To the Letter. Simon Garfield

      A hundred and forty years later, in the last years of Queen Elizabeth I, one may reasonably have hoped for improvement. In an intriguing bit of postal sleuthing, the historian James Daybell has forensically tracked one letter from 1601 as it travelled in vain from London to Dover and back again without ever reaching its intended reader. The letter, which now resides at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire, was written by Sir Robert Cecil, the secretary of state. Its recipient should have been the MP Sir Francis Darcy, but Darcy is still waiting for it.

      The letter was slight, merely a cover note informing Darcy that he was to receive other letters from court and an unnamed French book. Sir Robert left a large amount of blank space around his 57-word note written on a sizeable sheet, denoting power and profligacy. It was written by a scribe but signed by Sir Cecil. Addressed ‘To my verie loving friend Sir Francys Darcye knight at Dover,’ this wasn’t quite as optimistic as it would be if we sent such a letter today. It wasn’t the vagueness of the location that stumped the post – being a Sir, he probably would have been tracked down to some or other courthouse, coffeehouse, alehouse, or house of ill-repute – so much as the fact that Sir Francis had already fled Dover for elsewhere. The instructions on the outside of the letter – ‘post hast hast hast for life life life lyfe’ – was not only in vain, but evidence (for such a perfunctory message) of a sort of desperate madness.

      The letter was carried along the Dover Road on horseback, presumably (as was the custom) by a number of riders working as a relay. The letter was endorsed with the words ‘For he Mats affayres’, which permitted it to travel free of charge by an early version of the royal mail, rather than by private carrier. The regally endorsed riders would be stationed at a series of established stops, either inns or signposts, a similar system to the one established within the Roman Empire. These ‘post-stage’ landmarks, which were usually towns dotted from eight to twenty miles apart, can also be thought of as the earliest forms of pillar boxes; before such a practical thing was invented centuries later, a regular series of deliveries and collections would be made along a set road, with letters being either dropped off as a final destination or handed on to the next rider like a baton. The Dover Road was one of England’s very few established routes, so the Robert Cecil letter arrived within a day, and, failing to find Darcy, finished its journey in the hands of Sir Thomas Fane, Lieutenant of Dover Castle.

      The markings on the envelope provide yet more details, the Elizabethan equivalent of UPS tracking. The first endorsement was ‘London this 23 of September at 8 in the morninge’, possibly written, James Daybell suggests, by Rowland White, the Post of the Court responsible for gathering official correspondence from several quarters to the main depot in central London. The next endorsement, ‘London at past eight in the morning’, was followed by ‘Dartford at 11 in the fornone’, and then Rochester ‘at 2 in the afternon’. We also know it got to Sittingbourne at 7 and then Canterbury after 9, reaching Dover at some point the following morning. Sir Thomas Fane woke up to learn that Darcy had scarpered, and tried to locate him in the Kentish Downs, another failed mission.

      Sir Thomas then sent the whole thing back to Sir Robert in a covering packet, which stopped off at all the places it had stopped off on its way down (reaching Dartford at almost 4 a.m.). In addition, the new packet was endorsed with an illustration of a gallows, presumably donating urgency, or the fate a trembling postmaster would meet if the letter wasn’t delivered.

      Beyond all the clear absurdities of this frantic toing and froing through night and day across the pastures of England for nought, the example did at least point to one unmistakable truth: the post – even the fate of a single transaction – was important. The post may not have been particularly private (Sir Robert’s tired letter was opened before he got it back, perhaps by his secretary but conceivably by others too, and it may have passed through a dozen hands before it didn’t reach where it was intended) but there was no doubting the investment in trying to get it through. If you wrote it, many people would try to deliver it. The fact the post-stages existed at all, and the bureaucratic feat of tracking the letter at every calling station, meant there had indeed been slender improvement in at least one primitive branch of the postal service compared to the preceding centuries.