972Unsolved Historical Ciphers
Glascoe Davison longeth to heare from Lyons [9] · one should come from Roome [9] · [9] = cover-name marker

Westminster → Paris · cleartext letter with cover-name markers · 24 January 1572/3

Burghley to Walsingham, 24 January 1573, in Walsingham’s Paris letter-book

William Cecil
fromWilliam Cecil
Francis Walsingham
toFrancis Walsingham

BL Harley MS 260 f. 395r (DECODE R8362), listed as “W. Baurleighs? to unknown recipient, 27 Jan 1572”. The page is a fair copy of a letter from William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to Sir Francis Walsingham, ambassador in France. The letter is in clear English and was printed by Dudley Digges in 1655. It contains no ciphertext, only two boxed markers after cover-names, so there is nothing to decipher.

Daniel Bourdeau · posted · updated

Method: not a cipher

Summary. DECODE lists R8362 as a one-page ciphered letter of “W. Baurleighs?” to an unknown recipient, dated 27 January 1572, “short parts encrypted only”. The image is f. 395r of Harley MS 260, the later fair-copy letter-book of Walsingham’s embassy in France. It is signed “Your assured frind William Baurleighe”, the copyist’s spelling of Burghley, and dated “from Westm the 24th of Januarie 1572”, which is 24 January 1573 in modern reckoning. Dudley Digges printed it in The Compleat Ambassador (1655). The page holds no letter cipher and no code numbers. It has only two boxed 9s, one after “Lyons” and one after “Roome”. In the other letters of this volume a box after a word marks that word as a cover-name, a place name that stands for a person, and the digit in the box varies. The whole letter is cleartext, and there is nothing to decipher. Who the cover-names Lyons and Roome stand for is not stated anywhere in the letter-book, in Digges or in the Calendars.

01 What the record is

The page carries the running head “Januarie 1572”. The letter is copied in the same hand as the rest of the register, so this is the letter-book copy, not the letter as sent. DECODE made two misreadings. It read the day as 27 when the page has “24th”, and it left the recipient unknown although the register belongs to Walsingham. The address at the foot of the page, “To my verie …”, is cut off at the page end.

Four lines of secretary hand: Glascoe Davison longeth to heare from Lyons, a boxed 9, for that by your last tickett, and Roome with a boxed 9
Harley MS 260 f. 395r: “Glascoe Davison longeth to heare from Lyons [9] for that by your last tickett … one should come from Roome [9]”. Image: British Library, Harley MS 260 f. 395r, via DECODE R8362.

02 The letter

Burghley writes that he is “sorie and ashamed” that he cannot yet send anything that settles Walsingham’s own case, his recall from France. He promises to keep working for it. He leaves news of Lord Worcester’s journey to the Secretary. Then he comes to the business of the cover-names:

Glascoe Davison longeth to heare from Lyons [9] for that by your last tickett, I understand that Steward tould you that one should come from Roome [9], the shipp abode in the place appointed the space of 23 daies. And soe I end, trusting to see you here amongst your frinds within this sixe weekes at the leaste to bee revoked by that tyme. From Westm the 24th of Januarie 1572. Your assured frind William Baurleighe.

“Tickett” is the separate slip on which Walsingham sent his secret news. The same plot about a ship, Steward, Glasgow and the Rome/Florence party runs through the letters of November 1572 and February 1573 in this volume (R8361, R8364).

03 Why the boxed 9s are not cipher

In the Harley 260 letters that Digges printed, boxed digits appear directly after a place name: Florence [9], Rome [9], Glasgow [7], and in February 1573 both “Glasco [9]” and “Glasco [g]”. The same cover-word takes different digits, so the digit does not encode a value. The box flags the word before it as a cover-name for a person. In R8362 both boxes follow place names, Lyons and Roome, and the sentence makes sense without them. That accounts for both marks; the page has no others.

04 What remains

05 Sources

Notes, transcription and profile: r8362/.