ABSTRACT
Queen Elizabeth was the financier of literature that desired, and although she encouraged writer John Lyly. She employed her literacy also in writing her own letters, of which many survive including a series written to James VI of Scotland. These letters are especially interesting because James's replies often survive both attitude and style as well as in language. Elizabeth's letters are written in the London standard such as the tendency to write both 'they' and the definite article; James's are in contemporary Scots which had developed from the earlier northern Middle English. Elizabeth seeks to prove her decision to have James's mother put to death. Perhaps reflecting the nature of the circumstances the first sentence becomes almost unintelligible as the result of sequence of digressive qualifications. James's letter, which like Elizabeth's is in his own hand, is a draft which may never sent but is a well-turned pieces of diplomatic correspondence, in effect a letter of credit for its bearer.
