Chapter VIII

The Inland and Foreign Post Offices were now combined under the management of John Manley, to whom they were farmed for a sum of £10,000 a year. This was in 1653, and the grant was limited to a period of two years. Manley was a Justice of Peace for the county of Middlesex, and is referred to in some contemporary records as Justice Manley. He made himself useful on the bench to Cromwell's party in connection with many political cases brought before him for trial. It is probable that he had previously been a soldier, as he is sometimes referred to as Captain Manley. In 1655, when Manley's term was up, the office changed hands. On the 3rd of May in that year, an Order in Council was passed, to the effect that the management of the Post Office should be performed by John Thurloe, Secretary of State, "security being given for the payment of the present rent of £10,000 a year, and for keeping the conditions of the contract with the present farmer, etc., beginning from the expiration of Manley's contract." Manley's contract fell to expire on the 30th June following. In pursuance of this Order, Thurloe succeeded Manley in the management of the Posts.

During Thurloe's possession of the office an Act was passed for settling the postage of England, Ireland, and Scotland (June 1657). The Act sets forth that "Experience having shown that the settling a Post Office is the best means to maintain trade, convey dispatches, and discover dangerous designs, it is enacted that there shall be but one Post Office, and one Postmaster-General and Controller to settle Posts, who shall carry all letters except those sent by known carriers, or merchants' letters of advice sent by ship-masters; also, except private letters sent by messengers. He is to have the horsing of all who ride by post." The rates of postage for letters were as follows, viz.:--

Single. Double. Per Oz.
To or from any place within 80 miles } 2d. 4d. 8d.
of London }
" " at a greater } 3d. 6d. 1s.
distance }
" Scotland 4d. 8d. 1s.6d.
" Ireland 6d. 1s. 2s.

Within Ireland.
To or from any place within 40 miles } 2d. 4d. 8d.
of Dublin }
" " at a greater } 4d. 8d. 1s.
distance }

Foreign.
To Leghorn, Genoa, Florence, Lyons, }
Marseilles, Smyrna, Aleppo, and } 1s. 2s. 3s.9d.
Constantinople }
" Bordeaux, Rochelle, Nantes, Bayonne, } 9d. 1s.6d. 2s.
Cadiz, and Madrid }
" St. Malo, Morlaix, and Newhaven[2] 6d. 1s. 1s.6s.
" Hamburgh, Frankfort, and Cologne 8d. 1s.4d. 2s.
" Dantzic, Leipsic, Lubeck, Stockholm, }
Copenhagen, Elsinore, } 1s. 2s. 4s.
and Queenesbrough[3] }

For every through post, or persons riding in post, 2-1/2d. the mile for each horse, besides the guide groat for every stage.

All persons save the Postmaster-General or his deputies were forbidden to supply post horses on pain of a fine of £1000 a month--half to the Protector and half to the discoverer. Many other provisions are set down which need not be quoted here.

Two months later, 27th August 1657, on a report from the Committee on the Postage, it was ordered that a lease be granted of the office of Postmaster-General to Thurloe, at a rent of £10,000, to be paid quarterly; "he to be at all charges, take no greater rates of postage than expressed in the Act, and send all Government letters free: the grant to be for as many years as His Highness thinks fit, not exceeding 11, or one life."

During Thurloe's time, the Post Office was made very serviceable in the discovering of "dangerous designs"; for it is said that the control of the office gave him an "immense advantage in intercepting letters and collecting intelligence, abroad as well as at home." The truth is, that not only in Thurloe's time, but in the years immediately preceding the Restoration, during the settlement of the kingdom after the Restoration, and probably for long after that, the Post Office was regarded as the pulse of all political movements, the deputy postmasters in the country serving as a hydra-headed agency for the State--seeing, hearing, and reporting everything of importance that transpired in their districts; while the opening of letters in the Post afforded a means of securing evidence against the enemies of the ruling powers for the time being. One or two examples of how these things were done may be interesting. On the 9th August 1659, the Council approves of "Col. Crompton's stopping the Irish mail, not knowing of how dangerous consequence some of the letters might be, and judging it fit that they be perused before passing further." Then Major-General Lambert, to whom this communication is addressed, is desired to "examine all the letters, send up any that are dangerous, and send the rest forward to Ireland." On the 9th January 1662, the postmaster of Northallerton reports to the Postmaster-General, that "four disaffected Scottish ministers,--Dunkinson, Ord, Douglas, and Jamieson,--thought to be spies and deluders of loyal subjects, are at Northallerton, and write many letters to Berwick and different parts of Yorkshire. Asks whether the letters should be received, and, if so, whether they should be opened in presence of a magistrate." These facts being communicated through Secretary Nicholas to the king, the former writes to the postmaster as follows:--"The king being acquainted with his letter to Col. Bishop, about Scottish ministers and disaffected persons now in Northallerton, and corresponding with others in Berwick and elsewhere, wishes him to carry to Sir W. Penniman, a deputy lieutenant, all letters from the four ministers whom he names; to be opened, perused, and sent up to London if they contain anything prejudicial to the public peace; otherwise to be forwarded as addressed." On the 31st January 1662, a warrant was issued to the head of the Post Office "to permit John Wickham and John Hill to search the next mails from Holland for counterfeit gold, and, if any be found, to accompany them with it to Secretary Nicholas, it being reported that much base gold has lately been imported by the mails." These incidents show how the interception and perusal of letters in the post were carried out--all under sufficient authority.

There were no newspapers in these days, as _we_ know them, and no telegraphs; all news, except such as might be conveyed by special messengers, or clandestinely by carriers, passed in letters through the post. The possession of the office was therefore, under the conditions previously stated, of the first importance to the powers holding the reins of government; and as parliamentary parties, having various and conflicting political views, were constantly changing positions at this time, the control of the Post Office changed hands with almost equal frequency.

To return to John Thurloe. Thurloe was Secretary of State under both Oliver and Richard Cromwell; and, after the resignation of the latter, he continued to hold his Secretaryship till the 14th January 1660. "In April 1659, he used his utmost efforts to dissuade the Protector from dissolving the Parliament; a step which proved fatal to his authority." He had previously been "very obnoxious to the principal persons of the army, to whose interests, wherever they interfered with those of the civil government, he was a declared enemy"; and it is not improbable that this antagonism led to his being relieved of the farm of the Post Office. But his deprivation of the office of Postmaster-General and Farmer of the Post did not take place till later in the year, and under circumstances which Thurloe describes in his State Papers. In a document of February 1660, he writes:--"I humbly offer to consideration, that within less than a fortnight of the 29th Sept. last"--that is, a fortnight after--"my farm was, by virtue of an Act of Parliament dated the 11th Oct., made null and void; and the office itself, as it stood at that time, set aside; and consequently no more rent payable; and it was then lawful for any other person to set up other posts for the carrying of such letters as should be brought to them, which very many accordingly practised."

The State records during the closing period of the interregnum are very imperfect, but sufficient has been left to enable us to trace the position of affairs as relating to the Posts. Two months before the passing of the Act just mentioned,--namely, on the 8th of August,--the Council of State resolved that the Post Office should be farmed, that is, let out to some farmer other than Thurloe; but, until Thurloe should be removed, this could not be arranged.

Now, as a consequence of these proceedings, and of the Act of the 11th October, the office passed into the hands of Dr. Benjamin Worsley, to whom the farm was then granted for a term of seven years, at a rental of £20,000. This seems a large advance upon the previous rent of £10,000; but Thurloe states that he improved the office £4000 per annum to the State voluntarily, which he might have put in his own purse; and the rent he was paying when he vacated the farm must have been £14,000 a year. But Worsley did not long enjoy the position, for shortly thereafter he was "violently turned out." Worsley had been selected, as one of several persons, for nomination to Parliament as a general officer by the Committee of Safety in July 1659. In October following, the government was in the hands of a Committee of Safety composed for the most part of officers; and Worsley being a military man, the Post Office might be supposed to be in safe hands if placed under his care.

We have been unable to discover to what family Dr. Worsley belonged. It is not improbable that he was connected by family ties with Charles Worsley, who had been one of the colonels of Cromwell's own regiment of foot. According to the Journals of the House of Commons, Benjamin Worsley was, in July 1647, appointed to be one of the Physicians, General-Surgeons, and Apothecaries of the Army in Ireland, and was then sent to Dublin. In March 1650, he was appointed Secretary to the Commissioners under the Act for regulating Trade, and, in 1653, Secretary to the Commissioners for Ireland. He was then selected as a fit person to accompany Viscount Lisle, as secretary, in a projected embassy to Sweden; but the embassy, so far as Lisle was concerned, did not proceed.

Now, on the 26th December 1659, the Rump was again in the ascendant, and constituted themselves a House. On the 3rd January 1660, Parliament appointed a new Council; on the 9th January, the House of Commons resolved to take the Post Office into its own hands, and that it should "be managed for the best advantage of the Commonwealth"; on the 10th January, Thomas Scott, a member of Parliament, one of the Council of State, and a hot-headed republican, was appointed by the House of Commons "to receive informations of private and public intelligence, as the Secretary of State heretofore had and used, and present them to the Council of State"; and, a week later, he was appointed Secretary of State to the Commonwealth. Now these events, taken in connection with the fact that, on the 21st January 1660, the Council of State issued an order "to apprehend Benj. Worsley and bring him in custody before the Council," may warrant us in concluding that this is the time when Worsley was "violently turned out" of the Post Office.

In succession to Worsley, Secretary of State Scott seems to have become Postmaster-General, but his connection with the Post Office was of brief duration; for a Parliament more favourable to the Restoration commenced sitting on the 3rd March 1660, and all persons who had been active in their opposition to the Royal House began to consider what was best for their own preservation. Scott was one of the men who had signed the death-warrant of King Charles I., and no doubt he would be forward in clearing out. That Scott was virtually Postmaster-General for a time seems to be proved by a warrant, issued by the Council of State on the 9th March 1660, "for intelligence, from the proceeds of the Post Office, paid by Wm. Scott and Isaac Dorislaus, whilst they managed it under Thomas Scott, £1000."

Like most of the Postmasters-General of these early days, Scott had an experience of imprisonment. After the Restoration he was taken; he had been excepted out of the general indemnity given by Charles II.; and on the 17th October he suffered death, with several others, in the presence of the king. Evelyn thus refers, in his diary, to the closing scene in the career of Postmaster-General Scott:--"I saw not their execution, but met their quarters, mangled and cut and reeking, as they were brought from the gallows in baskets on the hurdle. Oh! the miraculous providence of God!" So much for a royalist exclamation, and the laying of responsibility on the shoulders of Providence. For a short period after Secretary Scott quitted the Post Office, it is not very clear how it was managed; but a State paper of 3rd August 1660 shows that an account was rendered of its business from 25th March to 25th June of that year by Job Allibond and Francis Manley--the former a clerk in the office, and the latter Riding Purveyor to His Majesty. The receipts for the quarter were stated to be £5578, 9s. 5d., and the disbursements, £5431, 9s. 6d. Manley speaks of himself as being late Manager.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Havre-de-Grace.]

[Footnote 3: Königsberg.]