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1653 'Free' Letter from the Commonwealth's Parliamentary Commissioners at Leith to the Admiralty in London

Free postage for government mail was first recorded in a Council of State Order of November 1652: 'that all public packets on extraordinary dispa~ches,
letters of members of Par/lament and Council of State, secretaries, clerks, or officers employed in public service under them, or their corr:hmittees, or m any
other service of public concemment, shall be carried free'. Currently the earliest recorded example of a 'free' letter from Scotland Is dated 9 April 1653.

Free Letters The 1653 Letter

The Council of State Order of November 1652 provided little detail as to how free letters Transcript with modem spelling:
would be regulated. This was rectified in May 1653 when the Report of the Committee
for Management of the Posts stated that 'public letters are to be those directed to or Our last was the fifth instant, in which we advised Your Honourables how far we had
from the Laro General, Council of State, Commissioners of the Admiralty, Generals of
proceeded in pursuance of the orders lately received for impresting Seamen. Since which time
the fleet, and generals and offlcers of the army, and the Commanders-in-Chief in
Ireland and Scotland'. The Report also introduced an additional concept: 'the there is further progress made in the business; [the number of men now aboard Capt. Pestell
Commissioners for the Monthly Assessments, for Inspection, and the Irish and Scotch being 150]; and before he set sail for London we hope to make them up 200, which will be the
Committee should have theirs free, provided that the letters or packets not known by
utmost can be sent by these ships with safety [there being but three small merchantmen with
their seal have an endorsement "For the service of the commonwealth", and be signed
by the secretary or clerk'. him] and we hope by Captain Yates to send a further supply: we considered it our duty to give
Your Honourables this account and when he comes, or that we heard what provider he has
The Parliamentary Commissioners in Scotland
made in the business a further and faithful account thereof shall be sent from
In 1652, Oliver Cromwell appointed Edmund Syler, Richard Saltonstall and Samuel
Desborow as 'Commissioners in Scotland'. Their role was to enforce Commonwealth
policies in Scotland. Among their duties was 'to remove such persons as shall be found Leith !I' April 1653 Right Honourable
scandalous in their lives and conversations, or that shall oppose the Authority of the
Commonwealth of England, exercised in Scotland, and place others more fitly qualified
Your Honourables most humble
in their rooms'. The Commissioners' roles expanded to managing the sequestration of
estates in Scotland which, in effect, involved selling confiscated estates back to their and faithful servants
original owners. The Commissioners were based at the Court of Admiralty in Leith.
The two signatories of this 1653 letter were Edmund Syler and Richard Saltonstall. gth April 1653. Letter from the Parliamentary Commissioners in
Scotland, based in Leith, to the Admiralty in London:
Edmund Syler was a colonel of Cromwell's New Model Army. He had a regiment of
foot raised in Lincolnshire and a troop of horse, totalling 900 men. In December 1650 For the Right Honourable
he was ordered to march into Scotland. His regiment was involved in the siege of the Commissioners for ordering
Tantallon Castle and the Battle of lnverkeithing in 1651. Late in that year a proposal to
disband Syler's regiment resulted in a mutiny of the troops but this lasted only a few and Managing the affairs
hours. After his term as 'Commissioner in Scotland', Syler remained in Scotland to of the admiralty and Navy
become, in 1659, Commissioner for Excise and Customs at Leith. Whitehall

Richard Saltonstall was Sir Richard Saltonstall, born in As both the senders and the recipients qualified for free The orders that the Commissioners in Scotland had received from the Admiralty were
Halifax. His parents had grown wealthy as Tudor postage under the 1652 Council of State Order, no further to imprest (i.e. pressgang) sailors into Cromwell's new navy that was being formed to
clothiers. In the 1620's Richard moved to a puritan endorsement was required for this letter to be exempt from fight the Dutch. An Act for pressing sailors into service had been passed in 1652. In a
parish in London and, in 1629, he joined the postal charges. previous letter on the subject, the Commissioners had informed the Admiralty that the
Massachusetts Bay Company, lending them money. In
This letter is currently the earliest recorded Scottish 'free' letter. bailiffs and magistrates of the Scottish ports had alleged that they could find no
1630 he accompanied the Arbella fleet to America and seamen, which indicated their 'disaffection to the service'.
led the settlement of Watertown, which was originally The letter preceded, by a month, the introduction of regulations
called Saltonstall Plantation. This is now part of Greater that required some letters of state to be endorsed 'for the The Captain Pestell referred to was William Pestell, commander of the Satisfaction, a
Boston and so Richard Saltonstall is regarded as one of service of the Commonwealth' in order for them to be carried frigate of 26 guns and 100 crew. It had come into Leith from Orkney where it had
free. been deployed on winter guard off the coast of Scotland.
the original founders of that city. On returning to Britain,
he opposed the crown in the civil wars and, in March
1650, was appointed a commissioner of the high court References: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
of justice. During the Commonwealth period he became Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Interregnum
Provenance: Mlohael Jeckson's 'early Letters' exhibit
Commissioner in Scotland and held other lucerative Rex Clarl<'s 'Free Franking' col/eotlon
posts. After the Restoration, however, he was forced to
flee arrest as a 'seditious person'. He died in 1661.