Sovereign Spaces: Mise‐en‐page and the Politics of English Royal Correspondence in the Sixteenth Century*

Abstract

AbstractThe layout of inter‐princely correspondence is an important, but overlooked, aspect of how early modern princes communicated and contested their relative status. While recent scholarship on material letters has illuminated social relations within European polities, the ways in which the mise‐en‐page of royal letters can be used to explore the relationships between rulers has been neglected. Focusing primarily on letters written to or by English monarchs of the sixteenth century, this article analyses the space on the page in order to demonstrate the way in which epistolary etiquette expressed hierarchies and could be used to claim status.