'By the vse of others penne': the collaborative production of Queen Elizabeth I’s English scribal letters, 1581–90

Abstract

This thesis examines the role of scribes in the production of Queen Elizabeth I’s (1533–1603) English scribal letters in the period 1581–90: the latter years of Sir Francis Walsingham’s (c. 1532–90) tenure as Principal Secretary (1573–90). Much scholarly work on Elizabeth I’s letters has focused on those written in the queen’s own hand, despite the fact that the majority were produced, not by the queen herself, but by the royal secretariat: a sophisticated network of penmen that included the Principal Secretary, his servants, and the clerks and under-clerks of the Signet Office. Where these ‘scribal’ missives have been considered, priority has largely been given to recovering Elizabeth’s personal involvement in their composition: with the exception of a few important studies, the contributions of the non-authorial agents in whose hands they were written has mostly been ignored. This thesis thus focuses on the role of Elizabeth’s scribes, seeking to identify these hidden figures and recover their influence on the queen’s missives. Through a innovative, mixed-methodological approach that combines bibliographical (codicological, material, and palaeographical) methods with quantitative textual analysis and qualitative, close reading techniques, I thus disentangle the production of Elizabeth’s scribal missives to identify the key scribal contributors to them and isolate their contributions. I argue that Elizabeth’s letters should not be approached as artefacts that offer access to the unmediated ‘voice’ of the queen, but as literary texts that communicate a rhetorical persona constructed collaboratively by the queen, her Principal Secretary, and the clerks and penmen at work in the royal secretariat.