July 31, 1635 – Charles I made the Royal Mail service available to the public for the first time with postage being paid by the recipient.
The Royal Mail  - Great Britain 2010 – First Day Cancel – Canceltraces its history back to 1516, when Henry VIII established a “Master of the Posts”, a post which eventually evolved into the office of the Postmaster General. The Royal Mail service was first made available to the public by Charles I on 31 July 1635, with postage being paid by the recipient, and the General Post Office (GPO) was officially established by Charles II in 1660.
Between 1719 and 1763, Ralph Allen, Postmaster at Bath, signed a series of contracts with the post office to develop and expand Britain’s postal network. He organised mail coaches which were provided by both Wilson & Company of London and Williams & Company of Bath. The early Royal Mail Coaches were similar to ordinary family coaches but with Post Office livery.
Royal Mail is the national postal service of the United Kingdom. Royal Mail Holdings plc owns Royal Mail Group Limited, which in turn operates the brands Royal Mail (UK letters), Parcelforce Worldwide (UK parcels) and General Logistics Systems. Post Office Ltd., which provides counter services, is a wholly owned subsidiary.
Royal Mail Holdings is a public limited company in which the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills owns 50,004 ordinary shares plus 1 special share, and the Treasury Solicitor holds 1 ordinary share.
Historically, the General Post Office was a government department which included the Royal Mail delivery business, represented in government by the Postmaster General, a Cabinet-level post. It became a statutory corporation in 1969.Most of the duties were passed to Consignia plc in November 2001, and the old Post Office was dissolved in 2007. Consignia changed to Consignia Holdings plc, then Royal Mail Holdings plc, the current name.
Royal Mail was not privatised in the 1980s and 1990s, but remains a limited company owned by the UK government. A bill that arrived in the House of Commons around 4 June 2009 would, if passed, partly privatise the company. However the bill was postponed due to the current recession.
Royal Mail is responsible for universal mail collection and delivery in the UK. Letters are deposited in a pillar or wall box, taken to a post office, or collected in bulk from businesses. Deliveries are made at least once every day except Sundays and Bank Holidays at uniform charges for all destinations within the UK. First Class deliveries are generally made the next business day throughout the UK.
Royal Mail delivered 84 million items every working day and had a network of 14,376 post offices with a revenue of £9.056 billion, and profits before tax were £312 million in 2006. Since that time, profits have dropped year on year – £233 million in 2006-7 falling to a £10 million trading deficit in 2007. In 2008, the BBC reported that Royal Mail’s trading position had worsened to an annual loss of £279 million/yr in financial 2007. For the financial year 2008-9 Royal Mail had an operating profit of £321m, with all four group businesses in a full year profit for the first time in two decades.
In Wales, the service carries the Welsh name Post Brenhinol, as well as the English name. Both names are normally used on vans, postboxes etc. It is also compulsory for all Post Offices in Wales to have the name Swyddfa’r Post on display outside. In parts of the highlands and islands of Scotland, post office branches also display the name Oifis a’ Phuist, which means post office in Scots Gaelic.
Charles I - Great Britain 2010 – Scott no __ – (19 November 1600-30 January 1649) was the second son of James VI of Scots and I of England. He was King of Scotland, King of England, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles believed was divinely ordained. Many of his English subjects opposed his actions, in particular his interference in the English and Scottish Churches and the levying of taxes without parliamentary consent which grew to be seen as those of a tyrannical absolute monarch.
Religious conflicts permeated Charles’s reign. His failure to successfully aid Protestant forces during the Thirty Years’ War, coupled with such actions as marrying a Catholic princess, generated deep mistrust concerning the king’s dogma. Charles further allied himself with controversial religious figures, such as the ecclesiastic Richard Montagu, and William Laud, whom Charles appointed Archbishop of Canterbury. Many of Charles’ subjects felt this brought the Church of England too close to the Catholic Church. Charles’ later attempts to force religious reforms upon Scotland led to the Bishops’ Wars, strengthened the position of the English Parliament and helped precipitate the king’s downfall.
Charles’ last years were marked by the English Civil War, in which he fought the forces of the English and Scottish Parliaments, which challenged the king’s attempts to overrule and negate Parliamentary authority, whilst simultaneously using his position as head of the English Church to pursue religious policies which generated the antipathy of reformed groups such as the Puritans. Charles was defeated in the First Civil War (1642–45), after which Parliament expected him to accept its demands for a constitutional monarchy. He instead remained defiant by attempting to forge an alliance with Scotland and escaping to the Isle of Wight. This provoked the Second Civil War (1648–49) and a second defeat for Charles, who was subsequently captured, tried, convicted, and executed for high treason. The monarchy was then abolished and a republic called the Commonwealth of England, also referred to as the Cromwellian Interregnum, was declared. Charles’ son, Charles II, became king after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. In that same year, Charles I was canonized as Saint Charles Stuart and King Charles the Martyr by the Church of England.

charles1m

charles1x

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 31st, 2010 at 00:09 and is filed under Great Britain. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.