THE FIRST P.M.G.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 245, 13 September 1935, Page 14

THE FIRST P.M.G.

A POSTAL TERCENTENARY. CHARLES I’S PROCLAMATION. The King’s Silver Jubilee has been made the occasion, as was the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, for grateful reductions in Post Office charges—■ charges for the transmission of goods or messages by train and car and bicycle and foot or by electric wire, says the London Times. It is mere coincidence that this year also brings the tercentenary of the Royal Proclamation which instituted the first State postal service for private letters in Great Britain.

The only official postal service that existed under Queen Elizabeth was expressly limited “for Her Majestie’s affaires.” Even in James I’s reign the duties of the Master of the Posts for England and Scotland and for Foreign Parts in the King’s Dominions were not sufficiently comprehensive or well defined, or sufficiently safeguarded against abuse, for the service of that time to be considered a true ancestor of the present system. James created, among other doubtful monopolies, a further office of Master of the Posts for Foreign Parts out of the King’s Dominions, which in the next reign fortunately fell into honest and competent hands. A joint holder of the latter office, one Thomas Witherings, turned his eyes to the mismanagement of the home service under Lord Stanhope of Harrington. His scheme for reform at homo was accepted by Charles I, and embodied in the Proclamation of July 31, 1635. Thomas Witherings was, in fact, the father of the G.P.0., and the first real P.M.G.

The Proclamation itself is a rare document. A printed copy in the library of the British Museum has recently been issued in facsmile. It makes entertaining reading at a time when though penny postage (itself first adumbrated in the report of a committee appointed exactly 100 years ago) is, alas! not restored, the prospect is held out of a three-halfpenny air mail between all the foreign parts in the King’s Dominions. Rates were higher in 1936—tw0 pence a letter if under fourscore miles, with a schedule rising to eightpence “uppon the borders of Scotland and in Scotland.” TWO POSTS FOR SCOTLAND. If this was expensive for the King’s Scottish subjects they. h?d one consolation. Bristol and Plymouth and Holyhead were to be served once weekly; outlying towns were to be served as occasion demanded; but observing that “there hath beene no certaine or constant entercourse betweene the Kingdomes of England and Scotland,” Charles was graciously pleased to command two posts a week between Edinburgh and the City of London.

Under AVitherings’s directions ' the speed of travelling for the posts was fixed at seven miles an hour in summer and five in winter, and the journey. to and from the northern capital at six days. He introduced, or nt least regularised, several useful safeguards on which modern methods are founded. Registration, for example: every postmaster was to “keep a faire paper hook to enter the packets in,” and “write upon a label fastened to every or any of the packets the time of receite thereof and not on the Packet or Letter as hath been disorderly used.”

\\ itherings’s efficiency and foresight are in no doubt. But, whether he

early threw in his lot with the Roundheads or attempted to steer a middle course, the Civil War upset not only his postal services but his prestige. Charles threw him over in favour of a Royalist merchant, and under the Commonwealth he suffered, though ne successfully answered them, many charges of delinquency and favouritism. Worry led to illness, and illness to death, in the autumn of 1651. A memorial tablet in St. Andrew’s, Hornchurch, describes him as “Chiof Pastmaster of Great© Britaine and foreigne parts. . . second to none for unf’athomed poilesicy unparralled sagacius and divining Genius; witness his great correspondence in all parts of ye Christian World.”