The close connection between the posts and the Sovereign continued long after the reign of Henry the Eighth. In 1572 Thomas Randolph, Master of the posts to Queen Elizabeth, rendered an account of the charges to which he had been put in the execution of his trust during the preceding five years; and in this account, which is given in considerable detail, not a single post is mentioned without some qualification identifying it with the person of the Sovereign--a post daily serving Her Majesty, a post for Her Majesty's service and affairs, a post during the time of Her Majesty's progress, a post for the conveyance of Her Majesty's letters and those of her Council. As late as 1621 all the posts of the kingdom, which even then were only four in number, started from the Court. I. "The Courte to Barwicke," _i.e._ the post to Scotland. II. "The Courte to Beaumoris," _i.e._ the post to Ireland. III. "The Courte to Dover," _i.e._ the post to the Continent. IV. "The Courte to Plymouth," _i.e._ the post to the Royal Dockyard.
The setting up of a post for a particular purpose and letting it drop as soon as the purpose had been answered was another peculiarity of these early times. The post to Plymouth, ordained in 1621 to be one of the standing posts of the kingdom, had been dropped since 1611, having then been declared to be unnecessary except in time of war. Even the post to Ireland had at one time been dropped and was not revived until 1598. In the same year a second post to Ireland, Irish affairs being then considered to require "oftner dispatches and more expedition," was set up by way of Bristol, and this in its turn disappeared. Indeed, it would probably not be too much to say that at the beginning of the seventeenth century no post set up in England during a war had lasted longer than the war itself. This practice of dropping a post as soon as it had served its purpose, a practice which must almost necessarily have existed from the earliest times, would seem to explain Brian Tuke's meaning when, after stating that in 1533 except those he mentioned "the Kinges Grace hathe no moo ordinary postes," he adds, "ne of many days hathe had."
For the regulation of the posts the earliest instructions of which we have any record were issued by Queen Elizabeth. Every "post" was to keep and have constantly ready two horses at least, with suitable "furniture." He was to have at least two bags of leather well lined with baize or cotton, and a horn to blow "as oft as he meets company" or four times in every mile. He was, after receiving a packet, to start within fifteen minutes, and to run in summer at the rate of seven miles an hour and in winter at the rate of five. The address of the packet and the day and the hour at which he received it were to be carefully entered in a book to be kept for the purpose. But the packets which were thus to be treated were only such as should be on the Queen's affairs or the affairs of State. "All others" are dismissed in a word. These, the instructions state, are "to passe as by-letters." To pass as by-letters probably means that the letters were to go when and as best they might, but that the post was not to go for the purpose of taking them. This view is confirmed by an order of the subsequent reign, that "no pacquets or letters," except such as were on the King's affairs, should "binde any poste to ride therewith in post." But be the meaning what it may, the expression seems to shew that even in the reign of Elizabeth letters other than State letters had begun to be sent to the post-houses, and that such letters, if barely recognised, were yet not excluded.