In 1587, after enduring 19 years in prison for allegedly helping hatch a plan to assassinate her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, Mary, Queen of Scots was beheaded. She was only 44. However, despite living a life of fear and loneliness, it seems that Mary has made sure not to be silenced.
Wednesday, marking the anniversary of the execution of Maryan eclectic team of experts have announced in the UK that they have discovered more than 55 encrypted letters written by the famous royal during her captivity – 50 of which have Never been seen before.
By chance, the trio – a cryptographer, a pianist and a physicist – came across this treasure box of letters while browsing the online archives of the National Library of France in search of interesting encrypted documents.
The approximately five dozen pieces were listed as dating from the first half of the 16th century and related to Italian matters, but upon further analysis it was undeniable that they “had nothing to do with Italy” , the team said.
Some of the decoded words and phrases discovered by the team.
George Lasry, Norbert Biermann and Satoshi Tomokiyo
On the contrary, they were written in French and belonged to Marie.
Words relating to “captivity” kept coming up, for example, as did references to the name “Walsingham”, which was also the name of Elizabeth I’s spymaster. dark in a unique and private encryption system. And after thoroughly studying the secret correspondence Mary constructed with confusing symbols, signals, and line art, the crew finally cracked her code.
“It was a bit surreal,” George Lasry, lead author of a discovery study, computer scientist and cryptographer, said in a statement. “Together the letters make up a voluminous body of primary new material on Mary Stuart – some 50,000 words in total, shedding new light on some of her years in captivity in England.”
Brilliant in itself, it is also a huge deal because while historians had a strong idea that these letters existed, the actual evidence of such documents had long been considered lost to time.
“Mary, Queen of Scots left a large body of letters preserved in various archives,” Lasry said. “There was earlier evidence, however, that other letters of Mary Stuart were missing from these collections, such as those referenced in other sources but not found elsewhere.”
Bingo. The team’s freshly printed decryptions, dated between 1578 and 1584, are most likely excerpts from this secret correspondence.
A restored portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots.
Getty Images
Oh Castelnau!
An incredible walkthrough of how the team decoded the letters and a look at the intricacies they found can be seen in an article published on the proof in the journal Cryptologia. But to sum up, there were a few major topics revealed by the team’s decoding.
First, and perhaps most importantly, Mary spoke at length about her poor health due to the conditions of the prisons in which she lived. She also often asks how the negotiations with Queen Elizabeth I are going regarding her release from confinement. Although Mary was convicted in 1567 of plotting the murder of Elizabeth I, she virtually maintained her innocence – but even today historians are still unsure of the truth.
It’s probably because Mary Entire life was like a cryptogram itself, riddled with conspiracies, covert operations and mystery.
A copy of a code between Mary and Castelnau, previously found in Castelnau’s notes.
George Lasry, Norbert Biermann and Satoshi Tomokiyo
Mary was charged with her supposed crimes in confusing terms to begin with. The timeline goes back to when her second husband Henry Stuart or Lord Darnley (she didn’t really care about) was found strangled. His body had been located in a house he was staying in… which was also bombarded with barrels full of gunpowder hidden under his bedroom.
Naturally, many people thought Darnley’s death was murder. And they pointed the finger at Mary.
Next, Mary tried to enlist the support of Elizabeth I in light of these charges, which her cousin first proposed, but ultimately Elizabeth I had her imprisoned for the deed. However, as some historians claim, Elizabeth I probably imprisoned Mary not for valid reasons, but because she feared that Mary would overthrow his claim to the throne.
SOa bunch of strange documents, including letters, marriage contracts and literally sonnets, appeared in a silver box belonging to Mary after she fled Scotland. They apparently offered strong evidence that Mary wanted to kill Darnley. But what’s odd about the coffin letters is that many of the documents were produced for the court by Mary’s half-brother – and political enemy. Moreover, they were neither signed nor dated.
Yet they seemed to be handwritten by Mary. Confusing.
Going back to the team’s newly deciphered letters, some fascinatingly touch on a bunch of great moments in this saga.
A few, for example, point to Mary’s distrust of Elizabeth I’s spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham, as well as one of Elizabeth I’s close friends, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.
Specifically, Mary describes Walsingham as “cunning”, falsely offering her friendship while hiding her true intentions, the study authors write. She also strongly warns that some people working for her might be Walsingham secret agents. That last bit, according to the study authors, turned out to be correct.
And if you wonder WHO exactly Mary tells her secrets in securely encrypted memos the answer is (mostly) Michel de Castelnau de Mauvissiere, French Ambassador to England. Among 57 letters analyzed as part of the recent decryption, write the authors, 54 were addressed to Castelnau.
Needless to say, he was also a strong supporter of the captive queen.
This previously discovered cipher which decoded the message between Marie and Châteauneuf, the French ambassador to London after Castelnau, bears some similarities to the newly deciphered cipher between Marie and Castelnau.
George Lasry, Norbert Biermann and Satoshi Tomokiyo
For example, a major recurring topic, according to the study, concerns Mary’s efforts to maintain a secure communication channel with Castelnau. This confidential channel, they say, ran alongside an official channel under Walsingham’s supervision whereby, “in Mary’s own words, she would never write anything she didn’t want even her worst enemies to read. “.
And in a letter of 1583, Marie writes:
“Monsieur de Mauvissière, you have given me great pleasure in informing me fully, as you have done in your last two letters, of your steps regarding this new offer and the negotiations for my freedom… I wrote to the Queen of England as you did. advised me, and by word of mouth I have instructed Beale, as he sees fit, to convey to Burghley, Leicester and Walsingham and the other members of the Council the sincerity of my intention towards their said queen, themselves and this state.
A special graphical user interface that the team used to decrypt the found letters.
George Lasry, Norbert Biermann and Satoshi Tomokiyo
“This is the most significant new discovery about Mary Queen of Scots in 100 years,” Jon Guy, who wrote a biography of Mary Queen of Scots in 2004, said in a statement. “I always wondered if de Castelnau’s originals might one day end up buried in the National Library of France or perhaps elsewhere, unidentified because of encryption. And now they did.”
And according to Guy, those strange coffin letters? He once wrote that they were only “a solution of the enemies of Mary to destroy her, an ingenious and devious solution”.
