Another matter occurred at this time which, while only indirectly affecting Palmer, was not calculated to promote harmonious relations. Bonnor, who had sent some accounts to Windsor for Walsingham's signature, wrote two or three days later, urging that they might be signed and returned at once, and giving as a reason the importunity of the letter-carriers. "What these poor oppressed creatures will do," he said, "I know not. They all came in a body this morning and gave a most affecting description of the distresses with which their wives and families laboured, their credit exhausted, not a shilling to buy bread, and each having between £30 and £40 of hard-earned wages due to them from a public office whose revenues are every day increasing." This struck Walsingham as very strange. The letter-carriers were paid by weekly wages; and what, over and above their wages, they had earned for extra duty should also have been paid weekly. Besides, the accounts had been in his hands for only two or three days, whereas for the last twelve months and more he had been pressing for their production, and had only now succeeded in getting them.
There was a mystery somewhere, and, as the best means of solving it, Walsingham called for the vouchers. Bonnor now lost himself in excuses. The vouchers were essential to his reputation. He could not part with them. If once they left his hands, they might be lost. It could not but be known to his Lordship how often this had happened with official papers passing to and fro. Besides, to inspect the vouchers would be to pry into his private concerns. This was enough for Walsingham, and he directed the accountant-general to look into the matter forthwith. The examination revealed a curious state of things. The amounts which the letter-carriers had earned for extra duty had not been paid for a whole year, and a part of the money which had been issued for that purpose had been applied to the payment of the persons irregularly appointed to the newspaper office. More than this. The accounts shewed, or professed to shew, that during the last eighteen months the mail-coach contractors had received in payment of their services the sum of £20,000; but the receipts for more than £16,000 of this amount bore no dates, and others were signed by Bonnor himself. "Signed," to use his own words, "by myself for money paid by myself to myself." In short, the so-called vouchers were no vouchers at all. Bonnor now made an apology, which, in point of abjectness, has probably seldom been equalled; and Walsingham, unwilling to force matters to extremities, let him off with a sound dressing. This disclosure did not tend to restore either harmony or confidence. Palmer, it is true, gave no heed to accounts; but Bonnor was under his protection, and Palmer resented a censure upon his lieutenant and friend even more than a censure upon himself.
