Thomas Witherings [SEP] date of death
Thomas Witherings
Thomas Witherings (died 28 September 1651) was an English merchant and postal administrator who established the Royal Mail public letter service. He was a politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1640.
Early life.
Witherings was the second son of a Staffordshire family and his uncle Anthony Withering and brother were courtiers. He was harbinger to the Queen Henrietta Maria and may have had Roman Catholic leanings at the time, although later he was a puritan. Witherings was admitted to the Worshipful Company of Mercers
. 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