The imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots used sophisticated ciphers as she conspired to overthrow her cousin, Elizabeth I. Long thought lost, the letters were hiding in plain sight.
Mary, Queen of Scots, was a master at sending secret messages, and codebreakers have spent centuries frustrated by her sharp ciphering skills. Whenever her surviving exchanges have been cracked, scholars thrill to the information found inside.
, says this need for secrecy grew significantly during Stuart’s lifetime, when the Protestant reformation was intensifying conflicts between the Holy Roman Empire and already hostile noble factions in Europe. Walsingham’s moles also intercepted letters written by Michel de Castelnau, France’s ambassador to England, which made repeated mention of additional secret correspondences by Mary. However, historians assumed that those clandestine letters had been so well concealed by de Castelnau that they were forever lost.Trio of codebreakers
Each time the team found another identifiable French word, they would lock it into the software program, generating a better possible key—a process known in cryptology as hill climbing. Eventually, the program stumbled upon the name Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spymaster.
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