Queen Elizabeth arriving at Kenilworth Castle in 1575.
The Langham Letter is a brilliant tour de force which describes Leicester's entertainment of Queen Elizabeth at Kenilworth in the summer of 1575. Its purported author is a bumptious court official, one 'Robert Langham or Lanham'. However, scholarly consensus now rejects the notion that the Letter was written by the fictitious Langham. Penny McCarthy, in Pseudonymous Shakespeare, has recently proposed Shakespeare as the author. In fact, the vocabulary of the Langham Letter is indistinguishable from Shakespeare’s, as has been established in a comparison of the Letter’s vocabulary to over 2100 lines from Shakespeare’s plays, in each of which a vocabulary word used in the Letter is used in the same sense, and as the same part of speech, as it is used in Shakespeare’s plays.
Click here for documents related to Humphrey Martyn, the real-life addressee of the Langham Letter. For a discussion of Oxford's authorship of the Langham Letter, see issues of the Edward De Vere Newsletter on this website.
DOCUMENTS RELATED TO THE LANGHAM LETTER
1500
Last will and testament, dated 13 June 1500, of Richard Martyn of Long Melford, paternal great-grandfather of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1516
Last will and testament, dated 14 November 1516, of Lawrence Martyn (d.1518) of Long Melford, paternal grandfather of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1535
Last will and testament, dated 20 April 1535, of Roger Martyn of Long Melford, paternal great-uncle of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
Last will and testament, dated 23 November 1535, of Robert Pakington, maternal great-uncle of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1536
Last will and testament, dated 29 April 1536, of Richard Patten, father of William Patten, who was responsible for the private printing and distribution of copies of the Langham Letter
1551
Nuncupative last will and testament, dated 11 July 1551, of Thomas Knolles, first husband of Elizabeth Martyn, the stepmother of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
Last will and testament, dated 16 August 1551, of Sir John Pakington, maternal great-uncle of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1555
Last will and testament, dated 14 September 1555, of Humphrey Pakington, maternal grandfather of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1558
Last will and testament, dated 25 December 1558, of Humphrey Pakington, brother of Lettice (nee Pakington) Martyn, mother of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1562
Last will and testament, dated 24 May 1562, of Katherine, Lady Dormer, second wife of Robert Pakington, maternal great-uncle of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1563
Last will and testament, dated 29 March 1563, of Dame Blanche Forman, whose niece, Blanche Watson, stepsister of the poet, Thomas Watson, was the second wife of John Lambert, uncle of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
Last will and testament, dated 26 April 1563, of Dame Anne Pakington, maternal great-aunt of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
Last will and testament, dated 25 August 1563, of Elizabeth Pakington, maternal grandmother of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1567
Last will and testament, dated 31 March 1567, of Richard Lambert, uncle of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1570
Last will and testament, dated 11 September 1570, of Sir Richard Newport, owner of a copy of Hall's Chronicle containing annotations thought to be by Shakespeare, and uncle of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1571
Last will and testament, dated 31 May 1571, of Sir Thomas Pakington, first cousin of Lettice (nee Pakington) Martyn, the mother of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1573
Last will and testament, dated 8 September 1573, of Sir Roger Martyn, father of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1577
Last will and testament, dated 30 April 1577, of Dorothy (nee Kitson) Pakington, wife of Sir Thomas Pakington, first cousin of Lettice (nee Pakington) Martyn, the mother of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1580
Last will and testament, dated 3 March 1580, of John Lambert, uncle of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter, which includes bequests to Humphrey Martyn and his brother, Edmund
1581
Last will and testament, dated 6 October 1581, of Elizabeth Martyn (d.1583), stepmother of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter
1596
Last will and testament, dated 13 June 1596, of Edmund Martyn, brother of Humphrey Martyn, addressee of the Langham Letter