Much attention has concentrated recently on the scandal surrounding the Post Office’s prosecutions of numerous sub-postmasters and -mistresses. The 18th-century Post Office was established and run on very different lines than that of today, but as Dr Charles Littleton shows, it too was not immune from scandal, parliamentary scrutiny, or partisan politics.
The Post Office Act of 1711 had established a single Post Office for the United Kingdom and set the postage rates and delivery times for letters and packets. The Act further confirmed that the Post Office was a branch of the Treasury, whose primary goal was to raise state revenue through postal charges. The income had been used since the Restoration to provide pensions to Court favourites, and in the years after the Revolution pensions to peers and statesmen derived from Post Office receipts became common. By 1699 it was estimated that payments for pensions consumed about a third of the Post Office’s receipts.
There were other ways in which the postal system benefitted the nobility and the political elite. From the Restoration it was commonly accepted, although nowhere officially codified, that peers and Members of Parliament could send and receive letters free of postage charges. This privilege of ‘franking’ was widely abused in the 18th century, as peers and MPs made their signed ‘covers’ available to enclose correspondence conducted by other parties.
By 1754 the amount of franked material, representing lost revenue, amounted to £23,600. The privilege of franking, and its abuse, came before the Commons on 26 February 1735, when opposition Members raised a complaint that their privileged correspondence was being opened in the Post Office on behalf of the ministry. A Committee of the Whole House convened two days later, where evidence was produced showing that the right to frank letters had never been established by statute, but had long been maintained by successive royal warrants. The Committee interrogated Edward Cave, who had served as ‘inspector of franks’ since 1723, and had from 1731 used the newsletters and gazettes passing through the Post Office to gather, often illicitly, much of the copy for his popular serial, The Gentleman’s Magazine. Cave described his techniques for determining both the sender and intended recipient of letters, and only confirmed the MPs’ suspicions that the search for fraudulent franks gave Post Office officials licence to open and read their correspondence.
The Commons adopted resolutions confirming their privilege of franking letters and decrying the abuse of this privilege, both by those outside Parliament and by the ministry using it as a justification for monitoring private correspondence. [Cobbett, Parliamentary History, ix. 839-48]. That was hardly the end of the matter, and franking remained a live issue for the remainder of the century. In 1764 the Postage Act established the privilege of franking for peers and MPs by statute for the first time, and set out the harsh penalties for those trying to defraud the Post Office, including transportation to the colonies. Further Acts regarding franking were passed in 1784 and 1795.
Throughout the 18th century the Post Office was led by two joint postmasters-general, and in the second half of the century all of them were peers, or sons of noble families. Those appointed tended to be either ministers at the end of their careers or party followers with little desire for higher office. One postmaster-general, Thomas Villiers, Baron Hyde of Hindon (later earl of Clarendon), commented that the office was ‘a very good bed for old courtiers to rest in’. [TNA, PRO 30/8/64].
Hyde’s own career is representative of the political nature of the office. In 1759, on the advice of his prime minister Thomas Pelham Holles, duke of Newcastle, the king filled both the vacant postmasterships with Robert Hampden, a former ambassador to the United Provinces and heir to the barony of Trevor, and William Ponsonby, 2nd earl of Bessborough [I], brother-in-law of William Cavendish, 4th duke of Devonshire. Bessborough resigned in November 1762 in solidarity with Devonshire, in opposition to the peace terms ending the Seven Years’ War. Bessborough’s place was then filled by John Perceval, 2nd earl of Egmont [I], well known to the new premier John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute, through their connections to Leicester House.
(c) Trustees of the British Museum
In September 1763, during the premiership of George Grenville, Egmont was promoted to first lord of the Admiralty and was replaced at the Post Office by Lord Hyde. Hyde had already served as a diplomat during the War of the Austrian Succession, and as an MP and lord of the Admiralty. In July 1765 both Hyde and Lord Trevor (the former Hampden), were replaced by followers of the new Whig ministry – Thomas Robinson, Baron Grantham, long one of Newcastle’s closest friends and a not particularly successful member of his 1754-6 administration, and Bessborough, returning for his second stint in the post after his 1762 demonstration of Whig loyalty. These two had barely taken their places when the Rockingham administration fell in July 1766, replaced by one led nominally by William Pitt, earl of Chatham.
Grantham and Bessborough were both elderly and unwilling to vacate their comfortable posts. They remained until November 1766, when they took part in the Rockingham Whigs’ engineered mass resignation in protest against Chatham’s dismissal of one of their colleagues. They were replaced by the dilettante and rake, Sir Francis Dashwood, 11th Baron Le Despenser, and Wills Hill, earl of Hillsborough [I], a politician clearly on the way up, ‘laid up in lavender at the Post Office till he shall be wanted elsewhere‘. [Chatham Correspondence, iii. 139] Hillsborough left in 1768 to serve as secretary of state for the colonies, where he played a principal part in the descent to war.
The rapid turnover of postmasters-general in the 1760s points to the office’s political nature and its importance as a lucrative, and relatively comfortable, reward for incoming ministries to bestow on loyal followers. That there were two positions available made the opportunities for partisan patronage more extensive.
CGDL
Further reading
Kenneth Ellis, The Post Office in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford UP, 1958)
Howard Robinson, The British Post Office: A History (Princeton UP, 1948)
I would have liked to read something in this article about the only female postmaster general who ever was. Lady Katherine Stanhope, Countess ( suo jure) of Chesterfield, who inherited the office from her third husband Daniel O’Neill (died 1664). She and her husband are excellent examples of being handsomely rewarded after the Restauration. Lady Stanhope was the confident of the first Princes Royal, Mary Henrietta Stuart (mother of William lll). She died as one of the wealthiest women of her time.