The History of the Post Office, from Its Establishment Down to 1836. Herbert Joyce
sum in those days; and it was probably this fact rather than any special qualification on his part that pointed him out as Witherings's successor. Be that as it may, into Burlamachi's hands the office of Master of the Posts was sequestered, subject to the condition that he was to discharge the duties under the control of the Secretary of State. The sequestration was announced to the public by means of placards fixed up on the old Exchange, and Witherings lost no time in fixing up counter-placards by way of protest.
And now began an unseemly contention which, arising ostensibly out of the rights of individuals, went far to bring the two Houses of Parliament into collision. In 1642, after struggling for the best part of two years to maintain his position, Witherings assigned his patent to the Earl of Warwick, and, under the influence of this peer, both Houses declared the sequestration to be illegal and void. Meanwhile Burlamachi had fallen into the power of one in whose hands he was the merest puppet. This was Edmund Prideaux, afterwards one of the Commissioners of the Great Seal and Attorney-General under the Commonwealth. At his instigation Burlamachi still kept possession of the letter office. In vain the Lords ordered him to give it up to Lord Warwick, and summoned him before them to explain his contumacy. It was true, he replied, that the office was still kept at his house, but this house and his servants had been hired by Mr. Prideaux, and it was he that disposed of the letters.
Incensed at such contempt of their orders, the Lords authorised Warwick to seize the mails. After one or two half-hearted attempts to carry this authority into effect, arrangements were made for a more strenuous effort. On the 19th of December two of Warwick's agents lay in wait at Barnet and there surprised the mail as it came from Chester. Seizing the letters and the man that carried them, they made the best of their way towards London, but had not proceeded further than the foot of the hill beyond Highgate when they were themselves surprised by five troopers "on great horses with pistols," who barred the road, and, in the name of the House of Commons, captured the captors.
Meanwhile a still more exciting scene was enacting before Warwick's office near the Royal Exchange. There two of his men kept watch for the mail from Plymouth, and, as it passed on its way to Burlamachi's house hard by, they dashed into the street and seized the letters. Their success was but for the moment. Before they could regain the office, Prideaux had swooped down upon them at the head of some half-dozen adherents, and with his own hands had torn the letters away. "An order of the House of Commons," cried one of the bystanders, "ought to be obeyed before an order of the House of Lords."
On these occurrences being reported to the Lords, Burlamachi and all others who had been concerned in them, Prideaux alone excepted, were ordered to prison. Among these was the man who had been captured at Barnet and afterwards rescued, one Hickes by name; and this fellow proved to be Prideaux's own servant. On the part of that wily politician one looks in vain for any effort to procure Burlamachi's release, or even for the slightest indication of concern that he had been arrested; but the arrest of his own servant, the servant of a member of the House of Commons, excited his keenest resentment. This, in Prideaux's view, was a clear breach of privilege, and the House was pleased to agree with him. No sooner, therefore, had Hickes been imprisoned by the Lords than he was released by the Commons, and no sooner had he been released by the Commons than the Lords ordered him to be imprisoned again.
Matters having come to this pass, the two Houses held a conference. The result might easily have been foreseen. The Lords yielded to the Commons, and Burlamachi, on rendering an account which had long been called for, was released from custody together with the others who had been imprisoned at the same time. Concerning the next two years little is known; but it seems probable that Burlamachi, who in his petition praying for release had pleaded old age and infirmities, did not long survive the indignity to which he had been exposed. At all events, in 1644, either by death or resignation, the office of Master of the Posts had become vacant, and, as Burlamachi's successor, the House of Commons appointed Prideaux.
Thus ended the battle of the patents, which had raged more or less fiercely for more than twenty years. It was long indeed before Lords Warwick and Stanhope ceased urging their claims, Warwick as Witherings's assignee, and Stanhope on the allegation that at the Council Table the Lord Keeper Coventry had cajoled him into surrendering his patent; but after Prideaux's appointment there was no farther appeal to force.
CHAPTER IV
EDMUND PRIDEAUX AND CLEMENT OXENBRIDGE
1644—1660
Hardly had Prideaux assumed the direction of the letter office before he gave public notice that there would be a weekly conveyance of letters into all parts of the kingdom. There is reason to doubt, however, whether under his rule as much or nearly as much as this was accomplished. Next to Norwich, Yarmouth was then, as it is now, the chief town in the eastern counties; and yet it is certain that a post to Yarmouth was not established until after Prideaux's rule had ceased; and more than fifty years later we find his successors lamenting that, while Lincolnshire generally was ill provided with posts, there were several towns in that county which had no post at all.
But to whatever extent Prideaux's professions exceeded his performance, it is beyond question that he spared no effort to extend the posts, and that he is justly entitled to the credit, not indeed of improving upon Witherings's scheme, but of carrying that scheme into more general effect. Despite his exertions, however, he failed to keep pace with the wants of the time. Indeed, what facilities for intercourse had been given already seem to have created a demand for more. In 1649 the Common Council of the city of London, not content with a post only once a week to Scotland, established a post of their own. Along the whole line of road between London and Edinburgh they appointed their own postmasters and settled their own postage, and the same plan they proceeded to adopt in other parts. Prideaux, who to his office of Master of the Posts had recently added that of Attorney-General, was highly incensed. Only a few years before, the State monopoly of letters, when the State was represented by the Crown, had been the object of his fiercest denunciation, and now this same monopoly was a cherished possession to be defended at all hazards. First he remonstrated. Then he threatened. And neither threats nor remonstrances having any effect upon the city authorities, he reported their proceedings to the Council of State, and the Council of State reported them to Parliament. Parliament was in no mood for concession. The city posts were promptly suppressed, and more than thirty years elapsed before private enterprise again embarked upon a similar venture.
The report which Prideaux made to the Council of State had another result, which probably he little contemplated. In that report he had taken credit to himself that, although the charges of management had risen to £7000 a year, or about twice the amount they had been in Witherings's time, he had relieved the State from the whole of this burden. In other words, the posts had become self-supporting, but, so far as appeared from the report, were nothing more. The House of Commons was not satisfied. Accordingly the Council was instructed to examine and report whether the terms on which the letter office was held were the best that could be obtained. The investigation was soon made. Heretofore, in consideration of his defraying the charges, Prideaux had been allowed to receive the postage and make what he could out of it. For the future, besides defraying the charges, he was to pay to the State a fixed rent of £5000 a year. This was the introduction of the system of farming, a system which, as regards the posts generally, continued to nearly the end of the seventeenth and, as regards the by-posts, beyond the middle of the eighteenth century.
In 1653 Prideaux ceased to be Master of the Posts. Two years before he had been elected a member of the Council of State, and shortly after his election, and probably as a consequence of it, the arrangements for communicating with the army had reached a high state of perfection. Between the Council and the forces in Scotland messengers, we are told, were passing almost every hour. But, useful as he may have made himself, Prideaux seems to have been altogether wanting in those qualities which are calculated to inspire confidence. At the Treaty of Uxbridge, where he