DC -- Natl Postal Museum -- Exhibit (Case): From Royal Mail to Public Post:
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- Description of Pictures: From Royal Mail to Public Post
October 21, 2016 – January 16, 2017
The United Kingdom’s postal service, Royal Mail, observes its 500th anniversary in 2016. To mark the occasion, the National Postal Museum presents a temporary display of original documents from 1635 and 1840, pivotal years in the expansion and evolution of the country’s postal network. These important documents chronicling postal reform in the United Kingdom are on loan from a private collection. In 1516, King Henry VIII knighted a government clerk named Brian Tuke and gave him the title Governor of the King’s Posts. Sir Brian developed a system of post roads connecting London with the four corners of England. This was a closed system, available only to the king and high-ranking public officials. Its postmen were royal messengers who carried official writs, summonses and orders for the government. Over the next three centuries, however, a series of reforms gradually opened the Royal Mail to public use.
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- Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
- ROYAL_161020_08.JPG: From Royal Mail to Public Post: The Path to Philately
The United Kingdom postal service, Royal Mail, observes its 500th anniversary in 2016. To mark the occasion, the National Postal Museum presents a temporary display of original documents from 1635 to 1840, pivotal years in the expansion and evolution of the country's postal network.
In 1516, King Henry VIII knighted a government clerk named Brian Tuke and gave him the title Governor of the King's Posts. Sir Brian developed a system of post roads connecting London with the four corners of England. The roads to Dover in the southeast and Berwick in the north were established by 1533; those to Exeter in the southwest and Holyhead in the northwest followed soon after.
This was a closed system available only to the Crown and high-ranking public official writs, summonses and orders for the government. Over the next three centuries, however, a series of reforms gradually opened the Royal Mail to public use. These documents, on loan from a private collector, mark important turning points in the process.
- ROYAL_161020_12.JPG: "All those that will send letters to the most parts of the habitable world, or to any parts of our King of Great Britain's Dominions; let them repair to the General Post Master Thomas Withering at his house in Sherbourne lane."
-- The Carrier's Cosmography by John Taylor, 1637
During the reign of King Charles I (1625-1649) London merchants petitioned the Royal Mail to carry business letters. Saddled with debts inherited from his predecessors and embroiled in costly foreign wars, Charles decided that opening his personal postal system for public use might be a good way to raise much-needed cash.
The king's order was given as a proclamation issued from his royal lodge at Bagshot near Windsor on July 31, 1635. Fittingly, it was carried over the Exeter post road to London where it was typeset and printed by Robert Barker, the king's printer. Royal Mail now operated "for the advancement of all His Majesties Subjects in their trade and correspondence."
Thomas Witherings, a merchant and politician who was already in charge of England's foreign mail, was granted a monopoly on carrying "all such Letters as shall be directed to any Post-towne." The proclamation also contains the first standardized letter postage rates, based on the number of sheets in the letter and the distance it travelled. By November public post offices were operating in Bishopsgate Street and at Withering's own home in Sherbourne Lane.
- ROYAL_161020_16.JPG: By the King. A Proclamation for the setling [sic] of the Letter Office of England and Scotland
Two-page folio imprinted at London by Robert Barker, printer to the King's most Excellent Majesty, and by the assignes of John Bill, 1635.
- ROYAL_161020_39.JPG: From Royal Mail to Public Post: The Path to Philately
Although the reforms of 1635 made the Royal Mail useful for business correspondence, individuals still found the system expensive and complicated. Rates on private mail were high to subsidize free postage for members of Parliament, government officials, and publishers.
Based on distance and the number of pages, postage was charged to the recipient -- not the sender -- of a letter, and many refused to pay. Cities and towns established independent penny posts in an attempt to make local communication easier, but the United Kingdom overall became a dizzying patchwork of different postal rates and zones. The post office operated at a deficit.
- ROYAL_161020_44.JPG: In 1837, Parliament created a select committee headed by Robert Wallace, a Member of Parliament from Scotland and noted postal reformer. Wallace championed Rowland Hill's recommendation that postal fees be set at a uniform rate everywhere in the United Kingdom and be prepaid by the sender using a postage stamp or printed letter sheet. Parliament approved the plan in 1839 and Hill was appointed to supervise its implementation.
On April 10, 1840, less than one month before the new postal reform was to take effect, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (roughly equivalent to the US Secretary of the Treasury) sent examples of the new one-penny stamp and letter sheet to Wallace, who mounted and annotated them on a card in his own handwriting. This document was recently rediscovered among Wallace's personal papers held by his descendants.
The letter sheet is a proof of an early lacking the words "POSTAGE ONE PENNY" at the bottom. The stamp, however, is exactly as issued to the public on May 1, 1840. It was printed using Plate 1a, the first of eleven steel printing plates created to produce the stamps. This is the earliest dated example of a finished Penny Black yet discovered, and was quite probably taken from the first sheet ever printed.
- ROYAL_161020_46.JPG: In 1837, Parliament created a select committee headed by Robert Wallace, a Member of Parliament from Scotland and noted postal reformer. Wallace championed Rowland Hill's recommendation that postal fees be set at a uniform rate everywhere in the United Kingdom and be prepaid by the sender using a postage stamp or printed letter sheet. Parliament approved the plan in 1839 and Hill was appointed to supervise its implementation.
On April 10, 1840, less than one month before the new postal reform was to take effect, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (roughly equivalent to the US Secretary of the Treasury) sent examples of the new one-penny stamp and letter sheet to Wallace, who mounted and annotated them on a card in his own handwriting. This document was recently rediscovered among Wallace's personal papers held by his descendants.
The letter sheet is a proof of an early lacking the words "POSTAGE ONE PENNY" at the bottom. The stamp, however, is exactly as issued to the public on May 1, 1840. It was printed using Plate 1a, the first of eleven steel printing plates created to produce the stamps. This is the earliest dated example of a finished Penny Black yet discovered, and was quite probably taken from the first sheet ever printed.
- ROYAL_161020_52.JPG: First Proof of Penny Postage Stamp Cover
Presented to Mr. [Robert] Wallace by the Right Honourable the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Francis Thornhill Baring, April 10, 1840
- ROYAL_161020_57.JPG: "Universal Penny Postage Fly or Loose Stamp, presented to me Mr. Wallace as above. These come into public use on the 6th of May, 1840."
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