The postal service of the British Army is today provided by the British Forces Post Office but its origins may be traced back to Saxon times.
Origins The origins of the BFPO can be traced back to Saxon times. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle makes mention of messengers being sent by King Edward the Elder (899–924) to recall members of the Kent fyrd, but it is generally regarded that the origins of the postal services stem from the Kings Messengers (Nuncii et Cursores) of medieval times. In particular the Royal Post established in the reign of King Edward IV (1461–1483) to support his troops engaged in a war against Scotland.
Henry VIII appointed Sir Brian Tuke "Master of Posts" in 1513. Tuke set about formalising the Royal Posts and established regular posting stations between London and Dover. The Royal Posts provided a courier service while Henry was campaigning in France. During the reign of Elizabeth I postal routes were laid for her armies campaigning in Ireland and Scotland. A special postal route was laid to the West Country in 1588 to carry news and intelligence of the expected Spanish Armada.
Start of the postal service and the English Civil War In 1632, Charles I appointed Thomas Witherings as the Postmaster of foreign mails. Three years later Witherings proposed to Charles's Council to "settle a pacquet post between London and all parts of His Majesty's dominions, for the carrying and recarrying of his subjects letters." To justify the expenditure Witherings suggested that "anie fight at sea, anie distress of His Majestie's ships (which God forbid), anie wrong offered by anie nation to anie of ye coastes of England or anie of His Majestie's forts...the newes will come sooner than thought," implying that the reason for this innovation was to provide better defence of the realm. Two years later a state letter monopoly formally came into being and the public institution of the Post Office was created. It was used to raise revenues to sponsor state activities including war. A public mail service was developed through Witherings' organization, with post offices connected by regular routes built across the nation along the lines of communication utilized by the Tudor troops. A conveyance tariff was fixed. Postage was paid on receipt of the letter by the addressee and remained so until the Rowland Hill reforms of the 1840s.
Both the Royalist and Parliamentarians maintained their own postal systems during the English Civil War (1642–1651). The Parliamentarians appointed Edmund Prideaux as Master of the Posts, Couriers and Messengers. In this capacity he established within the Post Office an instrument of state control, called the 'Secret Office'. This office was charged with gleaning intelligence from intercepted mail. In the Commonwealth period this control was extended nationwide, as soldiers of the New Model Army were appointed Postmasters and were required to submit monthly reports on the activities of the communities that their post office served. Elements of the Secret Office still exist today under the auspices of the Home Office and its secret intelligence services.
The most famous Royalist messenger was James Hicks, a Post Office employee, who passed through the Parliamentarians lines many times but was never caught. The Parliamentarian New Model Army employed its musicians as messengers.
Bishop Marks – the first postal cancellation stamps In 1660 Colonel Sir Henry Bishop was appointed Postmaster General, he had served as a Royalist officer during the Civil War and was given the "farming" patent of the Post Office as a reward. He instigated the use of a metal stamp which was to be "put upon every letter showing the day of the month that every letter comes to the office, so that no Letter Carryer may dare to detain a letter from post to post, which before was usual". These impressions known as "Bishop Marks" were the first of their kind anywhere in the world and were the fore runner of today's cancellation marks.
"Common Post" and the War of Spanish Succession English troops were engaged in the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–13) and campaigned under the command of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough in Europe. Mail was sent by through the Post Office system using the packet boats that sailed between Harwich, England and Dutch port of Hellevoetsluis. On the Continent the military mail was handled by the Thurn & Taxis Post, the postal service of the Holy Roman Empire. This service was referred to as the "Common Post". After the Grand Alliance armies overran Flanders the Dover-Ostend packet service re-opened, for it had been closed at the start of the war because its packet boats were prone to attack from the French.
In addition to the "Common Post" Marlborough used the Queen's Messengers to carry his communications between his Headquarters and the English Court. The Queen's (King's) Messengers were members of the Royal household detailed with the task of carrying despatches on behalf of the Monarch and her/his ministers. They came into existence in the 1640s. They travelled on horseback and used the official Post Office packet services to cross over the Continent. A direct line can be drawn from today's Defence Couriers of the British Army to these Messengers.
"Armee Britannique" – post mark (1743)
In 1743 the first distinctive post mark appeared on letters sent by British troops campaigning in Europe. The Thurn & Taxis Post, who processed the mail on behalf of the British army, endorsed it with a small circular stamp inscribed "AB" – Armee Britannique.
Mr Sutton was appointed Postmaster to the Army in 1747, but no more is known of him.
Mail during the Seven Years' War (1756–63) The Seven Years' War was fought in Europe, North America and India. The postal lines of communication depended upon the Post Office Packet Service. The troops in Europe had their mail conveyed on the packet boats between Harwich and Brielle in Holland. The mail for the troops in North America was carried on the Falmouth, Halifax/New York packet route. The troops involved in the war in India had their mail carried on the East India Company merchant ships.
In North America, the mail was distributed to the troops through the colonial postal system, which was largely developed under the management of Benjamin Franklin. Mail was often carried between the coastal ports of New York, Boston and Halifax by sloops, and a similar practice operated in the West Indies.
Military postage concessions (1795) In response to the ever-increasing re-direction charges incurred by soldiers posted from one station to another throughout the expanding British Empire an Act of Parliament (1795) was passed to provide cheap postage rates for non-commissioned officers (NCO) and private soldiers or Royal Navy sailors.
This concession allowed soldiers' letters under the weight of to be sent and received for one penny, whilst officers' mail was charged at six pence. To safeguard against abuse it was necessary for a soldier or sailor's name and his regiment or ship to be endorsed on the outside of the letter and to be countersigned by his commanding officer. To prevent the abuse of the concession, further legislation was enacted in 1806 imposing a penalty of £5 or a term of imprisonment for any abuser. It came to light that officers were handing their personal letters to their soldiers/sailors, who then signed their names on the covers and presented them as their own to their commanding officer for counter-signature.
Henry Darlot – The Duke of York's Army Postmaster In the summer of 1799 Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany (1763–1827), as Commander-in-Chief of the army, wrote to the Postmaster General (Lord Auckland) to request that "a good intelligent clerk" who could "facilitate delivery and to collect letters and protect revenue" be seconded from the General Post Office as the Army Postmaster to an amphibious expedition to Den Helder, Holland.
Henry Darlot, a clerk from the Post Office Foreign Section, was chosen as the Army Postmaster, the first to officially accompany the Army overseas. Mail for the Army was handed to the Post Office Foreign Section, sealed in bags and passed to ships sailing to Holland. The Army established a base at Den Helder. When Henry Darlot arrived with his servant, he found that two despatches of mails had already preceded him. The result was chaos. He reported to the Post Office Secretary's Office on 27 September 1799 that: the mails are both delivered which I assure you is not so easy or businesslike as I imagined it would be, for although the letters are partly sorted in London to the different regiments, there are still a great number for persons not attached to any regiment who are so impatient to be supplied that immediately a mail arrives I am beset by at least a hundred of them. Great confusion is occasioned also by officers detached from the regiment to which their letters were addressed insisting on looking for them before the Drum Majors [who were appointed Post Orderlies for each regiment] get them.
The military campaign was a failure and Henry Darlot lost his horse and much of his equipment in the retreat to the coast. On his return to London, he was commended for having carried out his task "with ability and propriety to the entire satisfaction of the Postmaster-General. " In the two months he was in Holland his Army Post Office made an overall profit of £643 6s 6d. (The postage rates were 1d for soldiers and 6d for officers).
Peninsular War – postal arrangements (1809–1813) Despite Henry Darlot's successful attachment to the army, no Post Office official was sent to provide a postal service to the British forces during the Peninsular War. Mail was sent by regular weekly packet service from Falmouth, Cornwall to Lisbon (Portugal). This civilian service was established in 1703.
The mails were received by the British Post Office Agent, Thomas Reynolds, who passed it onto the Quartermaster General's Headquarters in Lisbon. Where the Sergeant Postmaster, Sergeant R Webb (3rd Foot Guards), who had been appointed by the Commander-in-Chief, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) in April 1809, sorted and arranged the distribution of the mail. The transit time from London to the field was 13–20 days. Return post left Lisbon for Falmouth, three days a week. There was no censorship of mail. The military mail service was augmented through the use of the Spanish civilian postal service.
When the army advanced into Spain, at the end of 1811, Major George Scovell was appointed Superintendent of Military Communications responsible for all army communications. As part of his re-organisation of the postal and courier service he detailed the cavalry to escort mail. He also ordered that "bags containing letters sent to different Divisions of the Army must be returned to Headquarters at the first opportunity. The wet bags cause the loss of many letters on the road."
After the battle of Vittoria (21 June 1813), Wellington began to close up on the Pyrenees, thus extending his line of communications. This affected the mail service and the postal operations were moved from Lisbon to the port of Pasajes (east of San Sebastian), the British Post Office Agent there was Charles Sevright, who had spent ten years as a Prisoner of War after his arrest in Holland on spying charges.
In February 1814, the mail service was experiencing some problems again. Wellington became dissatisfied and rebuked Lieutenant-Colonel Sturgeon, who took it very much to heart and deliberately rode too close to the enemy lines at Vic en Bigorre (France) and was shot in the head. The post of Superintendent of Military Communications was taken over by Lieutenant-Colonel Colquhoun Grant.