Origin of Post Offices.

Southland Times, Issue 19381, 3 September 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)

Origin of Post Offices.

Courier-; for carrying royal or Government despatches are mentioned in histories of the earliest times. Royal posts existed in Assyria. Persia, Greece and Rome. The name Post-office originated in tbe posts, or stations, at intervals along the roads of the Roman Empire, where couriers were kept in readiness to start on the instant. The first postal system for commercial and private correspondence appears to havo been established between the Hanse Towns early in tbe thirteenth century. In the reign of the Emperor Maximilian I. of Germany, letter posts were established by the Princes of Thurn and Taxis, connecting the chief cities of Austria and Lombardy ; and later (1510) the same princes connected Vienna and Brussels in the same way. Maximilian's successor,. Charles V., encouraged still further extension of this private postal system by repeated enfeoffments or special franchises, until all the great commercial centres of his vast empire from Vienna to Madrid, from the Adriatic to the North Sea, and intervening places, were brought into regular postal communication. Far back in the twelfth century the University of Paris, whose students, gathered from all civilised nations, numbered not long after this over 2-_>,ooo, employed foot-runners to carry letters for its members to all parts of Europe. But not until 1524 was permission granted to the Royal French posts to every other letters than those for the Government and the nobility. ___ In IMI Thomas Randolph was appointed the "Chief Postmaster" for England, with authority to establish and supervise Post houses and regulate the fees charged by postmen, but apparently without authority to receive and handle mail matter, which was left largely to tho discretion of the postmen themselves. Xot until the time of James I. of England was a postmaster for foreign parts appointed, and steps taken by the Government to establish regular running posts, going day and night, for the transmission of letters for the general public. In 1635 such a mail was established to run weekly between London and Edinburgh, and soon eight other lines were instituted.