732, the death of the widow of Thomas Neale, Esq., act. 96, in Old Palace Yard.
By way of corrigendum to Miss Woolley’s paper, it should be mentioned, out of Mr. F. H. Norton’s notes to his edition of the Journal of Hugh Finlay, that the Virginian act of 1661/2, cited on [p. 22], above, was preceded by an act of similar tenor in 1657.—Editor.]