ABSTRACT
G. B. Harrison suggests, as a rough estimate, that the letters of Queen Elizabeth I number between two to three thousand. As recent editions indicate, less than 100 of these are written in the queens own hand, with around eighty written in English. However, the majority of Queen Elizabeth's letters are not autograph, but scribal manuscripts, often headed with her sign-manual or the statement by the queen. Daybell posits that there is a spectrum along which the named author's contribution to a letter can be placed, reflecting the different composition methods available to early modern writers. The extant autograph letters provide a relatively large body of data to represent Elizabeth's letter-writing preferences, and these form the comparative baseline for the analysis. Spirit and Moor are among the many nicknames used by Elizabeth for her councillors, and their inclusion here rather than a standard epistolary address offers immediate and quite persuasive evidence of Elizabeth's contribution.
