Mary Queen of Scots was deemed by her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, to be a threat to her sovereignty and so had her imprisoned - and eventually executed.
Secret letters written by Mary Queen of Scots while she was imprisoned by Queen Elizabeth I have been cracked by a team of codebreakers.
For centuries, the contents of the coded correspondence dating from 1578 to 1584 were believed to have been lost. Mary, who was beheaded on this day 436 years ago, used a complex cipher system to hide her messages, which the codebreakers found include musings about her time in jail, poor health and attempts to negotiate her release.Mary had already been held captive in Scotland by the time she was detained in England - her imprisonment spread across castles from Carlisle to Fotheringhay over the course of 19 years.She was jailed by Elizabeth, her cousin, because she was deemed a threat to her power.
They included complaints about her poor health and her captivity conditions, as well as her mistrust and disdain for Elizabeth's principal secretary Sir Francis Walsingham and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester.Mary was known to have communicated with allies from jail - but the range of these letters, from 1578 to 1584, suggested that they were sent earlier and later than previously thought.
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