Security News > 2023 > February > Codebreakers decipher Mary, Queen of Scots' secret letters 436 years after her execution

A team of codebreakers discovered - and then cracked - more than 50 secret letters written by Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots while she was imprisoned in England by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I. In total, the team deciphered 57 letters penned between 1578 to 1584.

The three codebreakers - George Lasry, a computer scientist and cryptographer; Norbert Biermann, a pianist and music professor; and Satoshi Tomokiyo, a physicist and patents expert - essentially stumbled upon the letters while combing the Bibliothèque nationale de France's online archives for enciphered letters.

"We have broken secret codes from kings and queens previously, and they're very interesting but with Mary Queen of Scots it was remarkable as we had so many unpublished letters deciphered and because she is so famous," Lasry added.

The secret letters span several topics and include Mary complaining about the conditions of her captivity and feeling that France had abandoned her and her son, who was abducted by Protestant English nobles and would later become King James I. In several of the documents, she expresses animosity toward the Earl of Leicester - a favorite of Queen Elizabeth - and tells Castelnau about alleged plots against her cousin, advising him to report them to the queen without letting on that Mary was the source of the info.

"By nature, the contents of letters exchanged in cipher via a confidential channel are expected to be more revealing than the contents of official letters. However, while some of the letters were exchanged at the time of the Throckmorton Plot in 1583, even mentioning Francis Throckmorton as a trusted courier, they do not contain any details about the plot, which is only indirectly alluded to after it had been exposed, Mary deploring Throckmorton's suffering after his arrest."

The researchers suggest that future efforts to may uncover additional letters written by Mary Stuart, and cite "Evidence that some enciphered letters known to have existed are still missing." .

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/02/09/codebreakers_mary_queen_of_scots/