By the last letter we appear to have reached some sort of resolution. The legate from Paris with crucial news of his possible divorce is sick, but otherwise ‘all my pains and labour’ seem to be at an end, and ‘thereby shall come, both to you and me, the greatest quietness that may be in this world.’ Anne is installed in dwellings near the king, and the need for letters has diminished. But their marriage is still more than four years distant, and the ‘quietness’ of which he writes, ushering in the English Reformation, would sound its effects through the constitutional halls for centuries.
Anne Boleyn writes to Henry from the Tower in 1536. Apparently.
The letters are now in the Vatican Library, glued into a book and tempered with a Vatican seal. They may have been stolen not long after Boleyn’s execution and brought to Rome as a spoil of war while the excommunication furore raged. We do not have Anne’s responses to his longings, and the only extant relevant letter by her during this period was written to Cardinal Wolsey, thanking him for his support in these months and hoping that the legate will soon bring positive news of a divorce.
But there is another letter from Anne that has become famous – her last to Henry in 1536, sent from the Tower where she was accused of adultery and treason. It is remarkable as much for its beauty, restraint and composure as its plaintive contents, and it is a letter that, in its heartbreaking simplicity, does more to seal an innocent, golden reputation than any other letter in the English language. The culture of Anne Boleyn that has spawned the novels and films and devotional websites, largely draws from this:
Sir,
Your Grace’s displeasure, and my imprisonment are things so strange unto me, as what to write, or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant . . .
But let not your Grace ever imagine, that your poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a fault, where not so much as a thought thereof preceded. And to speak a truth, never prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn: with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself, if God and your Grace’s pleasure had been so pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation or received Queenship, but that I always looked for such an alteration as I now find; for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your Grace’s fancy, the least alteration I knew was fit and sufficient to draw that fancy to some other object. You have chosen me, from a low estate, to be your Queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire. If then you found me worthy of such honour, good your Grace let not any light fancy, or bad council of mine enemies, withdraw your princely favour from me; neither let that stain, that unworthy stain, of a disloyal heart toward your good grace, ever cast so foul a blot on your most dutiful wife, and the infant-princess your daughter. Try me, good king, but let me have a lawful trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and judges; yea let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open flame; then shall you see either my innocence cleared, your suspicion and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared.
. . . But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death, but an infamous slander must bring you the enjoying of your desired happiness; then I desire of God, that he will pardon your great sin therein, and likewise mine enemies, the instruments thereof, and that he will not call you to a strict account of your unprincely and cruel usage of me, at his general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear, and in whose judgment I doubt not (whatsoever the world may think of me) mine innocence shall be openly known, and sufficiently cleared . . . If ever I found favour in your sight, if ever the name of Anne Boleyn hath been pleasing in your ears, then let me obtain this request, and I will so leave to trouble your Grace any further, with mine earnest prayers to the Trinity to have your Grace in his good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions. From my doleful prison in the Tower, this sixth of May;
Your most loyal and ever faithful wife,
Probably not a real letter though. Or rather, it was a real letter, purportedly found among Thomas Cromwell’s papers after his death and then frequently copied, but it was not a real letter written by Anne Boleyn in the Tower. Too many inconsistencies – the way she spelt her name ‘Bullen’ (which she hadn’t done for many years), her judgement of herself as ‘from low estate’ – suggest inauthenticity to the great majority of modern historians. The reason for its forgery may be religious, political or just mischief-making, and its compelling attractiveness, its ability to charm just as it deceives, may derive from the multitude of caustic samples in the letter-writing manuals.
That Henry VIII feared frauds and spies there can be no doubt, and it was his attempt to control these (the combined effort we would now call Intelligence) that led to the formation of the first Royal Mail to ensure the safe passage of correspondence from the court. In the early part of his reign, Henry created a new role for the treasurer of the king’s chamber: the master of posts. Brian Tuke, who was also Cardinal Wolsey’s secretary, was entrusted with improving the haphazard network of posts along key roads, with a particular emphasis on a northern route through York to Edinburgh and the roads to the Cinque Ports, particularly Dover for the crossing to Calais. His responsibilities are best described in a letter he wrote to Thomas Cromwell in August 1533, observing that ‘The king’s pleasure is that posts be better appointed, and laid in all places most expedient; with the commandment to all townships in all places, on pain of life, to be in such readiness, and to make such provision of horses at all times, as no tract or loss of time be had in that behalf.’
London was the obvious centre for this activity, with a team of ‘King’s hackneymen’ on permanent standby in the city at Lombard Street.
The new urgency urged by Tuke did improve the system marginally, and it encouraged private operators to use the extended network and improve their own carrier systems as much as royal pardon would allow. For the Royal Mail now imposed a monopoly on letters and other post, a control that soon extended beyond domestic packets towards the ‘strangers’ post’ across the Channel, and Tuke ensured that his master of posts was entrusted with another new task: he held an official warrant to enable all mail on royal business both in and out of the court to be opened, read and redirected. On the surface this could be passed off as a grand secretarial role; but beneath it lay a darker vision.
The darker vision was ‘The Great Snooping’. A paranoia of plotting that descended over the Tudors would extend into Elizabethan England, and successive postmasters after Tuke increasingly controlled not just a postal monopoly but played a leading role in suppressing anything deemed anti-monarchist or papist, or anything, indeed, that might threaten national security. Yet it wasn’t until the 1650s that the secretive and disruptive role of the Letter Office was confirmed.
When, in 1655, John Thurloe became postmaster general (as the job was now called), the burgeoning postal service was in the process of opening up its networks to commoners’ letters not on royal business. Merchants had petitioned for this reform in earlier decades, and successive state secretaries had savoured the prospect of large postal revenues, but it was only with Oliver Cromwell’s ‘Act for the Setting of the Postage of England, Scotland and Ireland’ of 1657 that the first General Post Office established an enshrined framework for both domestic and foreign mail. The first London penny post followed a few years later, setting a uniform rate within the capital, allowing letters to be sent back and forth several times in a day. It heralded the beginning of an efficient concept: at the turn of the century Daniel Defoe remarked how ‘Letters are delivered at the remotest Corners of the Town almost as soon as they can be sent by a Messenger, and that Four, Five, Six or Eight Times a Day. We see nothing of this at Paris, at Amsterdam, at Hamburgh or any other City.’
Spymaster General John Thurloe.
‘Eight time
s a day’ was overplaying it a bit, but his international comparisons were well grounded. The need for an established postal service for a country with grand visions of empire was long overdue. Britain didn’t quite lead the pack – that credit should perhaps go to the Dutch Taxis dynasty given Church approval in 1600 to charge a postage fee for private letters – but Britain set an enviable example to a shrinking world. The intellectual and cultural discourse that had been unleashed by the Renaissance had been mirrored in the expansion of trade and global ambitions; oceans were newly navigable, and the very earliest stirrings of globalisation were taking shape. Letters would carry news of these developments, and increasingly reflect people’s needs as they expanded their philosophical and geographical horizons.
For the time being, letter-writing in Britain remained predominantly a pursuit of courtiers, churchmen and merchants; the penny post introduced by William Dockwra in 1680 shouldn’t be confused with the great equalities afforded by the universal penny postage promoted by Rowland Hill in 1840, but it was the beginning of something long overdue.
In the late seventeenth century the cost of letters was borne by the recipient not the sender (which caused some writers to ask permission before commencing a correspondence), and outside London rates varied widely: a single sheet sent less than eight miles cost 2d, while two sheets cost double; the cost of longer journeys cost up to 4d per sheet, but there were many reports of letters costing the recipient 8d or more; a letter from London to Scotland was considered tardy if it took more than five days. But there was no doubting the improvement of this service over the haphazard network of carriers, nor the encouragement it gave to letter-writers. In 1698 the penny post carried more than 790,000 letters and packets within the capital, and 77,500 outside it; five years later the number topped one million.*
We’ll return to the peculiarities and shortcomings of the system when we consider letters from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, but for now we should note that John Thurloe also had another role in Cromwell’s nervous government beyond postmaster general; he was spymaster general too.
A full account of Thurloe’s vocation only came to light in 1898 with a new examination of the papers of the privy council and other state offices of Charles II. One document, by a certain Major John Wildman, revealed that, because all the letters to be distributed to all parts of the kingdom came through a central London office, the task of ‘sorting’ them through the night took on an entirely new meaning. The document relates that Cromwell employed a certain Isaac Dorislaus
to reside constantly at the [Letter Office], who had a private roome allotted him adjoyning to the forreigne Office, and every post night about 11 a clock he went into that roome privately, and had all the letter[s] brought and layd before him, to open any as he should see good, and close them up again, and there he remained in that room, usually till about 3 or 4 in the morning, which was the usuall time of shutting up the male, and in the processe of time the said Dorislaus had got such a knowledge of all hands and seals, that scarcely could a letter be brought him but he knew the hand that wrote it; and when there was any extraordinary occasion, as when any rising was neare or the like, then S. Morland [a secretary of Thurloe’s] went from Whitehall between 11 and 12, and was privately conveighed into that roome, and there assisted Mr Dorislaus, and such letters as they found dangerous he brought back with him to Whitehall in the morning.
Wildman’s account is backed up by Thurloe’s own state papers, where there are many instances of ‘interrupted’ and ‘intercepted’ letters, and several letters from his henchman Dorislaus. ‘Sir, I Have been up all night,’ states one letter of June 1653. ‘The inclosed are my last night’s worke . . .’
The merchants here doe generally write, that the king of Spayne hath deceaved them, lest them to shift for themselves, and that hee and this state are agreed for the coyning and disposing of the silver by this state. I will goe this morning to Whitehall, and tell Bishop, that I am now layd aside, have nothing more to doe with the post letters. I will manage that businesse for you with that secrecy and dexteritie to your owne heart’s desire; and am resolved henceforward not to impart one sillable of any thinge I know to any living soule but yourselfe, who am now wholy engaged to you; and you shall finde me reall, faythfull, and true in every particular trust or word you shall impose upon me. I am very sleepy, and will tell you more of my minde at Whitehall.
Your most faythful and humble servant, Dorislaus.
Some form of officially sanctioned clandestine censorship remained in place in London until 1844. So how best to avoid this furtive small-hours surveillance? With counter-espionage creativity. Letter-writers had to learn not only the craft of composition but the art of concealment too, and soon there were manuals for sale alongside The Enimie of Idlenesse that taught ciphers and code-breaking. The state of the art was considered in 1605 in The Advancement of Learning by Francis Bacon, itself a letter (to James I). The attributes required of a good code were threefold: ‘That they be not laborious to write and reade; that they bee impossible to discypher; and in some cases, that they be without suspition.’ To illustrate the last requisite, Bacon developed what he called a ‘biliteral cipher’, a process wherein a letter would appear normal on the surface but only reveal its true meaning to the recipient. This involved the use of two parallel alphabets, one forming a decoy, the other the intended secret text. To befuddle further, five times as many letters would be used than were necessary in a single word, a process he called ‘infolding’. It appeared to be an early form of binary or genetic coding: words such as ‘aababaabbaabbaaabaa’ would not be uncommon in Bacon’s ciphers, though it is unclear why this seeming gibberish wouldn’t at once be rightly regarded as fishy.
Ciphers were an essential piece of the ambassador’s tool kit, often involving prearranged numerical and alphabetical cryptographies known only to the recipient. They were popular too among merchants eager to conceal new markets, for which they also developed their own form of shorthand. These mathematical and linguistical tricks soon moved from the writing desk to the parlour and a magician’s cabinet of illusions: Johann Wecker’s Eighteen Books of the Secrets of Art and Nature, published in 1660, included instruction on ‘The way to write in an Egge’ and ‘How to make Letters that lye hid appear, and to hide those that are visible’ (hint: use both ‘vinegar and piss’). Code words were common too. Mary Queen of Scots employed a Scottish cipher secretary named Gilbert Curle, who used the sort of deflections we have become familiar with from the great wars: the queen of England was referred to as ‘the merchant of London’; the queen of Scotland was ‘the merchant of Newscastle [sic]’.
And then there was that other confounding schoolboy favourite: invisible ink. Again, one perhaps imagines this as originating with early spy novels, but the rough science gained full momentum in the seventeenth century. And here again vinegar and urine were found to have their uses, alongside alum powder, milk, onion water and the juice of oranges and lemons. Its most notorious use was during the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, with a group of Jesuit priests conducting regular correspondence on what must have appeared to be partially blank paper.
One of them, John Gerard, later wrote of his activities from prison, confessing to using the juice of citrus fruit between lines of pencil: ‘In the penciled letter I confined myself to spiritual topics, but in the white space between the lines I gave detailed instructions to different friends of mine outside.’ And Gerard was particular about the type of juice he used. Lemon juice was valuable, becoming visible when exposed to water or heat; when it dries or is taken away from a flame the writing disappears again. ‘But orange juice is different,’ he wrote in his autobiography. ‘It cannot be read with water . . . Heat brings it out but it stays out. So a letter in orange juice cannot be delivered without the recipient knowing whether or not it has been read.’
Increasingly aware of state intervention, writers – be they spies on intellige
nce missions or traders on mercantile ones – found new ways to secure their information. And increasingly too, they began to regard the secrecy of their letters as a sacrosanct right, a belief strengthened, ironically as we’ve seen, by the emergence of an official royal postal network opening its service to the public. When all else failed, the recipient had a simple instruction: burn after reading.
And what rich rewards should we expect from this century of great postal transformation? Surely Shakespeare’s letters would be worth a look? Perhaps a note to his leading actors as they prepared to take the stage? Or a handful of love letters to Anne Hathaway, one with a lock of his hair? And perhaps a letter from Elizabeth in appreciation of his playes addressed to the Globe bye Thames? All these were on offer for the first time in 1795, and a man called Samuel Ireland was taking orders for a limited print edition at a charge of 4 guineas. The letters were the main attraction, but Miscellaneous Papers and Legal Instruments under the hand and seal of William Shakspeare also included deeds, a radical draft of King Lear and an entirely new play entitled Vortigern and Rowena. Understandably enough, the letters and their publication were the cause of some hysteria, at least until the leading Shakespearian scholar Edmond Malone delivered his critique of the documents in the spring of 1796. According to Malone, the letters contained so many discrepancies – grammatical, orthographical, phraseological, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral – that they couldn’t possibly be genuine. And he was right. The letters were written, as were the plays, by Samuel Ireland’s son William Henry to please his father.*
‘Some have greatness thrust upon them . . .’ Stephen Fry’s Malvolio misinterprets a letter in Twelfth Night.
To the Letter Page 11
