Scientists decipher letters of Queen Mary Stuart of Scots: they will help to better understand the events of 500 years ago

For a long time, 57 letters written by Queen Mary of Scots were a mystery. It had to be solved, as the correspondence of the contender for the English throne, who dared to challenge the almighty Elizabeth Tudor, was clearly interesting.

This is reported by NV.ua.

The researchers gained access to the letters of the Scottish Queen Mary Stuart, which were stored in the National Library of Great Britain. The letters were written in 1578-1584, shortly before the queen's execution in 1587.

Mary Stuart was convicted of participating in a conspiracy of assassination of Queen Elizabeth I, as she was a cousin of hers. The letters consisted of 50,000 words and 50 previously unknown fonts used by the queen to communicate with her addressees.

The scientists managed to crack the font using a special cryptographic method.

"We start with a random key, decrypt the text using that key, make small changes to the key, and decrypt again," said George Lasry, a computer scientist and member of the DECRYPT project who conducted the work.

Scientists found the encrypted documents in the library. The letters were dated to the 16th century, but it was unknown who the author was and to whom they were intended.

The first clue was the discovery of the name "Walsingham" in the text. Francis Walsingham was the chief secretary to Elizabeth I, and this led researchers to believe that the letters were written by Mary Stuart.

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The team deciphered the text in full and found that Maria Stewart wrote to the French ambassador Michel de Castelnau most often. She warned him that Walsingham could not be trusted.

Some of the letters described events related to William Ruthven's raid. He conspired with several Presbyterian nobles to kidnap Mary's only son, the future King James I of Scotland and England. In her letters, the queen asked the French to save him and was angry at their slowness.

As a reminder, scientists found out that the Maya had a very high level of dentistry.

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