Robert Murray

Robert Murray was an English financier, member of Clothworkers' Company, and writer on commerce. He is now remembered for his part in the first London Penny Post, a postal system whose function was to deliver mail within London and its immediate suburbs for the modest sum of one penny.

He was born in London in 1635 and in 1649 he was entered as an apprentice on the books of the Clothworkers' Company. From 1676 he wrote on matters of banking and national revenue. Murray was the inventor of ruled copybooks for children, and in early 1680s, he is said to have originated the idea of the penny post in London. In 1703 he offered to the Lord High Treasurer “a scheme for tin” and asked for the royal bounty. In 1720 he succeeded George Murray as “comptroller and paymaster of the standing orders of the lottery of 1714” and in this capacity had transactions with the South Sea Company.

In 1724, Murray was superseded as paymaster of lottery, and in February 1726 is spoken of as dead.