Which is to suppose that music is an unbearably important and serious thing and not just something to distract from our own internal witherings.
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Ignoring the rank fetishization of other cultures' foodstuffs and the unbearable expensiveness of it all, the idea of eating a bowl of pho in a converted petrol station on a miserable Tuesday night, washing it down with a £6 Amstel, listening to the inane witherings of the assembled throng of fuckwits is, well, another scene ripped straight from hell's playbook.
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Spiritual witherings and decayings are opposite to the word of God.
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In 1644, Witherings was assessed by the Committee for the Advance of Money for £800, but ended paying £550. In 1646 Witherings purchased the Nelmes estate at Hornchurch from the Naunton family who as Royalists were suffering financial difficulties.
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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 on 16 February 1625.
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In 1632, Charles I approved the appointment of Witherings as the Postmaster of Foreign Mails together with William Frizzell. Although the Postmaster was only responsible for official mail, it had become the practice to provide a service for City of London merchants dealing with the continent. In April 1633 Witherings was sent on a visit to the Calais and Antwerp to regularise the foreign mail service. However, by August 1633 rivalry had broken out between the two postmasters and both Witherings and Frizzell were suspended for a few months before being reinstated.
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Under Witherings' organisation a public postal service was established with post offices connected by regular routes established, throughout the country, along the lines of communication used by the Tudor armies. Witherings opened the first post office at Bishopsgate Street in October 1635.The British Postal Museum and archive The King charged Witherings with building six "Great Roads" to aid in the delivery of the post, of which the Great West Road was one. Postmasters on each road were required to provide horses for the mail at 2½d a mile and a conveyance tariff was fixed.
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In August 1651, Witherings died on his way to worship in Hornchurch church. He was buried in the chancel and the inscription on his tablet recorded he was "second to none for unfathomed poilesicy, unparallelled sagacius and devining Genius; witness his great correspondence in all parts of ye Christian world". He left his estates at Nelmes to his nephew William Witherings.
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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 sea, anie distress of His Majestie's ships (which God forbid), anie wrong offered by anie nation to anie of ye coastes of England or anie of His Majestie's forts...the newes will come sooner than thought," implying that the reason for this innovation was to provide better defence of the realm. Two years later a state letter monopoly formally came into being and the public institution of the Post Office was created.
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Witherings married Dorothy Oliver, daughter of John Oliver of Wilbrougham. She brought him a reasonable fortune and £105 a year of her land was sold to help him procure the post of Postmaster.
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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.
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In April 1649 information was laid against Witherings that he had assisted George, Earl of Norwich in the 1648 Royalist insurrection in the county of Essex during the Second Civil War. He was imprisoned and his property seized, but he was released without charge and his property restored in May. By 1649, Witherings had been reinstated as Postmaster of Foreign Mails and on 18 August 1649 he became Alderman for Bishopsgate ward. In June 1651 the charges raised against him in 1649 were levelled against him again with further accusations.
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For many years Prideaux was intimately and profitably connected with the postal service. The question of the validity of patents for the conduct of posts was raised in both houses of Parliament in connection with the 1640 sequestration cites Rymer, Fœdera, xx. 429. of the office of Thomas Witherings, granted in 1633. Prideaux served as chairman of the committee appointed in 1642 to enquire into the rates of inland letters.
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Her Majesty's Mail. London: Sampson, London. p. 38. In the 1640s Parliament removed the monopoly from Witherings and during the Civil War and First Commonwealth the parliamentary postal service was run at great profit for himself by Edmund Prideaux (a prominent parliamentarian and lawyer who rose to be attorney- general). To keep his monopoly in those troubled times Prideaux improved efficiency and used both legal impediments and illegal methods.
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It was used to raise revenues to sponsor state activities including war. Under Witherings' organisation a public postal service was established with post offices connected by regular routes established, throughout the country, along the lines of communication used by the Tudor armies. A conveyance tariff was fixed. Postage was paid on receipt of the letter by the addressee and remained so until the Rowland Hill reforms of the 1840s.
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In April 1640, Witherings was elected Member of Parliament for Morpeth in the Short Parliament. Also in April 1640, he was deprived of his position in charge of the post-office and letter-office for abuses in exercising his duties. Over the next two years a wrangle continued which concluded that the sequestration of Withering's post had been illegal, but the result was not to restore Withering but to assign them to the Earl of Warwick.
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The A4 has gone through many transformations through the ages from pre-Roman routes, Roman roads (such as the one passing Silbury Hill), and basic wagon tracks. During the Middle Ages, most byways and tracks served to connect villages with their nearest market town. A survey of Savernake Forest near Hungerford in 1228 mentions "The King’s Street" running between the town and Marlborough. This street corresponded roughly with the route of the modern A4. In 1632, Thomas Witherings was appointed Postmaster of Foreign Mails by Charles I. Three years later, the king charged him with building six "Great Roads" to aid in the delivery of the post, of which the Great West Road was one.
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The reign of Edward II saw the first postal marking; handwritten notations saying "Haste,post haste". Brian Tuke was the first Master of the posts Henry VIII created the Royal Mail in 1516, appointing Brian Tuke as "Master of the Postes", while Elizabeth I appointed Thomas Randolph as "Chief Postmaster". Under Thomas Witherings, chief postmaster under Charles I, the Royal Mail was made available to the public (1635), with a regular system of post roads, houses, and staff. From this time through to the postal reforms of 1839 – 1840 it was most common for the recipient to pay the postage, although it was possible to prepay the charge at the time of sending.
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