💌 Love in Lockdown: How Peregrine Bertie Wrote a Secret Love Letter to Mary Vere

Post #1 of Writing and Delivering a Secret Love Letter in Elizabethan England

Likely Lady Mary Vere – often misidentified as her sister-in-law Susan Bertie –  captured Peregrine Bertie’s heart and outwitted her famous brother, Edward de Vere, 17^th Earl of Oxford. Shakespeare was so impressed that he immortalized her.

It was the quintessential forbidden Tudor romance, complete with one of the lovers in literal lockdown, without ink, pen or internet. As Shakespeare himself knew, “The course of true love never did run smooth.”

Peregrine Bertie was in such a predicament when he urgently needed to reassure his fair love, Lady Mary Vere— Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford’s sister – of his ardent affection for her.

Peregrine had been schooled alongside Oxford at the Cecils’ London house in the Strand. The sparks began to fly between him and Mary right under the usually watchful eye of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who knew a thing or two about clandestine love [See 👉💔 Cecil, In Love!].  Never mind the even more watchful eye of his wife, Mildred Cooke Cecil, to whom romance was brewed in the devil’s own workshop [See 👉🧙‍♀️ The Three Cooke Sisters: Were They the Real "Witches" in Shakespeare's Macbeth?].

When clandestine kisses turned towards marriage, everyone objected, except the lovers. Peregrine’s parents had picked Mistress Elizabeth Cavendish for their son; but Peregrine made it widely known that she was not a dish to his taste. Oxford, in control of his sister’s betrothal, had chosen Lord Garrat, the heir to the Kildare earldom in Ireland; but Mary thought Garrat a scavenging “puttock” compared to the “eagle” that was Peregrine.

The ever-resourceful Peregrine Bertie: locked up by his parents and forbidden to write the love of his life, Mary Vere. But love always finds a way in Tudor England.

 (Spoiler alert: Mary was right.)

Panicked that “all” might not remain “still well” (spoiler alert: it already hadn’t), the Berties locked their son up in their London family home.

Mary must have written Peregrine for reassurance that he loved her because he wrote back. And what he wrote — under lock, key and family disapproval — survives, overflowing with tenderness:

“My own good Lady, I am not a little grieved that I have not ere this time resolved the doubt I left you in… I make more account of you than of myself or life… But understand how uncourteously I am dealt with by my Lord, your brother, who, as I hear, bandeth against me and sweareth my death, which I fear nor force not but lest his displeasure should withdraw your affection from me. Yours more than his own, and so till his end.”                               

          — Peregrine to Mary, 1577

Compare that what, Posthumus in a similar situation writes his lady love, Imogen, in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline:

“O lady, weep no more, lest I give cause/  To be suspected of more tenderness/ Than doth become a man. I will remain/ The loyal’st husband that did e’er plight troth/ . . . And with mine eyes I’ll drink the words you send,/ Though ink be made of gall.”

Coincidence or another Elizabethan secret? We digress. Our mystery today is how did Peregrine manage to write and send that love letter from lockdown? 

📜  I. The Paper: White Gold from Venice

“Go get me hither paper.”

— Lucrece, 1289

My first efforts at Elizabethan authorship technique on rag paper, with a quill I cut and ink I mixed myself. Results? Shakey at best.

The best writing paper in Elizabethan England came from Italy. Top of the line sheets, smaller and smoother than English stock, were creamy, edged in gold and made in Venice from rags. Hold it to the light, and you’d see a delicate watermark — a staff with a forked banner — proclaiming its pedigree.

While the next best paper came from France, English paper was coarse, grayish, politically fraught and better for fish than romance. Whether England should import Italian paper or build its own mills was such a hot topic that Shakespeare tucked the issue into a play (we’ll get to that mischief in a future post).

So if Peregrine wanted the good stuff, he’d have begged or bribed a servant for a few sheets of Venetian paper—light, flexible, and perfect for slipping beneath a floorboard or through a crack in a locked door.

🐝 II. The Ink: Waspish Alchemy in a Cup

“Ink be made of gall.”

           — Cymbeline, I.i

Forget bottled ink. Elizabethans made their own, and it was a potent brew.

A basic ink recipe mixed:

💧 Rainwater or melted snow (for purity)

🐝 Oak galls, those knobbly growths where wasps lay their eggs in oak trees

🧪 Iron sulfate (known as green vitriol), and

🌴 Gum arabic, sap from African acacia trees.

The result was a deep, lasting black — sometimes with a sheen of purple or bronze when fresh. The ink darkened as it aged, literally oxidizing love into forever.

If Peregrine had access to nothing but the oak galls (reaching out his window, perhaps?), he could have jerry-rigged the rest: wine or vinegar as base liquid, soot scraped from a candle or hearth. A true DIY romance.

🪶 III. The Pen: Goose, Knife, and Steady Hand

“Give me pen and ink.”

       — Titus Andronicus, IV.iii

Before fountain pens (which leaked into history around 1820), all serious writing depended on the humble quill.

My 16th-century quill-making experiment. Not perfect penmanship, but good enough to teach me how to use the tools of Elizabethan poets and playwrights.

The best quills, at least ten inches long, are plucked from the right wing of a goose. Then comes the tool of transformation — the penknife. You strip the lower feathers to improve grip, leaving the upper ones only if you want a decorative Tudor-esque flourish, say for a Netflix show. Those pretty plumes catch the air and make your handwriting wobble.

Then:

🪶 Scrape off the outer membrane.

🪶 Slice an angled scoop to cut off the barb.

🪶 Soak it briefly in water. Shake it out.

🪶 Pull out the quick at the core of the feather.

🪶 Cut another angle off the tip and a small scoop on each side.

🪶 Cut a fine slit in center of the nib to hold the ink.

A practiced hand could fashion a pen in under a minute – perfect when bored at Privy Council meetings. But Peregrine, with time on his hands, needed only a pilfered goose feather and a sharp knife from dinner.

 Voilà! The tools of rebellion.

How do I know all this?  When you write about Elizabethan playwrights and poets, you need to know their tools from personal experience. I’ve crushed the oak galls and wielded the penknife myself. I can attest, it works. 

❤️ The Miracle of a Love Letter’s Survival

Peregrine’s secret love letter was smuggled out somehow. Someone kept it for four and a half centuries, its paper, ink and devotion intact. We’ll probably never know the details.

💘 But, you can find out many more details about Peregrine and Mary’s romance here on YouTube. 🎥

💌 In another post, we’ll examine how Elizabethans folded, sealed, disguised, and delivered their letters. Luckily, you don’t need to battle wasps, whittle a quill, or bribe a jailer to get that secret dispatch. 👉 Just subscribe here and the next part of this little mystery mixed with Tudor history will appear in your inbox.  No ink blots!

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