![]() But letterlocking demonstrates that the urge to communicate securely is much older than many might assume. ![]() Today, when people think about keeping their messages secure from prying eyes, they tend to focus on digital communication, such as the "end-to-end encryption" of services such as WhatsApp or Signal. "The letters represent the thoughts, cares, and dreams of a cross-section of society: there are missives by ambassadors, dukes and duchesses, merchants, publishers, and spies, but also by actors and musicians, ordinary lovers, struggling refugees, and by women as well as men," write the researchers who have been studying the collection. Many of the letters were everyday correspondence, but collectively they paint a detailed picture of life in Europe during the 1600s. Inadvertently, they had compiled one of the richest epistolary archives of the period. The couple and their employees kept them in the hope that recipients might eventually shell out, hence the trunk's nickname: “the piggy bank” ( spaarpotje). Many had the words " niet hebben" scribbled on them in Dutch, which means "refused". In the 1600s, the recipients of letters had to pay to receive them, so for various reasons – poverty, relocation or death – letters often failed to reach their destination. The collection had been kept by a married postmaster and postmistress called Simon Brienne and Marie Germain, who lived in the Netherlands. So, she methodically described what she observed. While it could be mistaken for damage to the untrained eye, she realised it was evidence of letterlocking. On her first day, she was offered the chance to work on the Fondo Veneto Sezione II, a cache of maps, letters, legal and accounting documents from the late 1500s, many of which had not been repaired.Īs she completed her conservation work, Dambrogio didn't always follow the writing, since it was often in old Italian dialects, but she did notice cuts, creases and folds in the paper. In the early 2000s, she had been the first woman from outside the archive's conservation laboratory who was allowed to work there. The modern study of letterlocking began when the conservator Jana Dambrogio was leafing through a cache of documents in the Vatican Secret Archives in Italy. The hidden codes you're not meant to know.So how does letterlocking work, and is it possible to try it yourself? In recent years, a whole taxonomy of apparently forgotten letterlocking tricks have been uncovered. Anyone who is capable of sending a letter is using letterlocking."īut in the present day, we're only beginning to understand the technique's importance in history. So it's not something confined to experts, royalty or spy masters. "So, if it's a business letter, if it's a love letter, if it's a spy letter, if it's a diplomatic letter, they're all using letterlocking. This is how you send a letter before the envelope is invented," explains Daniel Starza Smith, a lecturer in Early Modern English literature at King’s College London. "This isn't something special that people do on special occasions. By folding and cutting letters in various clever patterns, people attempted to hide their correspondence from unwanted readers, and the "locks" came in myriad types. Mary Queen of Scots was far from the only person who was skilled in the art of "letterlocking" – the technique became common throughout Europe during the Late Middle Ages (1250-1500) and Early Modern periods (1500-1815). ![]() Watch this and other letterlocking techniques on the Unlocking History Research Group's YouTube page.Watch a reconstruction of how Mary did it: No wax or adhesive was required, but crucially, if someone tried to sneak a look, they would have to rip through the strip, so her brother-in-law would know the message had been intercepted. After poking the knife through the rectangle to make a hole, she then fed the strip through, looping it and tightening it a few times, creating a "spiral lock". Instead, Mary cut a thin strip from the paper margin, before folding up her message into a small rectangle. However, envelopes were not used in the 1500s – not least because paper was expensive – and there was no trustworthy postal service at the time. She didn't want her captors snooping – and particularly not her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. "The Catholic faith and the assertion of my God-given right to the English crown are the two issues on which I am condemned." With a sad acceptance of her fate, she asked him to take care of her affairs and pay her servants, wishing him "good health and a long and happy life".Īfter Mary had finished writing, she then began to fold up the letter to secure its contents. "Tonight, after dinner, I have been advised of my sentence: I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning," she wrote. Late at night on 8 February 1587, an imprisoned Mary Queen of Scots composed her last ever letter to her brother-in-law. ![]()
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