Decoding Mary Queen of Scots

Today is the 436th of the beheading of Mary Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587. For that reason it has been selected as the day for the release of an important new cache of her letters which she wrote in code to the French Ambassador to England between 1578 and 1584 and which have only now been decoded using modern computer technology. The originals survive in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, where their identity and significance had been entirely missed.

As the lead investigator states there is a need to fully edit the letters with historians so as to extract their full value for understanding the life of the Queen in these years of detention and disappointment.

John Guy, whose really excellent biography of Queen Mary My Heart is My Own I wholeheartedly recommend, is quoted as being delighted about the identification and decoding, and he stresses its importance as the most importanf addition to studies of her life for a century. He is acknowledged as an academic who has toiled through the surviving material to reconstruct not only the Quern’s life but the complex discussions about her claim to the English succession and the politicking around that in England. From what he is reported as saying about this new series of letters they reveal more of that and, importantly, that they reveal more of what the Scottish Queen knew and understood about her English rival’s court politics in these years.

The work of decoding the letters is reported upon by the BBC News website at Mary Queen of Scots' secret prison letters decoded and by The Independent at Secret messages from Mary Queen of Scots’ prison letters finally decoded

There is more detail and interpretation in pieces from Sky News at Codebreakers uncover secrets of lost letters Mary Queen of Scots wrote from jail, from arstechnica at Lost and found: Codebreakers decipher 50+ letters of Mary, Queen of Scots and from EurekAlert at Codebreakers crack secrets of Mary Queen of Scots’ lost letters. That is a summary from the publishers of the academic article. 

That full article about the research can be accessed from Cryptologia at Deciphering Mary Stuart’s lost letters from 1578-1584