Mary, Countess of Westmorland, wrote letters to her daughter Grace Fane, Countess of Home, discussing her health and hopes of pregancy. As noted in the catalogue of the Moray Papers, the six letters include some court news and a few lines of code or cipher. Mostly the coded passages in the six surviving letters relate to possible embarrassment involving Grace’s mother-in-law Mary, Countess of Home.

A letter from March 1627 has a line of extra plain text near the address, which was a mystery to me until I worked out the code, and realised this was an attempt at deciphering text from a later letter from the Countess of Westmorland.

The cipher text appears in a letter of 22 April 1631, I’ve put it in capitals here:

“it cannot be be any dangerous thing, & it is very hopfull that you are with childe, though it may be that you did not conceive soe soone as you are out of doubt on ways or other, then we will begin to resolve ether of your coming hither or my coming to you, for if you be with child (as I verily hope that you are) then shall NOT I DARE ADVENTER TOE ADVISE U TOE TAKE FOR LONGE JOURNE, but if it would COM ON THEM SELUES it would be MUCH MORE CONVENIENT for MEE, then for MEE TOE GOE TOE U; this honest messenger was soe confident that he had brought in his letters, as certain news of your being quick with childe, that he told it at Apthorp, from whence it was sent me, with more speede than your servant could come for that occation with a very joyfull hart, which hart will always be ready (as sad as it is) to receive such news ioyfully”

It seems interesting to jot down this working out on an older letter, and was presumably an accident. It doesn’t much look like Grace Fane’s own handwriting, who might be expected to write “I” just like her mother does, (see a letter in Grace Fane’s hand below). Possibly she had a clerk at Dunglass Castle who read her mother’s letters for her.

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