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Opening to the Public

When: 31 July 1635
Where: Kingdom of England
Part of: Royal Mail Service Made Available to the Public

Charles I made the Royal Mail available to the general public on 31 July 1635, establishing a recipient-paid postage system.

The Royal Mail service transitioned from a private royal channel to a public utility. Charles I authorized this change on 31 July 1635, defining the operational rule that postage would be paid by the recipient of the mail.

Sources

Royal Mail Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-17

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.