The years 1590 to 1596, the timespan covered by this study, denote the time that elapsed between Francis Walsingham's death and Robert Cecil's occupation of the role of principal secretary. In this monograph, Angela Andreani details this six-year vacancy in order to assess the intricacies of the role and the offices that the principal secretary oversaw, asserting that ‘writing practices in the Elizabethan state cannot be fully understood without a knowledge of the writing practices in the offices of the secretariat’ (14). These offices are configured by Andreani as the pair ‘secretary-signet’ (6), and operated as the hub of production for royal warrants and documents. Andreani's work contributes to a scholarly tradition that spans not only early twentieth-century work on the office of principal secretary by scholars such as Florence M. Greir Evans and Conyers Read, but also more recent research conducted by Steven May, Paul E. J. Hammer and Jeffrey F. Platt. Both a product of and a response to the ‘material turn’, her research also builds on the approaches of Rayne Allinson, James Daybell and Alan Stewart to expand the understanding of clerks in the employ of these two offices as beyond ‘mere penmen’ (188).

Grounded in a survey of documents in the State Papers and the Cecil Papers, Andreani's study insists on the importance of both personnel and practices, and presents a meritocratic view of these offices, in which the hierarchical order ‘seems not to have been established on the formality of title or office, but on the practical aspects of work: the extent of individuals' hands on paper; the variety of tasks performed, as amanuenses, readers, messengers, instructors’ (178). Andreani suggests that their operations during the vacancy reveal ‘a number of patterns inscribed in the history of English administration’ and that ‘although they might have been unofficial or semi-formal, such arrangements were grounded in practice’ (189). These patterns could perhaps be used to indicate stability, but Andreani emphasises their potential to be read as a ‘worrying vacuum’ (190). In the absence of the principal secretary, the offices made ‘special arrangements’ (177), which Andreani both assesses on their own terms, and uses to measure the distance from the quotidian practices inscribed in the offices prior to 1590. In doing so, she presents a compelling assessment of the progressively more autonomous role of the signet office from the principal secretary, to becoming a unit which in this time ‘could be activated directly by the monarch’ (6).

Building on her earlier work on diplomatic letters at court, Andreani traces the work of those ‘appointed to pen, copy, engross, store, and seal the royal correspondence’ (9). Chapter One deals with the structure of the staffing of the Elizabethan secretariat and signet office, and argues for an appreciation of both the people and the papers themselves as ‘instruments of governance’ (25). Chapter Two contains detailed information on the corpus of the State Papers and the Cecil Papers, demonstrating comprehensive knowledge of the material; Chapter Three further details the processes of record-keeping in the offices, detailing how the production of warrants made these roles performatively central to the judicial system. By outlining the implications of legislation, such as the Parliament of the Clerks of the Signet and Privy Seal Act of 1535/6, Andreani situates them within the judicial framework of the administration in order to show the far-ranging impact of their work. Chapter Four uses ephemera from the in-house correspondence of the secretariat to reconstruct the order of procedures relating to document creation, complementing the recent work of Mel Evans on collaborative authorship in the secretariat, by providing a similar analysis for the signet office. This chapter follows the movements and contributions of key personnel, such as Nicholas Faunt, Thomas Lake and Thomas Windebank, but also elaborates on how the competing forces of patronage that influenced the administration, including the individual secretariats of William Cecil, Lord Burghley and Robert Devereux, Second Earl of Essex, were fundamental to the network of the secretariat and are visible within the papers.

Figures in this book will be particularly useful for scholars wishing to conduct further research within these archives, not least with a series of tables, so thoughtfully and meticulously compiled that they will function as a scholarly resource in their own right. These tables demonstrate significant information to be used with both content-based and material concerns. For example, Table 2.5 presents ‘The watermarks of the Cecil Papers corpus’ (96), using the Thomas L. Gravell Watermark Archive and Les Filigranes, familiar to those studying watermarks, to classify documents and generate correlation statistics that could be used to trace networks. Table 2.2 depicts ‘Connections between archives’ (77), of documents that exist in multiple copies, and is a useful guide for anyone hoping to compile similar data as this provides a model which could be applied to research on individuals and indeed, single documents that exist in different iterations and invite comparison.

Andreani demonstrates masterful knowledge of the material and uses it to highlight the prominence of the signet office alongside the adjacent secretariat, stating that ‘as the inner core of the administration and as a system that changed in personnel but not in essence, the royal secretariat is a central component of Elizabethan politics, writing, and culture’ (16). Using Andreani's method, any single document in the State Papers or Cecil Papers can be read not only as a site of collaborative authorship, but also as a locus of Elizabethan bureaucratic processes. Future work on these fields will no doubt look to Andreani as a crucial guide to the operations of the state. This work will be of great use not only to scholars of these archives and the secretariat, but also to researchers of early modern espionage who may understand how it functioned in an administrative capacity. Indeed, it invites future work on secrecy, intelligence and literary culture to be similarly grounded in consideration of material documents. This volume, which emphasises the importance of the minutiae of secretarial practices, is therefore an indispensable volume in its own right and also a basis for further illuminating research.

本研究涵盖的时间跨度 1590 年至 1596 年表示弗朗西斯·沃尔辛厄姆 (Francis Walsingham) 去世和罗伯特·塞西尔 (Robert Cecil) 担任首席秘书一职之间所经过的时间。在这本专着中，安吉拉·安德烈亚尼 (Angela Andreani) 详细介绍了这一六年的空缺，以评估首席秘书所监管的角色和办公室的复杂性，并断言“如果不了解写作实践，就无法完全理解伊丽莎白时代的写作实践”在秘书处办公室'（14）。这些办公室由 Andreani 配置为一对“秘书图章”（6），并作为皇家授权书和文件的制作中心运作。Andreani 的工作为学术传统做出了贡献，该传统不仅涵盖了 20 世纪早期由佛罗伦萨 M. Greir Evans 和 Conyers Read，以及 Steven May、Paul EJ Hammer 和 Jeffrey F. Platt 最近进行的研究。作为“物质转向”的产物和回应，她的研究还建立在 Rayne Allinson、James Daybell 和 Alan Stewart 的方法的基础上，以扩展对受雇于这两个办公室的文员的理解，而不是“纯粹的笔工”（ 188）。

安德里亚尼的研究以国家文件和塞西尔文件中的文件调查为基础，坚持人事和实践的重要性，并提出了对这些办公室的任人唯贤的观点，其中等级秩序“似乎没有建立在头衔或职位的形式，但在工作的实际方面：个人的手在纸上的程度；执行的各种任务，如 amanuenses、读者、信使、教师（178）。Andreani 认为，他们在空缺期间的运作揭示了“英国行政史上铭刻的许多模式”，并且“尽管它们可能是非官方的或半正式的，但这种安排是基于实践的”（189）。这些模式或许可以用来表示稳定性，但 Andreani 强调它们可能被解读为“令人担忧的真空”（190）。在首席秘书缺席的情况下，办公室做出了“特殊安排”（177），安德烈亚尼都根据自己的条件进行评估，并用它来衡量与 1590 年之前办公室内的日常做法的距离。这样做时，她对印章办公室从首席秘书到成为一个“可以直接由君主直接启动”的单位的逐渐更加自主的角色进行了令人信服的评估（6）。

安德里亚尼在她早期的宫廷外交信件工作的基础上，追溯了那些“被任命为写字、复印、全神贯注、储存和盖章皇家信函”的人的工作（9）。第一章涉及伊丽莎白时代秘书处和印章办公室的人员结构，并主张将人民和文件本身视为“治理工具”（25）。第二章详细介绍了国家论文和塞西尔论文的语料库，展示了对材料的全面了解；第三章进一步详述了办公室的记录保存过程，详细说明了逮捕令的产生如何使这些角色成为司法系统的执行中心。通过概述立法的影响，例如 1535/6 年签署的议会书记员和枢密章法，Andreani 将他们置于政府的司法框架内，以展示他们工作的广泛影响。第四章使用秘书处内部信件中的蜉蝣来重建与文件创建相关的程序顺序，通过为印章办公室提供类似的分析，补充了梅尔埃文斯最近在秘书处合作署名方面的工作。本章讲述了尼古拉斯·法特 (Nicholas Faunt)、托马斯·莱克 (Thomas Lake) 和托马斯·温德班克 (Thomas Windebank) 等关键人员的动向和贡献，但也阐述了影响政府的赞助竞争力量，包括威廉·塞西尔 (William Cecil)、伯格利勋爵 (Lord Burghley) 和罗伯特·德弗罗 (Robert Devereux) 的各个秘书处, 第二埃塞克斯伯爵, 是秘书处网络的基础，在论文中可见。

本书中的数字对于希望在这些档案中进行进一步研究的学者特别有用，尤其是一系列表格，这些表格经过精心编制，可以作为学术资源发挥作用​​。这些表格展示了可用于基于内容和材料问题的重要信息。例如，表 2.5 展示了“The watermarks of the Cecil Papers corpus”（96），使用的是Thomas L. Gravell Watermark Archive和Les Filigranes，对于那些研究水印的人来说很熟悉，可以对文档进行分类并生成可用于跟踪网络的相关统计数据。表 2.2 描述了存在多个副本的文档的“档案之间的联系”（77），对于希望编译类似数据的任何人来说都是一个有用的指南，因为它提供了一个模型，可以应用于个人研究，实际上，单个文档存在于不同的迭代中并邀请比较。

安德里亚尼展示了对材料的精湛知识，并用它来突出毗邻秘书处旁边的印章办公室的突出地位，并指出“作为行政的核心和人事变化但本质上没有变化的系统，皇家秘书处是伊丽莎白时代政治、写作和文化的核心组成部分”（16）。使用 Andreani 的方法，State Papers 或 Cecil Papers 中的任何单个文件不仅可以作为合作作者的网站，而且可以作为伊丽莎白时代官僚程序的场所。毫无疑问，这些领域的未来工作将把安德里亚尼视为国家运作的重要指南。这项工作不仅对这些档案馆的学者和秘书处有很大用处，但也适用于早期现代间谍活动的研究人员，他们可能了解它是如何以行政身份运作的。事实上，它邀请未来关于保密、情报和文学文化的工作以同样的方式建立在考虑物质文件的基础上。这本书强调了秘书实践细节的重要性，因此它本身就是一本不可或缺的书，也是进一步启发研究的基础。