972Unsolved Historical Ciphers
(3) L̲ □̲ ⊔̲ 7 □ 4̸ф   ⊏̲ ⊔̲ 7̣ ⊓̲ ⊔̲ Ψ 6
(4) L̲ □̲ ⊔̲ 7 □ Ψ   ⊏̲ ⊔̲ 7̣ □̲ ⊔̲ 4̸ф
… the two passages either side of Percy’s signature, as traced

Norham Castle → Sir William Cecil · pigpen-like box symbols with dot and underline marks · 23 July 1559

Sir Henry Percy to Cecil, Norham, 23 July 1559

Henry Percy
fromHenry Percy
William Cecil
toWilliam Cecil

British Library, Add MS 4136 f. 172 (DECODE R9256): a page of the Forbes Papers with a tracing of the four cipher passages of Percy’s letter, numbered (1) to (4), and his signature. The original, with Cecil’s decipherment, is at The National Archives in SP 52/1.

The 63 signs were transcribed and tried as a substitution cipher from the ciphertext alone. No single alphabet fits the four passages, and 63 signs are too few to recover the key without a crib. Cecil’s contemporary decipherment exists on the original, which is not online.

Daniel Bourdeau · posted · updated

Method: not solved · Extent: text not obtained

Summary. DECODE catalogues R9256 as a ciphered letter of Henry Percy to Secretary Cecil, 23 July 1559, with no decipherment. The one image is a page of the Forbes Papers volume (BL Add MS 4136), not the letter. It carries an eighteenth-century tracing of four short cipher passages and Percy’s signature. The lower half is an unrelated key, Sturmius’s cipher of 1562, which DECODE files separately as R9257. The letter is calendared twice: Calendar of State Papers Foreign I no. 1051 and Bain, Calendar of State Papers Scotland I no. 501. Bain describes it as having “a few words in cipher, deciphered by Cecill”. The calendared text names Knox, Whytlaw, the Lord Prior, Lord Hume, the Merse and Teviotdale, the Dowager, the Congregation and Haddington, but does not say which of them were in cipher. The four passages have 63 signs: box shapes like pigpen, with an underline, one dot or two dots beneath, and five other signs. No key in the same volume uses this script. No key was found. No single letter-for-letter alphabet makes sense of all four passages, whether the marks are counted as separate letters or ignored, and either way round. Status: not solved. What would finish it is the TNA original with Cecil’s interlined decipherment, or the ciphered original of Percy’s 1 July postscript, whose plaintext Laing prints.

01 The document

Tracing of four short lines in a box script numbered (1) to (4), with the signature Henry Percy between lines 3 and 4 and the heading Sr Hen: Percy to Sr Wm Cecill from Norham 23 July 1559
BL Add MS 4136 f. 172, upper half: the Forbes tracing of the four cipher passages of Percy’s letter of 23 July 1559, with his signature. Image: British Library, Add MS 4136 f. 172, via DECODE R9256.

The heading reads “Sr Hen: Percy to Sr Wm Cecill from Norham 23 July 1559”. A second heading on the same page, “from Norham 22 July 1559 · A”, has only the signature under it. Below a rule is “Sturmius’s Cipher, 4 March 1562”, an alphabet with name codes and nulls. Its signs are Greek-like letters, not boxes, so it is not Percy’s key.

The passages are transcribed one sign at a time. Each sign is a box shape (⅃ ⊔ L □ ⊏ 7 ⊓ Γ, and a barred I) with or without a mark beneath: an underline, one dot or two dots. Five other signs appear: a crossed 4, a boxed cross, a trident, a tailed 6 and a house. In all there are 13 words, 63 signs and 19 distinct sign-and-mark combinations. The transcription is in percy1559/transcription.txt. Passages (3) and (4), on either side of the signature, begin with the same five signs and share their second word’s first three signs.

02 What the letter says, and what was in cipher

Bain’s calendar (no. 501) summarises the letter. Percy has had Knox’s answer by word of mouth. Whytlaw is fully instructed, so his journey is at an end. Percy has conveyed a letter to the Lord Prior and encloses the Prior’s unsigned answer. Lord Hume has put off the border meeting at Lady Kirk. The Merse and Teviotdale go to the Dowager tomorrow, and the Congregation towards Haddington. The note on the manuscript is “A few words in cipher, deciphered by Cecill”. On 22 July Percy had written Knox’s name as a cipher sign (CSP Foreign I no. 1045). On 4 August he told Cecil he had sent the Lord Prior “a cipher” (Laing, Works of John Knox VI, p. 61).

Percy’s cipher could spell out whole sentences as well as names. Bain (no. 480) records a postscript Percy added in cipher to Kirkcaldy’s letter of 1 July and deciphered himself. Laing (VI, pp. 33–35) prints it in clear: “The letter that Knoxe wrythe to you is by the meanes of the hole Congregatione, the names of whome I sende yowe here inclosed.” Its ciphered form is on the original only.

03 What was tried

04 What remains open

None of the four passages is deciphered. They may be name signs rather than spelled-out words, or the tracing may have miscopied some marks; a tracing cannot settle either question. Two documents would: the original of 23 July in TNA SP 52/1 with Cecil’s interlined decipherment, or the ciphered original of the 1 July postscript, which would give a sentence of known plaintext. Neither is online.

05 Sources

Transcription, scripts and notes: percy1559/.