Natasha Clarke
Technology

Unlikely trio decodes Mary Queen of Scots' secret letters

An international trio of codebreakers have made history by decoding and deciphering a treasure trove of lost letters written by none other than Mary Queen of Scots.

The unlikely team - consisting of a computer scientist, a physicist, and a musician - have a passion for historical ciphers and have been working together for 10 years.

The letters were assumed lost until they were discovered in Paris, in the National Library of France. The documents and their unusual symbols had been neglected in a mislabelled folder until the trio got to the bottom of them and revealed their true origin. It was only when the code had been broken that it was possible to identify the author as Mary.

George Lasry, the team’s computer scientist and cryptographer, is a member of the DECRYPT Project - an organisation with the aim of digitising, transcribing, and identifying historical ciphers.

It didn’t take long for the team to realise the letters were written in French, not Italian, once they began working on the unique ciphers. They noted the use of feminine form verbs and adverbs, and mentions of captivity, as well as one codebreaking keyboard: Walsingham.

“We were expecting Italian because that is what the catalogue said, but then we started to see some French words - 'ma liberté' (my freedom) - and sentences no-one would write if they were free," Lasry explained to Good Morning Scotland.

“So we knew it was someone in captivity, and some of the language was in feminine form, so it was a woman,” he went on. “She also wrote 'mon fils' - my son - so it was a woman in captivity with a son.

"We thought 'this is too crazy', it can't be Mary Stuart. But then we saw the word 'Walsingham' and we knew Francis Walsingham was the spymaster of Queen Elizabeth I, so we concluded it was from Mary.

"It was very difficult to believe at the start so it was a very exciting moment."

Mary, who spent the last 19 years of her life in English captivity, was able to smuggle her letters out via trusted visiting courtiers. Said letters, amounting to around 50,000 words in total, have offered new insight into Mary’s time in captivity.

"We have cracked more difficult codes, and we have deciphered an occasional letter from a king or queen, but nothing compared to 50 new letters from one of the most famous historical figures,” Lasry said of their historic accomplishment.

While it is believed that other letters may still be hiding out there for the next team of enthusiastic researchers to discover, this batch is set to keep historians and researchers busy for some time yet.

“In our paper, we only provide an initial interpretation and summaries of the letters," Lasry explained, “a deeper analysis by historians could result in a better understanding of Mary's years in captivity.

"It would also be great, potentially, to work with historians to produce an edited book of her letters deciphered, annotated, and translated."

Images: Getty

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Mary Queen of Scots, letters, technology