Post Offices opened between 1682 and 1738

Note: Although this map is dated 1682 to 1738, the year before Manley died, it is likely that those towns shown in red became post-towns during his term as deputy postmaster.

Sources: Legg family archives (B.L., Add MS. 63091), reproduced and published by the Postal History Society as special series no. 5 A general survey of the Post Office, ed. Bond, pp 69-70; Watson, The gentleman’s and citizen’s almanack (1740), p. 94.

properties was, in fact, a different Isaac Manley. The Oxfordshire property was built by an Isaac Manley who was a member of Captain Cook’s crew and later an admiral in the Royal Navy. The Manley Hall family had no connection with the Isaac Manley discussed here ‒ see ibid., and Reynolds, A history of the Irish Post Office, p. 18. The Post Office had transferred premises from Fishamble Street, near Christ Church Cathedral, about 1709.

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Momentum stalled under the stewardship of Sir Marmaduke Wyvill

If Isaac Manley demonstrated a genuine interest in developing the service, the same could not be said of his successor, another Englishman, Sir Marmaduke Wyvill.

The sixth baronet of Burton Constable in Yorkshire, where his family had deep routes and a large estate, Wyvill was appointed postmaster-general for Ireland in 1738 by his brother-in-law Thomas Coke (later Lord Leicester), one of the two joint postmasters-general of Britain.⁵¹ Unlike many other members of his family, very little is known about Marmaduke.⁵² His family had served the English monarch since the era of William the Conqueror.⁵³ His father had been an MP at Westminster, as had the five previous baronets.⁵⁴ Marmaduke’s career was not so auspicious. After four attempts, he was eventually elected to Westminster as MP for Richmond in 1727, though he was unseated the following year on petition.⁵⁵ Ten years later, he was appointed to the postmastership of Ireland. His appointment reflects the political changes that had occurred in Ireland since the Post Office had been established in 1638. Up to and including Manley’s appointment, for security reasons Westminster always closely vetted incumbents. Wyvill’s selection signalled a change in that the office became more valued and attractive for the title and substantial salary which the Westminster parliament could grant as a favour or reward. Beyond the fact that he owed the appointment to the advocacy of his brother-in-law, the reason for Wyvill’s appointment to the position is unknown.

Although he served as deputy postmaster-general for Ireland for sixteen years until his death in 1754, when compared with his predecessor, Wyvill introduced little change; in fact, the momentum in the modernisation of the Post Office, built up by Manley, largely stalled, the only improvement being a very modest and sustained increase in the network (the number of post-towns rose from 118 to 127 at a rate of less than one new post-town a year).⁵⁶ Quite simply, Wyvill was not committed to the Post Office; neither had he any interest in Ireland. A contemporary reference to his being ‘a great man for sheep in Yorkshire’ suggests his preference for spending time in his

51 Romney R. Sedgwick, ‘Wyvill, Sir Marmaduke, 6th Bt. (1692-1754), of Constable Burton, Yorks’ at The history of Parliament [http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/, accessed 2 Oct. 2012].

52 Unlike many of his forbearers, he is not even the subject of an Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry.

53 John Burke, A genealogical and heraldic history of the commoners of Great Britain and Ireland enjoying territorial possessions or high official rank (4 vols, London 1888), iv, 467.

54 Ibid., 467-70.

55 JHC, 14-15 Mar. 1727; Sedgwick, ‘Wyvill, ‘Sir Marmaduke’.

56 John Watson, The gentleman’s and citizen’s almanack (Dublin, 1755), p. 91.

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Yorkshire home, and he was the only Postmaster General for Ireland since Vaughan, almost a century before, who did not sit in the Irish parliament.⁵⁷ The fact that the development of the Post Office in Ireland virtually stagnated during his term in office demonstrates clearly that as far as Wyvill was concerned, the position was just an additional source of income. Exactly how much the salary was worth at this time is unknown but given that Manley received £600 a year plus a pension of £200, it is unlikely to have been less than £800.

Internal strife and systemic stagnation: the turn of Sir Thomas Prendergast

Wyvill was succeeded in 1754 by Sir Thomas Prendergast who had been linked with the position twenty years earlier. In two letters dated 21 January and 4 February 1734 Marmaduke Coghill, MP for Dublin University and commissioner of the revenue, informed Edward Southwell Jr., Secretary of State for Ireland, that ‘The prints [papers]

have given the reversion of the post office to Sr T. Prendergast.’⁵⁸ Coghill’s second letter reiterated the point; however, this was not the full story.⁵⁹ The newspapers were partly right in that Sir Robert Walpole, first lord of the Treasury, chancellor of the Exchequer and head of the government at Westminster, had twice promised Prendergast the position, initially in 1734 and again on the death of Manley, when Prendergast had canvassed for the position.⁶⁰ However, in the end, he was passed over when Wyvill was appointed. A disappointed Prendergast complained ‘heavily’ about not securing the post⁶¹ but in 1754, following Wyvill’s death, he was finally appointed. By then the Post Office premises was situated at Fownes’ Court on College Green in Dublin’s city centre.⁶²

Like Manley and Wyvill before him, Prendergast was politically well connected;

he was a cousin of the second duke of Richmond and owed his appointment to representations made on his behalf by the duke.⁶³ Prendergast won the safe seat of Chichester controlled by his cousin the duke in a by-election in 1733.⁶⁴ On entering

57 Sedgwick, ‘Wyvill, Sir Marmaduke’.

58 Marmaduke Coghill to Edward Southall jr., 21 Jan. 1734 in Letters of Marmaduke Coghill, 1722-1238, ed. D. W. Hayton (Dublin, 2005), p. 154.

59 Ibid.

60 Second Duke of Richmond to Sir Robert Walpole, ? Mar. 1738 in Earl of March, A duke and his friends: the life and letters of the second Duke of Richmond (2 vols, London, 1911), i, 324.

61 Marmaduke Coghill to Edward Southall, 10 Jan. 1835 in Letters of Coghill, ed. Hayton, p. 182.

62 John Watson, The gentleman’s and citizen’s almanack (Dublin, 1760), p. 52.

63 Romney R. Sedgwick, ‘Chichester Borough’ at The history of parliament [http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/, accessed 22 Oct. 2015].

64 Ibid.

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parliament he promptly voted against Walpole’s government, effectively ending his chances of a political career in England since he was not nominated for the seat in the general election the following year (though he did continue to harbour ambitions of returning to Westminster).⁶⁵ He therefore directed his attention to Ireland where in 1733, the same year that he had taken his seat at Westminster, he was also elected to the Irish parliament as MP for Clonmel (1733-60).⁶⁶ Eventually both his and Richmond’s persistence paid off when following the death of Wyvill and Walpole’s withdrawal of his objection, Prendergast became deputy post master for Ireland.

He was the first Irishman since Warburton to hold the position and, like Manley and Wyvill before him, he was a strong supporter of the Dublin Castle administration.

Prendergast’s six years in office (1754-60) were beset by internal strife and as in the case of his immediate predecessor, there was no significant expansion in the network with no new post-town created during his term in office.⁶⁷ His first year in office elicited mixed comment. In June 1755 Henry Fox, one of the Secretaries of State at Westminster, remarked that ‘Sir T. and Lady Prenedigrass [sic] will hardly make free with your Excellence’s letters, as I hear they do with other people’s’⁶⁸ while a few months later, Sir Robert Wilmot, secretary to Lord Lieutenant Devonshire in England, writing to the latter in September 1755, praised Prendergast, stating that ‘Every day produces fresh proof of the prudence of Sir Thomas Prendergast in the execution of his office’.⁶⁹

His term in office coincided with a dispute involving staff in the Dublin office which had its origins in Sir Marmaduke Wyvill’s time, but reached a climax in the early 1760s with the publication of a pamphlet titled, The case of Christopher Byron Late an Officer in his Majesty’s Post-Office, Dublin submitted to the Consideration of his friends, and the Public. Printed in 1762, this comprised three distinct petitions addressed to various dignitaries in the Post Office in Dublin and London.⁷⁰ Within these petitions are copies of other letters, written between 1755 and 1761. The first petition, dated 1755, was addressed to the earl of Leicester and Sir Everard Fawkener, joint

65 March, A duke & his friends, ii, 200-03, 259, 278-86, 323-30.

66 Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish parliament, 1692-1800, vi, 117; Romney R. Sedgwick, ‘Prendergast, Sir Thomas, 2nd Bt. (c.1700-60), of Gort, co. Galway’ at The history of parliament [http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/, accessed 2 Oct. 2012].

67 Watson, The gentleman’s and citizen’s almanack (1755), pp 91-2; idem, The gentleman’s and citizen’s almanack (Dublin, 1763), pp 91-2.

68 Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish parliament, 1692-1800, vi, 117.

69 Ibid.

70 The case of Christopher Byron late an officer in his Majesty’s Post-Office, Dublin submitted to the consideration of his friends and the public (Dublin, 1762).

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masters general: it was written by Christopher Byron on behalf of himself and other supernumerary and junior officers. The second was addressed to Sir Thomas Prendergast, deputy postmaster for Ireland (1755-60); it too included letters. The third, addressed to William Ponsonby, first Earl of Bessborough and to Robert Hampden, dates from sometime between 1759 and 1762 when both were joint postmasters-general.⁷¹ Bound and published in 1762 as a single pamphlet, these petitions merit close analysis since they offer revealing insights into how the Post Office was operating, both officially and unofficially, in the mid-eighteenth century.

The entire pamphlet is primarily focussed on a dispute between Byron and Evelyn Martin, two clerks of the road whose duty it was to charge for the conveyance of letters along one of the three post routes ‒ the Great northern, the Connaught, and the Munster roads. The row between the two men brought to the surface a range of grievances shared by many staff in the Dublin Post Office, particularly in relation to wages and perks associated with the position of clerk. At the time, junior officials like Byron (on whose behalf he purportedly wrote this petition) earned £12 per annum with no extras.⁷² They had previously applied for a wage increase through the aegis of Evelyn Martin ‘who acted as Accomptant and Comptroller of the Office’ but to no avail.⁷³ Soon after Byron was made permanent, he was informed by Martin that Sir Marmaduke Wyvill would be deducting 40s. a year from his wages and those of other junior officers. Byron and his colleagues suspected that this money was in fact appropriated by Martin.

On closer examination it emerges that hostility towards Evelyn Martin pre-dated this development, originally stemming from Wyvill’s appointment of him as accomptant and comptroller of the Office ahead of others who were senior to him.⁷⁴ Following his subsequent promotion to clerk to the secretary, Martin stirred further resentment when allegedly ‘he, [Martain] by some private agreement, rented, or procured the Privilege of sending and supplying News-papers, to all the Two-penny and every first four-penny Stage from Dublin’ along with other privileges that would normally have gone to ‘Secretary or postmasters Clerks’.⁷⁵ He was also accused of having appropriated for himself the privilege of supplying English newspapers to coffee-houses, printers, commissioners of revenue, the linen board, barrack officers and

71 Joyce, The history of the Post Office, p. 431.

72 The case of Christopher Byron, p. 5.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

75 Ibid., pp 6, 7.

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others, all of whom paid regularly and handsomely for this service.⁷⁶ Furthermore, Martin was said to have inappropriately acquired the position of clerk of the Leinster post road and many associated benefits. Byron and his colleagues were also aggrieved that when Martin was promoted, in addition to his salary of £50 and other benefits, he supposedly retained his old privileges which he should have passed on to the person who succeeded him in his previous positions. (These privileges were worth about £400 a year in addition to his salary.⁷⁷)

By the time of Wyvill’s death in 1754 nothing had come of these grumblings which were left to Prendergast, the newly appointment Deputy Postmaster of Ireland, to sort out. In a petition addressed to Prendergast,⁷⁸ Byron set out his many grievances and those of his colleagues, expressing their annoyance that while ‘most people in the Military and Civil Employments’ had received a raise in their salaries, they had not been afforded that treatment; indeed they complained that they were worse off than these other state employees.⁷⁹ From this, we glean useful information on the official wages paid to Post Office employees in 1765 (see Table 3.1).⁸⁰

Table 2.1 The wages and number of years employed for some staff in the Post Office in 1756

Salary Years employed

Richard Tucker £30 17

Thomas Lee £28 15

Coghill Haggerty £15 9

Christopher Byron £14 7

Samuel Dixon £12 4

Marmaduke Lamont £10 3

Source: The case of Christopher Byron … (Dublin, 1692).

The sacking of a letter-carrier, John Lewis, for what Byron and his colleagues considered a trivial offence, and his immediate replacement by a close associate of Evelyn Martin, aggravated the already fraught situation. (A letter-carrier collected payment for letters on his rounds, deposited this money in the bank once a month, and

76 The trade in English newspapers though small was very lucrative as they could reach the provenances quicker than the Irish newspapers. The Irish newspapers relied on the English ones for much of their international and British news. By the time these were printed and ready for distribution, the English newspapers had already been dispatched in a previous post. Also English newspapers were ‘in demand among some of the gentry now increasingly anglicised and among senior officers in army garrisons’

scattered across the country; see L. M. Cullen, ‘Establishing a communications system: news post and transport’ in Brian Farrell (ed.), Communications and community in Ireland (Dublin, 1984), p. 22.

77 The case of Christopher Byron, p. 9.

78 This petition comprised the second section of the pamphlet, p. 11.

79 Ibid., p. 11.

80 Ibid., p. 13.

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then presented a receipt to the Treasurer. According to Byron, Lewis was sacked for his tardiness in passing on this receipt.)

Prendergast’s alleged fondness for appointing his friends to well-paid positions ahead of those who were in line for promotion to those posts was another source of grievance for the Post Office staff who appear to have had just cause to complain. A surveyor sent over in 1760 from London to investigate the facts behind this allegation, upheld the aggrieved employees’ complaint: he reinstated one officer who had been dismissed, promoted others, and pointedly sacked Prendergast’s appointee.⁸¹ The surveyor also increased the wages of younger officers from £17 to £20 per annum.⁸² After this particular episode in the greater ongoing row, Prendergast devoted little energy to attending to his duties as deputy postmaster.⁸³ Nevertheless, the dispute between him and Martin on the one hand and Christopher Byron and his colleagues on the other would continue, re-animated by fresh disagreement over who Byron should vote for in the parliamentary elections of 1760.⁸⁴ One petition, signed by eleven staff members including clerks of the road, presented the following devastating evaluation of Prendergast’s term in office: ‘we are sorry to say, [Sir Thomas] rendered himself forever memorable, by a conduct towards the Officers established here before his time, to which we cannot give a softer Appellation, than Tyranny and Oppression.’⁸⁵

Prendergast’s Irish nationality appears to have been of no consequence in terms of his performance as deputy postmaster which was decidedly unimpressive, being defined by his disengagement, an unwillingness or inability to quell ongoing tensions and disputes within the ranks, and a resultant retardation to the point of virtual stagnation in the development of the Irish Post Office. In these respects he followed in the footsteps of his equally unremarkable predecessor, Wyvill: for both, the postmastership was little more than another income source. Although the number of post-towns did rise by seven from 117 to 124 during his five years in the office (1756-60), there was also contraction in the network when the connection between Tralee and Dingle that had opened the year before he came into office ceased operation.⁸⁶ Prendergast’s inertia is further evidenced by the lack of significant improvement to the quality of the postal service: this era saw no increase in the frequency of deliveries of

81 Ibid., pp 31, 37.

82 Ibid., p. 37.

83 Ibid., p. 37.

84 Ibid., p. 42.

85 Ibid., pp 27-8.

86 Watson, The gentleman’s and citizen’s almanack (1755), pp 91-93; idem, The gentleman’s and citizen’s almanack (1760), pp 90-92.

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mail between Dublin and the provinces or between Dublin and London. Like Wyvill before him, Prendergast seems to have had little interest in modernising the post in Ireland, instead leaving the day-to-day running of the Post Office to the secretary.

Following Prendergast’s death and at an early stage in his career, Sir William Henry Fortescue (cr. Earl of Clermont in 1777) was appointed deputy post-master general for Ireland in 1761. He too had to contend with the ongoing grievances of Byron and his colleagues. In July, just months after Fortescue’s appointment, Byron was dismissed from the Post Office. The final section of the petition dated 16 February 1762 and titled, An ADDRESS to the Right Honourable William Earl of Besborough, and Robert Hampden Esq. His Majesty’s Post-master-General, is Byron’s appeal for his reinstatement.⁸⁷ Byron complained about the circumstances of his dismissal, made allegations of bullying, cronyism and other abuses within the Post Office, and was particularly vehement in his criticism of Evelyn Martin. Determining how much of this was accurate or merely sour grapes on the part of a disgruntled sacked employee is, of course, a difficult task.⁸⁸ But although inherently biased, this pamphlet reveals much about the Irish Post Office in the mid-eighteenth century. It sheds significant light on the inner workings of the Post Office, the poor wages paid to staff, and the importance of the newspaper privilege to senior and junior personnel alike. In addition to exposing disquiet among staff, it shows that jobbery and cronyism were common practices. If the pamphlet is to be believed, bullying was also common. One can also deduce that the deputy postmaster general for Ireland seldom personally attended to the business of the office, relying instead on his secretary. The importance of perks associated with various jobs is clear. However, it is important to acknowledge that in availing of these concessions, the postmaster general differed little from his contemporaries who held political and other public office in both Ireland and Britain. Furthermore, the fact that Prendergast, like Wyvill, acquired the office through political patronage rather than ability once again reflects Westminster’s attitude towards the Post Office in Ireland: it

87 The case of Christopher Byron, pp 34, 51.

88 Wilson’s Dublin directory (Dublin, 1766), p. 18. It is not known whether Christopher Byron ever worked for the Post Office again after his dismissal. Wilson’s Dublin Directory of 1766 lists a Christopher Byron, card maker, of Eustace Street. That was the address at which the Christopher Byron, employee of the Post Office, was resident. Certainly some of the other individuals mentioned in the pamphlet were still working in the Post Office in 1768, among them Richard Turker who became clerk of the North Road, and Thomas Lee who served as clerk of the Connaught road. See John Watson, The gentleman’s and citizen’s almanack (Dublin, 1769), p. 99. A year later, a John Wilson, possibly the

88 Wilson’s Dublin directory (Dublin, 1766), p. 18. It is not known whether Christopher Byron ever worked for the Post Office again after his dismissal. Wilson’s Dublin Directory of 1766 lists a Christopher Byron, card maker, of Eustace Street. That was the address at which the Christopher Byron, employee of the Post Office, was resident. Certainly some of the other individuals mentioned in the pamphlet were still working in the Post Office in 1768, among them Richard Turker who became clerk of the North Road, and Thomas Lee who served as clerk of the Connaught road. See John Watson, The gentleman’s and citizen’s almanack (Dublin, 1769), p. 99. A year later, a John Wilson, possibly the