Secret Writing and the Popish Plot: Deciphering the Shorthand of Sir George Treby

abstract:This essay examines the previously undeciphered shorthand notes of Sir George Treby, a Whig mp and lawyer and the chairman of the House of Commons Committee of Secrecy investigating the Popish Plot (1678–81). Andrea McKenzie’s exposition of how she cracked Treby’s particular system of “secret writing,” and the challenges, features, and practical principles of early modern stenography more broadly, will prove useful to other scholars attempting to decode seventeenth-century shorthand. Not least, these documents provide a fascinating snapshot of the private thoughts of one of the principal Whig opponents of Charles II and James II during two watershed moments in British history: the Exclusion Crisis and Tory Revenge.