Edmund Prideaux - Postal Service

Postal Service

For many years Prideaux was intimately and profitably connected with the postal service. The question of the validity of patents for the conduct of posts was raised in both houses of parliament in connection with the sequestration, in 1640, of Thomas Witherings' office, granted in 1633. Prideaux served as chairman of the committee appointed in 1642 upon the rates of inland letters. In 1644 he was appointed, by resolution of both houses, "master of the posts, messengers, and couriers"; and he continued at intervals, as directed by the House of Commons or otherwise, to manage the postal service. He was ordered to arrange a post to Hull and York, and also to Lyme Regis, in 1644; in 1649 to Chester, Holyhead, and Ireland, and also to Bideford; in 1650 to Kendal, and in 1651 to Carlisle. By 1649 he is said to have established a regular weekly service throughout the kingdom.

Rumour assigned to Prideaux post office an income of £15,000 a year. Blackstone states that his reforms saved the country £5,000 a year; at any rate it was so profitable as to excite rivalry. "Encouraged by the opinion of the judges given in the House of Lords in the case of the Earl of Warwick v. Witherings, 9 July 1646, that the clause in Witherings's patent for restraint of carrying letters was void", Oxenbridge, Thomson, and others endeavoured to carry on a cheap and speedy post of their own, and Prideaux met them by a variety of devices, some in the way of ordinary competition, others in the shape of abuses of power and breaches of the law. The common council of London endeavoured, in 1650, to organise the carriage of letters, but Prideaux brought the matter before parliament, which referred the question to the Council of State, 21 March 1650, and on the same day the Council made an order that Attorney General Prideaux should take care of the business of the inland post, and be accountable for the profits quarterly, and a committee was appointed to confer with him as to the management of the post.

After various claims had been considered, parliament, on 21 March 1652, resolved that the office of postmaster ought to be in the sole disposal of the house, and the Irish and the Scotch committee, to which the question was referred, reported in favour of letting contracts for the carriage of letters. Prideaux contended that the office of postmaster and the carrying of letters were two distinct things, and that the resolution of parliament of 1652 referred to the former only; but eventually all previous grants were held to be set aside by that resolution, and contracts were let for the inland and foreign mails to John Manley in 1653.