Page 4 - British Post Office Notices 1666 to 1799

- PREFACE

- The British Post Office Notices comprise the directives concerning the running of the Royal

Mails. These were issued by the Postmaster Generals through their Secretaries, the Post Office
Surveyors, and by local Postmasters. The Notices served two audiences, postal employees and the
general public. Unfortunately I have discovered very few original documents or reprints of Notices
directed to the first category before 1800. However, since after 1800 a steady stream of Notices
appear, I assume that the ephemeral nature of the notices (serving a limited and time-bound usage
- and regularly superseded), did not encourage their preservation. The Notices simply have not
survived the vicissitudes of time. It is my fervent hope that the publication of this series of volumes
on this subject will encourage antiquarians, archivists, and collectors to survey early records with a
renewed interest in these early Notices.
The British Post Office Notices 1666-1899 series would like to make all of the Post Office Notices
that were available to the public in the 18th and 19th century also available to the modem public
without necessitating research on site in the London Archives. The review of Post Office Notices
from these early years is more fragmentary than for later times. Many of the earliest Post Office
Notices have not survived in their original form and are known from their reprints in newspapers.
Indeed, most of the Notices of this volume were gleaned from the various newspapers of the
times. Many of the early government proclamations were reproduced in 1he London Gazette. In
the 1790's, while 17ze London Gazette practically stopped reproducing the Post Office Notices, other
.- newspapers took over this task (The Times started on January 1, 1785 under the name of The Daily
Universal Register). When it has been possible to compare a Notice printed in several newspapers, I
have observed but minor differences of punctuation and capitalization. We can be confident, then,
that the prevailing practice by the papers was to print the Notice using the exact wording of the official
Post Office Notice.

This volume, the first of the series, spans the period from 1666 to 1799. The start of the period
is marked by the well-known Great Fire of London. It was reported by The London Gazette of
September, 1666 in these terms:
- City, beginning not far from Thames-Street, near London-Bridge, which continues
About two a clock this morning a sudden and lamentable Fire brake out in this

still with great violence, and hath already burnt down to the ground many houses
thereabouts; which sad accident affected His Majesty with that tenderness, and
compassion, that he was pleased to go himself in Person with his Royal Highness, to
give order that all possible means should be used for quenching the fire, or stopping
- sent by His Majesty, to be more particularly assisting to the Lord Mayor and
its further spreading. In which care, the Right Honorable the Earl of Craven was
Magistrates; and several Companies of His Guards sent into the City, to be helpful
by what ways they could in so great a calamity.

In its next issue, The London Gazette described the conflagration in more details. It dedicated a
full page to the event, an unusual amount of coverage when one considers that the paper was only two
pages long.

At the beginning, many of the Notices had to do with the development of regular mail routes
throughout the kingdom. Occasionally, when the monarch moved away from London, a special mail
delivery was organized from London to His Majesty's new place of residence whether in Bath,
Newmarket or Windsor.