His Majesty's Post

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 38, 7 May 1927, Page 22 (Supplement)

His Majesty's Post

AS it is at present the Post Office grew out of the arrangements for carrying the State mails. The • first man to be described as Master of jthe Posts was one Brian Tnke, under ‘Henry VII. There was then a fairly regular service between London and Berwick and London and Calais, via Dover. The Post Office motor-vaD that bowls along the Dover Road is following the oldest mail route in England. It was in 1637 that the State assumed the monopoly of letter carry Hng. Towns on the routes were bound ito supply horses, and very often an Unkeeper was postmaster.

From our point of view the whole business was slack and inefficient, but 5n 1784 the Post Office began to go in (for speed. John Palmer, of Bath, persuaded Pitt to inaugurate the system jof express coaches.

The phrase “marvellous velocity” rwas applied by Lord Campbell to the {feat of travelling frc«m London to Edinburgh in three nights and two days, and in view of the state of the roads his phrase was justified. Picturesqueness left the post w’hen the railway took the mails away from The roads. The mail guard used to wear a bright uniform; he was armed, and he blew a horn. Dwellers along the Great North Road must have felt (one day in 1838 that the glory had de(parted, for the mails henceforth travelled on Stephenson’s iron ways. Rowland Hill’s name became inseparably connected with the history of the British Post Office when he instituted the prepaid penny post in 1839 iHenniker Heaton advocated and Joseph Chamberlain brought into being the “Imperial Penny Post.” Both services are a little dearer to-day, perhaps awaiting still another vigorous and dogged reformer. However that may be, it is interesting to ponder upon the mighty organisation that has grown out of “his Majesty’s Post” of Tudor times, and which now carries millions of letters and parcels, has a huge telegraphic, telephonic, and wireless service, collects many taxes, pays out old-age, Army, and Navy pensions, and assists in the conduct of th* National Health Insure nnce.