Codebreakers crack secrets of Mary Queen of Scots’ lost letters more than 430 years after she wrote them in captivity
- last year
odebreakers have cracked the secrets of Mary Queen of Scots’ lost letters more than 430 years after she wrote them in captivity.
The content of the coded letters, penned by Mary while she was imprisoned by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I and believed for centuries to have been lost, were uncovered by an international team after they found them in a French library.
Using computerised and manual techniques, the research team decoded the letters which show the challenges Mary faced maintaining links with the outside world, how the letters were carried and by whom.
Key themes referred to in Mary’s correspondence include complaints about her poor health and conditions in captivity, and her negotiations with Queen Elizabeth I for her release, which she believes were not conducted in good faith.
Her mistrust of Elizabeth’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham is also apparent, as well as her animosity for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and a favourite of Elizabeth.
Mary also expresses her distress when her son James - the future King James I of England - is abducted in August 1582, and her feeling they have been abandoned by France.
George Lasry, a computer scientist and cryptographer, Norbert Biermann, a pianist and music Professor, and Satoshi Tomokiyo who is a physicist and patents expert, stumbled upon them while searching the national library of France’s – Bibliothèque nationale de France’s (BnF) – online archives for enciphered documents.
The content of the coded letters, penned by Mary while she was imprisoned by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I and believed for centuries to have been lost, were uncovered by an international team after they found them in a French library.
Using computerised and manual techniques, the research team decoded the letters which show the challenges Mary faced maintaining links with the outside world, how the letters were carried and by whom.
Key themes referred to in Mary’s correspondence include complaints about her poor health and conditions in captivity, and her negotiations with Queen Elizabeth I for her release, which she believes were not conducted in good faith.
Her mistrust of Elizabeth’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham is also apparent, as well as her animosity for Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and a favourite of Elizabeth.
Mary also expresses her distress when her son James - the future King James I of England - is abducted in August 1582, and her feeling they have been abandoned by France.
George Lasry, a computer scientist and cryptographer, Norbert Biermann, a pianist and music Professor, and Satoshi Tomokiyo who is a physicist and patents expert, stumbled upon them while searching the national library of France’s – Bibliothèque nationale de France’s (BnF) – online archives for enciphered documents.