POSTAL SERVICES 245 



Allen was a man of a modest and retiring habit, 

 but with the greatest confidence in himself. He 

 needed all his confidence, and all the untiring in- 

 dustry and vigilance that were his, for when three 

 years of the seven had expired he found himself a 

 loser by a small amount, and when the contract 

 lapsed, his gain was quite inappreciable. Yet he 

 renewed it for anotlier seven years, convinced that 

 the better facilities he had provided for the carriage 

 of letters must needs lead to great developments. He 

 was right : the correspondence of the country grew, 

 and in 1741 we find him bidding £17,500 per 

 annum for another term of seven years. He con- 

 tinued thus until his death in 1764, in receipt, for 

 many years, of an income of not less than £1:2,000 a 

 year on his post-oftice enterprise alone. 



Those were the times of the real post-boys. All 

 letters were carried by mounted messengers, since the 

 stage-coaches then running (where they existed at all !) 

 were not fast enough, frequent enough, or sufliciently 

 safe for the purpose. A side-light is thrown upon the 

 average " speed " of these stage-coaches, not then 

 considered speedy enough, by the onerous condition 

 in Allen's contract that the mails were to be carried 

 by his post-boys " at not less than five miles an 

 hour." 



Allen was in the forefront of Bath enterprise, and 

 was associated with John Wood, the elder of the two 

 architects of that name, in rebuilding the city. Before 

 their time it had been a place of mean streets and 

 winding alleys, the out-at-elbovvs remains of Gothic 

 times. As a result of their labours, and the labours 



