Abstract
Toward the end of her life, Elizabeth suffered from painful rheumatism in her right arm, which made letter writing difficult. In 1602 she complained to her young godson and probable heir, James VI of Scotland, of “an evill accydent of my arme” (one of her very few public admissions of physical frailty), and ended many of her holograph letters with apologies for her “skribling” and “skrating.”2 Such self-deprecating remarks on the poor quality of handwriting were common in letters of the period, but in Elizabeth’s case they were well-founded. Whenever Elizabeth became excited or agitated (as she often did when writing to James) her thoughts ran faster than her pen could trace them: her messiest letters are often her most intimate. This, combined with her progressive rheumatism, made her writing almost indecipherable as she grew older. Yet despite her increasing discomfort and fatigue, Elizabeth insisted on writing her own letters to James until her very last days, just as she had done since the early 1580s.
I hope you wyl beare with my molesting you to long with my skrating hand.
—Elizabeth I to James VI, January 6, 16031
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Notes
Elizabeth to James (holograph), 3 February 1602, Bruce, pp. 142–43. For an account of Elizabeth’s rheumatism see John Clapham, Elizabeth of England: Certain Observations Concerning the Life and Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. Evelyn Plummer Read and Conyers Read (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1951), pp. 89–90.
See John Guy (ed.), The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995);
Paul Hammer, “Sex and the Virgin Queen: Aristocratic Concupiscence and the Court of Elizabeth I,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 31:1 (2000), pp. 77–97.
Alan Stewart Shakespeare’s Letters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 66.
Leonard E. Boyle, “Diplomatics,” in J. M. Powell (ed.), Medieval Studies: an Introduction, 2nd ed., (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1992), p. 91.
Over 1,600 books are assigned to Elizabeth in the Royal Library Catalogue, although only 300 of these were formally “owned’ by her: the rest appear to be gifts or donations from the libraries of her courtiers. T.A. Birrell”, English Monarchs and Their Books: From Hentry VII to Charles II (London: British Library, 1987), pp. 24–26.
Henry VIII also owned dozens of writing tables: for a description of some see his Royal Expenses, 1546, L&P, v. 21 part 2, no.769, p. 400. For a detailed description of writing tables and their function see Peter Stallybrass, Roger Chartier, J. Franklin Mowery, and Heather Wolfe, “Hamlet’s Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England,” Shakespeare Quarterly 55:4 (2004), pp. 379–419.
Elizabeth used these watermarks between August 1588 and Oct 1594. H. R. Woudhuysen, “The Queen’s Own Hand: A Preliminary Account,” in Peter Beal and Grace Ioppolo (eds.), Elizabeth I and the Culture of Writing (London: British Library, 2007), pp. 26–27; Pryor, Life in Letters, p. 9. See also “Considerations for the erecting a corporation for the sole making of paper in England,” c. 1586, CSPDom, 1581–90, vol. 2, no. 132, p. 378.
Paul Johnson, Elizabeth I: A Study in Intellect and Power (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1974), p. 238.
Paul Hentzner, Paul Hentzner’s Travels in England, during the Reign of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1797), p. 22; Roy Strong, Elizabeth R (London: Random House, 1971), p. 66.
James Daybell, Women Letter-Writers in Tudor England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 108.
Elizabeth to Catherine de’ Médici, [c. 1561–2?], Catalogue of the collection of Alfred Morrison, ed. A. W. Thibaudeau (London, 1883–92), ii, plate 70, p. 77.
Felix Pryor, Elizabeth I: Her Life in Letters (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), pp. 12–13. Ironically, in 1565 Elizabeth remarked to the Emperor Maximilian II’s ambassador that “she had seen many bad handwritings, but that none had caused her so much discomfort as that of the late Emperor,”
Ferdinand I. Victor von Klarwill (ed.), Queen Elizabeth and Some Foreigners (London: John Lane, 1928), p. 215.
Quoted in David Starkey, Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne (New York: Chatto & Windus, 2000), p. 83.
Janet M. Green, “Elizabeth I’s Reply to the Polish Ambassador,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 31:4 (2000), pp. 993–94.
G. R. Elton England Under the Tudors (London: Methuen & Co., 1955), p. 284;
J. E. Neale, “Sayings of Queen Elizabeth,” in Essays in Elizabethan History (London: Jonathan Cape, 1958), p. 90.
Geoffrey Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government: Administrative Changes in the Reign of Henry VIII (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. 32, 59, 117, 369, 415–17.
F. Jeffrey Platt, “The Elizabethan ‘Foreign Office,’” The Historian, 56:4 (1994), p. 726;
Pam Wright, “A change of direction: the ramifications of a female household, 1558–1603,” in David Starkey (ed.), The English Court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London; New York: Longman, 1987), pp. 152–53.
Stephen Alford, The Early Elizabethan Polity: William Cecil and the British Succession Crisis, 1558–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 13. Burghley was equally assiduous with his own correspondence, preferring to write his own letters rather than dictating to secretaries even when he was ill. Alford, Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I (London: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 136, 148, 318.
Platt, “The Elizabethan Foreign Office,” The Historian, 56:4 (1994), pp. 728–731.
Quoted in Charles Hughes, “Nicholas Faunt’s Discourse Touching the Office of Principal Secretary of Estate, &c. 1592,” The English Historical Review, 20:79 (1905), pp. 501–02.
Alan G. R. Smith, “The Secretariats of the Cecils, circa 1580 –1612,” The English Historical Review, 83:328 (1968), pp. 483, 494.
See for example Philip’s letter regarding the appointment of Don Juan as Governor of the Low Countries, 1 Sept 1576, NA SP 70/139 fol. 123. For more on Tudor fascination in Italian language and culture, see George B. Parks, “The Genesis of Tudor Interest in Italian,” PMLA, 77:5 (1962), pp. 529–535.
Ramie Targoff, John Donne, Body and Soul (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2008), p. 42.
See also Sara Jayne Steen, “Reading Beyond the Words: Material Letters and the Process of Interpretation,” Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, 22 (2001), p. 65.
Sue Walker, “The Manners of the Page: Prescription and Practice in the Visual Organization of Correspondence,” The Huntington Library Quarterly, 66:3/4 (2003), p. 309;
Jonathon Gibson, “Significant Space in Manuscript Letters,” The Seventeenth Century, 12 (1997), pp. 2, 8, n. 16.
H. C. Maxwell-Lyte, Historical Notes on the Use of the Great Seal of England (London: HMSO, 1926), pp. 135–36.
David Ganz, “‘Mind in Character’: Ancient and Medieval Ideas about the Status of the Autograph as an Expression of Personality,” in P. R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim (eds.), Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers, Essays presented to M. B. Parkes (Aldershot and Brookfield: Scolar Press, 1997), p. 281.
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© 2012 Rayne Allinson
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Allinson, R. (2012). My Skrating Hand: The Making of Elizabeth’s Correspondence. In: A Monarchy of Letters. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137008367_2
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