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‘King\'s Messenger’ when a king is on the throne, a full-time British diplomatic courier. The origins of the King\'s Messengers have been traced to the late twelfth century but it seems to have been Henry VIII, not least because he saw advantage in employing them in a quasi-police role as well, who first gave real impetus to their development. In 1547, the last year of his reign, he decided that the King\'s Messengers - at that time 40 strong - should be formed into a Corps of King\'s Messengers and placed under the control of the Lord Chamberlain. Further regularization occurred in 1772, but it was 1824 before the King\'s Messengers were constituted on the basis which still obtains today. In that year, at the instigation of the Foreign Secretary, George Canning, and with the willing assent of George IV, the Foreign Office took over their financing and control. Henceforward, the ‘King\'s Foreign Messenger Corps’ became the overseas messenger service for the whole of the government (including the royal household). Previous abuses were also addressed, notably by tightening up conditions of entry. From this time onward, King\'s Messengers had to be British subjects, preferably former officers in the armed services, under thirty-five on the date of their appointment, adept in foreign languages and unlikely to fall off a galloping horse. These conditions were never substantially modified, the preference for former serving officers remaining particularly marked. Of all possible candidates, such men were thought most likely to be loyal, resourceful, and disinclined to be meek in asserting their legal rights of immunity in the face of ignorant or truculent border officials. In the period between the great improvement in roads in the later eighteenth century and the solid advance of the railways by the middle of the nineteenth, King\'s Messengers maintained their own carriages at Dover, which had seats which could be turned into beds. Always likely to be attacked for the large sums of money which they had to carry to meet their heavy expenses as well as for the secrets contained in their despatches, their carriages also had racks for arms, at a minimum two pistols and a sword. East of Berlin or south of Vienna they were generally forced onto horseback again, and had to be accompanied by a guide and two guards - or even, over certain stages, by a troop of cavalry loaned to them by the King of Prussia or Habsburg Emperor.
Today, the Queen\'s Messengers, whose work remains important, are more likely to be found in a plane than on the back of a horse, and each flies on average 250,000 miles a year on duty (since the late 1980s, ‘club’ class rather than first class). Until 1960, teams of messengers were stationed abroad in good centres for civil airline connections, and by 1945 there were ten such teams. However, the vast improvements in international air transport over the past five decades have made it possible for all journeys to start and finish in London, and the system of stationing Queen\'s Messengers abroad was ended. The strength of the corps fluctuated between 40 and 50 over the 1945-80 period but since then has declined steadily, most recently because the end of the Cold War reduced the number of classified documents to be carried and the frequency with which diplomatic missions had to be visited. The establishment is now 15 and, as far as despatches are concerned, only those classified as ‘secret’ or above are carried. (Commercial organizations now carry most mail classified as ‘confidential’ or below.) The badge of office of the Queen\'s Messengers remains the silver greyhound. See also casual courier; diplomatic bag; express; freedom of communication. |
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