packet routes to the Dutch Republic, Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies between 1669 and 1702.3 Scholars have investigated the institutional workings of British postal systems from the Roman period to today and historians of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries have cast the post as emblematic of the state’s growing power.4 However, looking at when individuals used the post, and when they did not, broadens the field of play and reveals how the British still relied on personal networks to send their letters.5
This chapter examines how letter writers sent their epistles and why they chose that mode of delivery. The decision hinged on many factors. Exchanging letters within the geographic boundaries of London differed substantially from the experience of sending a letter from London to Leicestershire, let alone Virginia. The further one traveled from the postal center of London the more important informal means of exchange became. The postal system was but one strand in a complex system of letter exchange and to understand the place of the post other forms of delivery require inspection. Writers like the Countess of Huntingdon used messengers, carriers, friends, and acquaintances alongside the post. The way letters circulated depended on place, personal preference, and opportunity. Furthermore, their circuits of exchange outline the shape of their writers’ social networks and illustrate how they functioned.
Figure 2. Letters were not always meticulous creations. This letter, composed by John Davys for his employer, the Countess of Huntingdon, on 19 February 1662, shows the hurried nature of some letters, especially business letters. The ink alters, he scribbles in changes, and squeezes additions into the margins. But he is also sure to add, right under the date-line, “I thank your honour for havinge mee in your mind.” This is also the letter in which he mentioned that he had received letters by the Derby Post, the carrier, and Mr. Sutton.
John Davys to Lucy Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, 19 February 1661/2, HEH HA 2006.
This item is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
By the Post
The existence of a postal system was not new to the English. One had been in use, on and off, since the Romans, but access to it and government control of it increased in the mid-seventeenth century. Charles I officially opened the royal post to the public, but growing unrest and eventually the Civil Wars curtailed the sending of letters by official means.6 However, after peace arrived it became clear that a public postal system was too important to the security of the nation and too lucrative a business for the government to allow it to slip out of their control.7 In 1660 the Convention Parliament passed an act “for erecting and establishing a Post Office” that reaffirmed actions taken previously by other regimes. The government shut out competing systems and thus established a government-run postal system opened to the public.
Historians have seen in the establishment and development of the postal system a force for change. In their eyes, its expansion allowed the British to make full use of their letters.8 To James How it was behind the creation of “epistolary space,” described as “spaces of connection, providing permanent and seemingly unbreakable links between people and places.”9 For Jürgen Habermas it helped push forth the bourgeois public sphere.10 For Konstantin Dierks control of the postal system explained the difference between victory and defeat in war.11 For these scholars the postal system was important indeed.
In many ways they are correct. Between 1685 and 1715 the volume of correspondence greatly increased and between 1686 and 1710 the number of letters processed by the Penny Post increased by 300,000 letters, from 624,575 letters to 954,283.12 As the countess’s letter illustrates, members of the Hastings family used the post as a matter of fact. Between 1718 and 1730 they, and their relations, used the post to send at least 43 percent of their letters and the true amount was probably much greater since this number is based only on the number of surviving postmarks.13 Nicholas Blundell, a member of the northern gentry, also used the post and often referred to visits to the Post Office in an offhanded manner in his diary. On a snowy day in December 1702 he sent off seven letters and during the next eight years he visited the office at least thirteen more times.14
The postal system reconfigured the epistolary landscape for English letter writers. Possessing the option of delivering a letter by the post made letter sending more of a constant in writers’ lives. Previously writers depended on carriers and personal letter bearers, but carriers stuck to their established routes and bearers were not always easy to find. Many letters sent by personal bearers were the product of chance. A friend or acquaintance had to be going to the exact location where the recipient resided and had to let the writer know of his or her journey. The Post Office eased this element of chance and rendered epistolary networks more permanent. It provided the British with another, more constant, mode with which to connect with those around them. As one correspondent told another, when his expected bearer canceled his trip: “I am resolv’d to make use of the common Post rather than not carry on so agreable a correspondence.”15 His decision sums up the situation: writers preferred trusted hands, but if necessary they turned to the post. Being able to use the post to send letters gave letter writers a choice.16 They were no longer bound to bearers or carriers; now, they could turn to a government-run system. But was it an option they wanted to choose?
Painting the post as a transformative system ignores the difficulties that plagued it and places too much emphasis on its ability to open epistolary doors. Just as print technology itself did not cause a print revolution and singlehandedly create the public sphere, the expansion of the postal system did not instantly transform the epistolary world.17 Its use depended on the needs and beliefs of its users and they knew that turning to the postal system was usually difficult, often dissatisfying, and could be dangerous since the information held within letters could be seen by prying eyes. Scholars have noted the troublesome aspects of the postal system, such as government censorship of letters, but they have not investigated the larger consequences of these problems.18 The dangers posed by the post and its less than stellar functioning require examination, but even more attention needs to be paid to the basic difficulties faced by those sending letters, especially for those who lived far from established postal routes.19 An understanding of these difficulties reveals that alternate modes of letter delivery were just as, if not more, important.
Sending letters by the post could be dangerous as the British were well aware. Senders knew their seals were not sacrosanct and that those running the Post Office often cracked them open and perused their contents.20 The opening of letters was no secret. One correspondent calmly told John Perceval, the Anglo-Irish landlord and future Earl of Egmont, “To give a general opinion of things is to guess at Random, & not altogether safe by letter as times go, and the Posthouse is managed.”21 Other writers let out a sigh of relief when they realized an opened letter held no politics.22 While there was no public outcry against the opening of correspondence, it did curtail what writers placed in letters and it annoyed many of them.23 One irate writer grumbled “the Ministers of the Post-Office … had an evil eye to my Epistolary Correspondence.”24 To avoid the danger a few simply wrote in code. They replaced names and places with a series of numbers or with terms agreed upon by the correspondents.25 These correspondents truly found safety in numbers.
But writers worried more about the rather lackluster performance of the post than they did about its dangers. Letters echo with the sighs of frustrated senders. When a letter did not arrive correspondents took it for granted that it had miscarried at some point.26 They accounted for delayed letters by assuming that postal officials let them sit unsorted at the Post Office or simply overlooked them.27 Such beliefs nicely shifted the blame of a late letter from the writer to an impersonal system, but it was also true. Often postal officials sent letters to the wrong place. An estate agent in Ireland complained to his employer that postal
