How did mail work in the 1500s/1600s?

by krudler5

I looked in the FAQ for this but didn't find anything, although I suspect this has probably been asked before. My apologies if it has.

How did mail work in the 1500s/1600s? I'm reading a book about the creation of the King James Bible, and in part of it the author mentions in passing about how one member of the English nobility (who had gone on an international tour of Europe) continued to write letters and mail them to his friends abroad (Italy, France, etc.).

My assumption is that the mail was primarily carried either via boat or horseback to the destination town, but how did it work from there?

  1. Whose job was it to deliver the letter?
  2. How did the person delivering the letter know where to take it? I know that, for example, London had street names so obviously they had addresses -- right?
  3. What would happen if the letter was undeliverable?
  4. How much would it likely have cost to mail a letter from, say, London to Rome? I realize it is likely difficult to say exactly what the cost would be, but perhaps a general idea ("a lot," or "a little," or some approximation like that).
  5. How long would it generally take to be delivered?
  6. How common was international mail in that era?

Thanks!

intangible-tangerine

I'll limit my answer to England (later Great Britain and Ireland for the period in question) since continental systems are unknown to me. The period you're inquiring about saw a great many major developments in English postal services. What follows is a rough outline.

Firstly, during the English Middle Ages there was no official postal system, but a variety of options were available.

A trusted servant might be made to memorise a message and would then be sent to the address of the intended recipient. Carrier pigeons and hawks could be used. A written message could be given to a pilgrim or travelling merchant headed in the right direction. These were all rather ad-hoc and inefficient and so something more reliable was needed.

In 1507 the job of 'Master of the Posts' (which would later become 'Post Master General) was created by Cardinal Wolsely during the Reign of Henry VIII. The first holder of this post, Brian Tuke, used his experience of the pre-existing French system to inform him.

The main aim of this early postal service was very modest, it was just designed to ensure that messages meant for the Royal Court got there speedily. Towns were required to appoint a Post Master and to have a supply of horses to carry letters and parcels. Each 'post' (precursors to post offices, but at this point usually just stables for the horses) were roughly 20 miles apart. The post master would not ride the horses himself but would employ 'post boys' for this role. This could be a dangerous job as they were vulnerable to highway men and other nasty things one would find on a lonely Tudor road.

This system was not a major innovation, horse mail was already an established practice, but Tuke was in charge of making sure the towns did not slack in their duty to provide an efficient (for the time) service.

These services were also used to send messages and objects to destinations other than the Royal Courts.

It's worth mentioning here that Cardinal Wolsely was very much involved in the development of the Secret Service which had been established under Henry VII and that government spying on private communications is a lot, lot, lot older than facebook and twitter.

The Tudor Courts did not discourage other people, those who could afford it, from using the postal service, indeed their doing so was quite useful as an intelligence gathering tool.

In 1635 the Royal Mail was officially founded under Charles I by Thomas Witherings. This meant that the postal services became officially available to the public. They had been unofficially so since they'd started and a system of efficient mail between London Merchants and their trading partners on the Continent was well established, so this was primarily about regularisation and monopolization. An increasingly literate and wealthy society was sending lots of letters and so, rather than having other up-starts muscle in on the potential profits Charles I sought to expand the existing mail services to the general population.

This called for a large expansion in the number of 'Posts' and so many homes and businesses (usually Inns/pubs) which had been operating side-lines as unofficial Post-Offices were brought in to the fold. The London based ones were listed in a charmingly titled publication 'the carriers cosmography' first published in 1637.

The first official post offices, then called 'letter offices' were established around this time.

Despite the turmoil of the English civil war (really the British and Irish Civil war as it involved the whole of the British Isles) the Postal Services continued.

In 1657, shortly before the restoration of the Monarchy after a brief Republic intermission the Postage Act was enacted by Parliament. This set fixed prices for sending letters and parcels and required all post masters and their employees to accept any reasonable item a member of the public wished to send.

In the 1680s private enterprises 'penny posts' started appearing in London, the first founded by William Dockwra these operated on much smaller geographic area, catering exclusively for the urban population. The postage stamp was an invention of Dockwra's penny post. These businesses did not last long as they were taken over by the Crown, which as we've learned loved a monopoly at that time.

And that covers our speedy journey from 1500 to 1700!

If you want to learn what happens next the Royal Mail has a terrific interactive time-line

I also recommend Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel 'Going Postal' it's not an academic source by any means as it's a fantasy novel, but it's very much inspired by this history.