The Times
January 20, 2007
A British historian has revealed the suggestive nature of a letter written in code by Charles I (Jack Hill)
Has a naughty word exposed Charles I?
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent
* Historian cracks code in lover's letter
* View of 'stuffy' Charles will change
A British historian has cracked the code in a letter written by Charles I and discovered a secret affair that overturns his centuries-old image as a devoted husband and morally upright monarch.
Sarah Poynting has found that the King used the word “swiving” — an obscene word used in the 17th century for sex. It was concealed within a letter written in cipher to Jane Whorwood, stepdaughter of one of his former courtiers, which was smuggled out of Carisbrooke Castle where he was imprisoned in 1648, the year before his execution, during the English Civil War.
Deciphering its contents, Dr Poynting discovered that in urging Whorwood to visit him, the King had written: “I imagine that there is one way possible that you may get a swiving from me.”
She said that earlier attempts to decode the letter had failed as researchers did not realise that the King had used it to conceal his attempt to arrange a sexual liaison. They believed that the crucial line had a very different meaning: “Yet I imagine that there is one way possible that you may get answering from me.”
Historians now must revise their image of Charles I, who ruled from 1625 and who is known from Van Dyck’s famous portrait as grave and dignified, and from contemporaries as a chaste man who would not tolerate drunkenness and immorality. He “could never endure any light or profane word” or “anything that was profane or unclean”, they wrote.
Dr Poynting deciphered the letter while researching the King’s writings for a three-volume study she is editing for Oxford University Press. It was one of two to Whorwood and is now in the British Library. Both had been folded into a square an inch across so that they could be smuggled out, perhaps in someone’s shoes.
Arnold Hunt, the British Library’s Curator of Historical Manuscripts, said that it was “pure archival genius” to have decoded the letter. “These manuscripts have been in our collections for about 150 years and have been looked at quite extensively. But no one until now has managed to decipher it so correctly. It’s overturned our previous views of Charles.
“For a lot of modern historians, he’s been seen as a weak and ineffectual figure — and any hint of an extramarital affair was unthinkable. We will all have to reconsider that now. This makes him out to be more human and, in some ways, more sympathetic.”
Jane Whorwood is known to have been a tall, red-haired woman who was “well-fashioned and well-languaged”. On the down side, she had a pock-marked face.
Dr Poynting, Research Fellow in the Department of History at Keele University, said that Charles I was known to be devoted to his wife, Henrietta Maria, and was remembered for refusing to tolerate the drunkenness and sexual immorality that marked the court of his father, King James I.
She said that it was just not what he was proposing that was startling, but the way he did it. “His relationship with Jane Whorwood was clearly very different from that with his wife. It was more suggestive of sexual obsession than romance.”
Until now, there has been no evidence that Charles was ever unfaithful to his wife.
The cipher uses single or double digit numbers for individual letters, apparently assigned at random. Dr Poynting realised that “answering” could only be correct if the King had made three separate mistakes in one word.
Out of date
The word “swive” is now obsolete. Its earliest usage appears to be c 1300, in an anonymous and insulting political song about King “Richard of Alemaigne”, who apparently spent “al is tresour opon swyvyng”. Chaucer found uses for it in The Miller’s Tale, 1386: “Thus swyued was this Carpenteris wyf”. In Thomas Nashe’s The Choice of Valentines in the early 1590s, it was used of sex with prostitutes. By the 17th century its connotations had shifted and it was an obscene word for sex, featuring in the pornographic verses of the Earl of Rochester. The word appears to have died out at the end of the 17th century, hanging on in Scotland until the early 18th century.
thetimesonline.co.uk
January 20, 2007
A British historian has revealed the suggestive nature of a letter written in code by Charles I (Jack Hill)
Has a naughty word exposed Charles I?
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent
* Historian cracks code in lover's letter
* View of 'stuffy' Charles will change
A British historian has cracked the code in a letter written by Charles I and discovered a secret affair that overturns his centuries-old image as a devoted husband and morally upright monarch.
Sarah Poynting has found that the King used the word “swiving” — an obscene word used in the 17th century for sex. It was concealed within a letter written in cipher to Jane Whorwood, stepdaughter of one of his former courtiers, which was smuggled out of Carisbrooke Castle where he was imprisoned in 1648, the year before his execution, during the English Civil War.
Deciphering its contents, Dr Poynting discovered that in urging Whorwood to visit him, the King had written: “I imagine that there is one way possible that you may get a swiving from me.”
She said that earlier attempts to decode the letter had failed as researchers did not realise that the King had used it to conceal his attempt to arrange a sexual liaison. They believed that the crucial line had a very different meaning: “Yet I imagine that there is one way possible that you may get answering from me.”
Historians now must revise their image of Charles I, who ruled from 1625 and who is known from Van Dyck’s famous portrait as grave and dignified, and from contemporaries as a chaste man who would not tolerate drunkenness and immorality. He “could never endure any light or profane word” or “anything that was profane or unclean”, they wrote.
Dr Poynting deciphered the letter while researching the King’s writings for a three-volume study she is editing for Oxford University Press. It was one of two to Whorwood and is now in the British Library. Both had been folded into a square an inch across so that they could be smuggled out, perhaps in someone’s shoes.
Arnold Hunt, the British Library’s Curator of Historical Manuscripts, said that it was “pure archival genius” to have decoded the letter. “These manuscripts have been in our collections for about 150 years and have been looked at quite extensively. But no one until now has managed to decipher it so correctly. It’s overturned our previous views of Charles.
“For a lot of modern historians, he’s been seen as a weak and ineffectual figure — and any hint of an extramarital affair was unthinkable. We will all have to reconsider that now. This makes him out to be more human and, in some ways, more sympathetic.”
Jane Whorwood is known to have been a tall, red-haired woman who was “well-fashioned and well-languaged”. On the down side, she had a pock-marked face.
Dr Poynting, Research Fellow in the Department of History at Keele University, said that Charles I was known to be devoted to his wife, Henrietta Maria, and was remembered for refusing to tolerate the drunkenness and sexual immorality that marked the court of his father, King James I.
She said that it was just not what he was proposing that was startling, but the way he did it. “His relationship with Jane Whorwood was clearly very different from that with his wife. It was more suggestive of sexual obsession than romance.”
Until now, there has been no evidence that Charles was ever unfaithful to his wife.
The cipher uses single or double digit numbers for individual letters, apparently assigned at random. Dr Poynting realised that “answering” could only be correct if the King had made three separate mistakes in one word.
Out of date
The word “swive” is now obsolete. Its earliest usage appears to be c 1300, in an anonymous and insulting political song about King “Richard of Alemaigne”, who apparently spent “al is tresour opon swyvyng”. Chaucer found uses for it in The Miller’s Tale, 1386: “Thus swyued was this Carpenteris wyf”. In Thomas Nashe’s The Choice of Valentines in the early 1590s, it was used of sex with prostitutes. By the 17th century its connotations had shifted and it was an obscene word for sex, featuring in the pornographic verses of the Earl of Rochester. The word appears to have died out at the end of the 17th century, hanging on in Scotland until the early 18th century.
thetimesonline.co.uk