Mary Queen of Scots: Secret letters written during imprisonment decoded

Secret letters written in code by Mary, Queen of Scots, during her imprisonment in England have been uncovered and decoded by a team of cryptographers. The documents, which were believed to have been lost, were found in the National Library of France in Paris. They were written to her supporters while she was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th Century.

Experts said the codebreakers’ work on the 57 letters was the most significant discovery about Mary for 100 years. They had been wrongly catalogued in the library, and only when the code was broken was it possible to identify Mary as the author. Working through a complex pattern of symbols in the letters, they revealed Mary’s complaints about the conditions of her detention, her feelings of abandonment by France and attempts to broker her release.

The letters date from 1578 to 1584, a few years before Mary’s beheading 436 years ago – on 8 February 1587.

Full story: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-64568222