This vivid scholarly history traces the birth of Britain's inland and foreign postal system, revealing that the Post Office was shaped as much by ambition, rivalry, and patronage as by policy. Drawing on records and original documents, it corrects earlier omissions and errors while reconstructing the first decades of a public letter network. From the loose meanings of "post," "postmaster," and "packet" in the early seventeenth century to the rise of fixed routes, the book follows the transformation of private carrying into regulated service. At its center are figures such as John Stanhope, Mathew de Quester, Philip Burlamachi, and especially Thomas Witherings, whose reforms, conflicts, and reversals illuminate the tangled politics of the age. The narrative moves through Elizabethan and Jacobean beginnings, the split between domestic and foreign authority, and the struggles of Charles I's corrupt, cash-strapped reign. It continues through civil war, Commonwealth, and Restoration, when letters were searched, intercepted, farmed out, and used as political weapons. Alongside the great disputes over fees, horses, patents, and jurisdiction, the book also captures the everyday life of mail: packet boats, post-boys, delays, stamps, offices, and the making of a national communications system. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.