This love letter is on several sites online--and I doubt there's a copyright problem.

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy reading Henry in a warm moment to Anne Boleyn:

"Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn

[ 1533 ]


Myne awne Sweetheart, this shall be to advertise you of the great ellingness1 that I find here since your departing, for I ensure you, me thinketh the Tyme longer since your departing now last than I was wont to do a whole Fortnight; I think your Kindness and my Fervence of Love causeth it, for otherwise I wolde not thought it possible, that for so little a while it should have grieved me, but now that I am comeing toward you, me thinketh my Pains by half released, and also I am right well comforted, insomuch that my Book maketh substantially for my Matter, in writing where of I have spent above IIII Hours this Day, which caused me now to write the shorter Letter to you at this Tyme, because some Payne in my Head, wishing my self (specially an Evening) in my Sweethearts Armes whose pritty Duckys2 I trust shortly to kysse. Writne with the Hand of him that was, is, and shall be yours by his will,
H. R.



1 Loneliness
2 Breasts
"

>whose pritty Duckys2 I trust shortly to kysse<

Ahhhh, I love this line.....how quaint!

Well, I suppose it's better than saying that he wanted to kiss her head while it was still attached to her body. Which it wasn't for very much longer.

- Pfranz

>because some Payne in my Head<

Some subconscious empathetic guilt-tripping , no doubt.

Brings to mind the impeccable film, The Lion In Winter, (Peter O'Toole, Katherine Hepburn), which I just recently saw again on a classic movie channel....if you haven't seen this one, folks, don't deprive yourself...rent it, buy it, see it soon!

Having found a need to question some of my own assumptions from time to time, I would ask: is this letter authentic? Simply being on several sites on the net doesn't make it so.

Snopes.com says as follows:

Claim: The Vatican houses the world's largest collection of pornography.

Status: False.

Origins: Although this rumor dates back hundreds of years, there's nothing to it....

Though the rumor about the Holy See's holdings is unfounded, it continues to spread, often vectored by those one would think would know better...

Father Leonard Boyle, chief librarian for the Vatican Library until his retirement in 1998, stoutly denies the rumor. The Vatican Library houses some 1.5 million scholarly books and 150,000 precious manuscripts, including ... correspondence between Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

(Do you s'pose the aforementioned Letter would be considered "pornographic" or not?)

RE:Claim: The Vatican houses the world's largest collection of pornography

Still, when my son had a free web page of erotica (he used to provide an indexed archive to the erotica.alt group)he was regually visited by someone who had a Vatican email address.(just like US government has GOV, and other counties have there own dot extentions, the vatican is .VAC-and recognizable.--he had and aplication that captured and stored the name of everyone who visited his page.

...an application that captured and stored the name of everyone who visited his page.`

Well, the IP address of the *originating server, at most.

----------

Wordwind - I know why Duckys would be capitalized but why all the rest... such as 'Tyme', 'Payne", 'Matter' and 'Book' etc?

A) If he was from the Vatican and they have this humungo collection of porn, why did he need to go somewhere else?

2) We used to capitalize any noun that wasn't tied down. Germans still do.

capitilization by proxy

Try perusing some William Blake, moose, or other poets of that period, and you'll see arbitrary capitilization with no rhyme or reason (is that a redundancy?). Anyway, I've been a Blake devotée for years, and I could never figure it out or find any citations to clear up the reason for it. I know it's derived from the Middle English forms. How long did this proxy capitilization continue? Was there a grammatical precedent for capitilizing some nouns and not others? Was there, at some point, some orthographic decree that put an end to the practice in English completely and immediately?...tsuwm? Bingley?

By about 1600, though, it had become the norm in English to capitalize the first word of a sentence. In other respects, though, English documents of the 16th and 17th centuries differ strongly from our own practice, with erratic and typically effusive capitalization: writers felt free to capitalize any word they felt like capitalizing. Even in the early 18th century, we find such a distinguished writer as Jonathan Swift capitalizing every single noun -- a practice which is still normal in written German today.

By about the middle of the 18th century, capitalization practice had largely settled down to approximately the norms we follow today.

http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-most-recent/msg03087.html


[ In America a movement against this use of capitals appeared during the latter part of the eighteenth century. In Jefferson’s first draft of the Declaration of Independence nature and creator, and even god are in lower case. During the 20’s and 30’s of the succeeding century, probably as a result of French influence, the movement against the capitals went so far that the days of the week were often spelled with small initial letters, and even Mr. became mr. Curiously enough, the most striking exhibition of this tendency of late years is offered by an English work of the highest scholarship, the Cambridge History of English Literature. It uses the lower case for all titles, even baron and colonel before proper names, and also avoids capitals in such words as presbyterian, catholic and christian, and in the second parts of such terms as Westminster abbey and Atlantic ocean.] H.L. Mencken, The American Language

Thanks, tsuwm, for the enlightening citations...knew you'd come through.

So, then according to the Mencken piece, capitilization didn't steady it's course to what it is today, until perhaps the 1930's, having even swung far into a strong non-capitilization movement first? And, that being so recent, can it then be said that the process of English capitalization is still in gestation today (I never though of *grammar as being so fluid...i.e. descriptive grammar)aside from the established convention of the word at the beginning of a sentence? I always surmised grammar to be something more concrete, with, perhaps, consensual scholalry changes from era to era.

>So, then according to the Mencken piece, capitilization didn't steady it's course to what it is today, until perhaps the 1930's,

make that the 1830's (HLM wrote his tome in 1921).

never though of *grammar as being so fluid...i.e. descriptive grammar

Even prescriptive grammar has had its fads and fancies. I could dig some up but it'd take me a bit.

I've been trying to nail down a revised contract with a major client of ours for the past 18 months.

In one small aspect their latest revision of the draft annoyed me - where I'd written "...the Supplier's Engineer or Technician...", they'd replaced the capital T in Technician for a lower case t.

Petty, and in my politically correct world, arrogant and unnecessary.

stales

From tsuwm's link: these were the ancestors of our smalls.

Never really thought of my smalls having ancestors.

Bingley

In reply to:

---

writers felt free to capitalize any word they felt like capitalizing

---

Or inserting Apostrophes wherever They wished?

Or hyphens, even?

Or, commas!!!

Almost makes you feel naughty like running around without knickers, doesn't it?

Depends whether your knickers have ancestors, I suppose.

Bingley

What just went by right over my head? Anyone know?

Prolly your knickers. You can have 'em back for five nicker.

- Pfranz

Don't need 'em, thanks anyway

smalls, is an other word for garments like knickers, or unmentionables,-- or panties, jockey shorts, boxers, or whatever other name is used for undergarments. (i think smalls might be more general,and like unmentionables, could include garments like bra's or camisoles.. but that is my read.)

now My Dear Mr Bingleys comments about smalls having ancestors has a slightly different read!

Capfka: Prolly your knickers. You can have 'em back for five nicker.

consuelo: Don't need 'em, thanks anyway

All mouth and no knickers?


Bingley

If he was from the Vatican and they have this humungo collection of porn, why did he need to go somewhere else?

La variété c'est l'épice de la vie.