“Newly Deciphered Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots Reveal Surprising Secrets”
Researchers have cracked the code used to write a collection of “lost” letters once owned by Mary, Queen of Scots.
Written between 1578 and 1584 using an “elaborate system of encryption” involving a mixture of letters and symbols, the letters were written to and by the former Queen of Scotland (aka Mary Stuart) while she was being read by her cousin Elizabeth I from England, to a opinion (opens in new tab).
A team of international codebreakers “stumbled upon” the mysterious texts while searching the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the country’s national library in Paris, according to the statement.
“This is a really exciting discovery,” said the study’s first author George Lasry (opens in new tab), a computer scientist and cryptographer who is a member of the DECRYPT project (opens in new tab), an organization that decodes historical manuscripts, the statement said. “We have cracked secret codes of kings and queens before and they are very interesting, but with Mary, Queen of Scots it was remarkable because we were able to decipher so many unpublished letters and because she is so famous.”
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Using computer techniques as well as manually comparing text in other historical manuscripts, the researchers deciphered a total of 57 letters, 50 of which were previously unknown to historians. Researchers also successfully identified symbols that represented specific names, locations, and dates, according to a study published in the journal Feb. 7 cryptology (opens in new tab).
Stuart was imprisoned for an alleged conspiracy known as the Babington Plot to assassinate Elizabeth I. Many of Stuart’s letters were written to Michel de Castelnau de Mauvissière, the French ambassador to England who supported the Catholics over the Protestants, the statement said.
Mary used the feminine form of verbs and adverbs and is said to often mention the name “Walsingham” or Sir Francis Walsingham, who served as Queen Elizabeth I’s chief secretary.
Mary’s correspondence also included details of how her health was failing during her imprisonment, the poor living conditions in prison, and details of her ongoing negotiations with Queen Elizabeth I to secure her release, even evoking a belief that she was “not well.” were guided by faith,” the statement said.
“Together, the letters form a substantial body of new primary material on Mary Stuart – some 50,000 words in all, which shed new light on some of her years in captivity in England,” Lasry said.
The decipherment “is the most important new find about Mary, Queen of Scots in 100 years”, John Guy, author of “Queen Of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart (opens in new tab)” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004) , who was not involved in the new research, said in the statement.
In 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded for treason; she was 44 years old.
Source: www.livescience.com
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