An analysis of more than 500 missives found that Elizabeth’s advisers crafted and even intensified the expression of emotion in her messages to such figures as Mary, Queen of Scots, and James VI of Scotland. Work on Elizabeth I’s letters has focused on identifying the English queen’s “voice” within them. Yet they were often the products of collaboration between Elizabeth and her secretaries.

On February 10, 1586, Elizabeth wrote a furious rebuke to Robert Dudley, First Earl of Leicester. “How contemptuously we conceive ourself to have been used by you,” Elizabeth raged. The only surviving copy is in the hand of secretary Francis Mylles, servant to Francis Walsingham. Through careful analysis of more than 500 of Elizabeth’s letters, the researcher discovered that the expression of emotion was often carefully constructed by her secretaries.

Around 3,000 of Elizabeth’s letters survive, mostly penned by scribes. These “scribal letters” have been neglected, with priority given to autograph letters. The research, part of the Feathers project led by Nadine Akkerman at Leiden University, sought to distinguish between authorial and scribal voices in collaboratively produced manuscripts from the early modern period.

One example is a letter from Elizabeth to George Talbot, Sixth Earl of Shrewsbury, written in May 1584. Through reassembly of different manuscripts, handwriting analysis, and textual comparison, evidence emerged that the expression of emotion in Elizabeth’s letters was carefully crafted by her secretaries.