Ghinucci, Lee and Poyntz to Wolsey, Valladolid, 17 July 1527

Summary. In July 1527 Henry VIII had three men at the Emperor’s court at Valladolid: Edward Lee, the King’s almoner; Girolamo Ghinucci, bishop of Worcester; and Sir Francis Poyntz, newly arrived with the French envoy, the bishop of Tarbes, to mediate a peace between Charles V and Francis I. Their joint report to Cardinal Wolsey of 17 July 1527 is calendared in Letters and Papers of Henry VIII, vol. IV, as no. 3271: “Pp. 23. The cipher deciphered by Tuke … One part of this despatch is separated from the other.” DECODE R8565 is that separated part. The folio numbers place it: the calendar puts the second part at old f. 166, and old ff. 166–169 are DECODE’s new ff. 174–177. The pages are English cleartext, with about five short passages in the Lee–Worcester cipher, each deciphered between the lines. The calendar prints what they say: Charles’s professions of goodwill to Henry, the idea of giving Milan with the daughter of Portugal to Henry’s son the duke of Richmond, and the French envoy’s secret fourth instruction. Every cipher passage has its decipherment. The letter was identified from the calendar and DECODE’s public thumbnails. The full images are behind the DECODE login and were not viewed, so one check on the first page remains.

01 The record

DECODE R8565 has eight images, 7 pages of text, status “Partially decrypted”, with inline cleartext and inline plaintext both marked “Yes”. The key linked to it is “Lee–Worcester Cipher (1526–1529)”. The public thumbnails (200 pixels wide) show:

seven written pages under the Cotton running head “Hispania 1527”, mostly English in clear;
about five short bands in which a line of cipher carries a line of decipherment above it (images 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7), which is DECODE’s “Partially decrypted” and “inline plaintext”;
three signatures at the foot of image 7, as expected for Ghinucci, Lee and Poyntz;
image 8, the address leaf with its endorsement.

So the catalogue entry is wrong on two counts. The letter is not from Poyntz alone but from all three ambassadors, and the recipient is Wolsey.

02 Where it sits in the volume

Letters and Papers cites the old foliation of Vespasian C IV, and DECODE the new. In this stretch the two differ by eight. Old numbers marked with a question mark in the table are inferred from that offset; they were not seen on the leaves. The anchor is the neighbouring record R8566: new ff. 178–181, old ff. 170–173 as written on the leaves (see targets/lee1526/). That is the calendar’s no. 3270, Lee to Henry VIII, 17 July, “Vesp. C. IV. 170”. Both end on the offer of the daughter of Portugal.

DECODE	new ff.	old ff.	Letters and Papers IV
R8561	166	158?	clear leaf, no cipher (`targets/lee1526/`)
R8565	174–177	166–169 (inferred)	no. 3271, second part (“f. 166”), to the signatures
R8566	178–181	170–173	no. 3270, Lee to Henry VIII (“f. 170”)
R8567	182–185	174–177?	no. 3272? (“f. 174”), see section 05

The calendar’s footnote to no. 3271 puts its second part at f. 166, starting “Were sent for to court on the 15th July”. It runs through the 15 and 16 July audiences to “17 July 1527. Signed.” That fits a seven-page record ending in three signatures.

03 What the cipher says

The calendar prints the deciphered passages in italics. For this part of no. 3271 they are the following. The words are the calendar’s summary of Tuke’s decipherment, not the letter’s own spelling, except where the calendar quotes.

… Perceive the French would not have brought him to show any demands. He professes willingness to do everything for the King, and we avoid giving him any token but that the King and your Grace are still wholly his.

… Buclans asked if they restored Sforza, what security they should have that he would not give up the duchy to France, and suggested that the Emperor might give it along with the daughter of Portugal to the duke of Richmond.

De Tarbes has now shown us the fourth instruction. Perceive well why he withheld it; for he is to say to the Emperor, before the English ambassadors, that they desire his amity more than that of any other prince. 17 July 1527. Signed.

So the ambassadors kept three things out of reach of anyone who opened the packet. First, they were privately reassuring Charles that Henry and Wolsey were still “wholly his”, while they mediated alongside the French. Second, the Emperor’s side had floated a marriage: Milan and Maria, daughter of Manuel I of Portugal (the Emperor’s niece), for Henry Fitzroy, duke of Richmond, Henry’s illegitimate son. Third, the French envoy had been told to court Charles in front of the English.

The companion letter no. 3272, from the same three men and “chiefly cipher, deciphered by Tuke”, continues in the same vein. It reports an intercepted despatch from Charles’s ambassador in France: De Tarbes could offer the Viceroy’s conditions undiminished; Lautrec had authority to conclude in Italy; Wolsey had pressed Francis to marry the Princess Mary. It also names a portion of 400,000 ducats for the Portuguese match.

04 The cipher

This is the cipher Lee and Ghinucci used with Wolsey from 1526 to 1529: graphic symbols for letters, with further symbols for words and names (a small nomenclator). Satoshi Tomokiyo reconstructed it, and his table is attached on DECODE to R8566. It has already been checked against the interlinear decipherments of two sibling records. On R8566, the symbols under “possibilite” and “good” decrypt to p-o-ss-i-b-i-l-i-t-e and g-o-o-d. On R8567, the run under “can not” decrypts to c-a-n-n-o. The key was not applied to R8565, because its symbols cannot be made out at thumbnail size and the decipherment exists.

Two lines of graphic cipher signs, each with a deciphered English line written above it — R8565, f. 177r, the last cipher passage of the despatch: each line of Lee–Worcester signs has the contemporary decipherment written above it, that De Tarbes has now shown them the fourth instruction, which he is to use before the English ambassadors: that they desire the Emperor’s amity more than that of any other prince. Image: British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian C IV f. 177r, via DECODE R8565.

05 What remains open

The first page. On the full images, confirm that image 1 opens with the 15 July summons to court (no. 3271, second part) and not “Wrote in former letters of the arrival of Ave Maria” (no. 3272). Either way the cipher was deciphered by Tuke and is in print, so the outcome does not change.
The exact wording. The calendar summarises. The English of the interlinear decipherment, and of Tuke’s separate decipher of no. 3272 in the Record Office (now The National Archives, SP 1), was not transcribed.
R8567’s place. On the same offset, the calendar’s “f. 174” for no. 3272 would fall on new f. 182, the first leaf of R8567. Its notes identify that record as a Lee-and-Poyntz despatch with old foliation 162–165, with the decipherment “it can not be so well bestowed. we know well you will kepe hit full well secrets from the frenchemen…”. This does not affect R8565.

06 Sources

DECODE record R8565: images behind login, British Library, not public domain. Neighbours R8566 (with Tomokiyo’s key) and R8567.
J. S. Brewer (ed.), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, vol. IV part 2 (London, 1872), nos. 3270–3272, pp. 1482–1487: British History Online, July 1527, 11–20.
S. Tomokiyo, reconstruction of the Lee–Worcester cipher (1526–1529), Cryptiana; document on DECODE R8566.

Notes and the profile are in targets/poyntz1527/.