本帖最后由 choi 于 4-7-2025 15:23 编辑
(1) Allan Massie, She Wanted to Break Free; Newsly decoded ncorrespondence reveals that Mary, Queen of Scots, was involved in various plots to free her from jer English imprisonment. Wa;; Street Journal, Apr 3, 2025, at page A15
(book review on Jade Scott, Captive Queen; The decrypted history of Mary, Queen of Scots. Pegasus, Oct 24, 2024)
Quote: "Mary was tried, found guilty * * * and sentenced to death. [Queen[ Elizabeth, reluctant to execute an anointed queen, asked Mary's jailer Amyas Paulet to dispose her quietly. Paulet indigently refused. At last Elizabeth signed the death warrantthat ad been in her nightmares for years; it [warrant] was quickly whisked away before she could change her mind.
My comment: This book is about the HISTORY of Mary, from the viewpoint of "decrypted history." The review itself says little about the decrypted letters. Hence there is no need to read the book review.
(2) Ashley Strickland, Codebreakers Find and Decode Lost Letters of Mary, Queen of Scots. CNN, Feb 7, 2023.
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/ ... ters-scn/index.html
Quote:
(a) "The 57 secret letters [that are reported to be decoded], from Mary Stuart to the French ambassador to England between 1578 and 1584 [judging from the years, which were remote from excution, the letters had nothing with the execution -- not to mention that Queen Elizabeth I was unaware of existence of most of the 57 (except those letters also found in England)/ As )1) states above, these letters at most sought freedom], were written in an elaborate code. The findings come 436 years after Mary's death by execution on February 8, 1587.
"Most of the letters were kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, mainly in a large set of unmarked documents that were also written in cipher — special graphical symbols. The documents were listed as dating from the first half of the 16th century and thought to be related to Italy.
"Then, a trio passionate about cracking historical ciphers stumbled upon the documents.
"George Lasry, a computer scientist and cryptographer from France; Norbert Biermann, a pianist and music professor from Germany; and The 57 secret letters, from Mary Stuart to the French ambassador to England between 1578 and 1584, were written in an elaborate code. The findings come 436 years after Mary’s death by execution on February 8, 1587.
Most of the letters were kept in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, mainly in a large set of unmarked documents that were also written in cipher — special graphical symbols. The documents were listed as dating from the first half of the 16th century and thought to be related to Italy.
"Then, a trio passionate about cracking historical ciphers stumbled upon the documents.
"George Lasry, a computer scientist and cryptographer from France; Norbert Biermann, a pianist and music professor from Germany; and Satoshi Tomokiyo a physicist and patents expert from Japan, all worked together to find the truth behind the documents a physicist and patents expert from Japan, all worked together to find the truth behind the documents.
(b) "Once the researchers began working through the unique ciphers, they quickly realized the correspondence was written using French, and there was nothing Italian about it.
"The team spied verbs and adverbs that used a feminine form, mentions of captivity — and a keyword: Walsingham. Sir Francis Walsingham was Queen Elizabeth I's secretary and spymaster. Together, all signs pointed to the fact that the team may have found letters of Mary Stuart thought lost for centuries.
"The results were published Tuesday in the journal Cryptologia."
(c) "[The finding of this paper in Cryptologia:] The ciphers were homophonic, meaning each letter of the alphabet could be encoded using several cipher symbols, according to the researchers. This practice ensured that certain symbols weren’t used too frequently. The text also included dedicated symbols to signify common places, words and names.
Note:
(a) Satoshi TOMOKIYO 友清 理士 (1967- ; male; ja.wikipedia.org says he is a nostorian and translater, without mention of decoding)
(b) The verb decipher in Japanese: 暗号解読.
(c) There is no need to read the rest of this CNN report. But do view a table of codes with black codes and pink (deciphered) letters on grayish background. The top French word "prochaine" is feminine form of adjective masculine prochain meaning "upcoming."
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prochain
(3) The direct cause of Mary's execution was Babington Plot
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babington_Plot
("The chief conspirators were Anthony Babington and John Ballard. Babington, a young recusant, was recruited by Ballard, a Jesuit priest who hoped to rescue the Scottish queen. * * * On 7 July 1586, the only Babington letter that was sent to Mary was decoded by [Thomas] Phelippes[, Francis Walsingham's decoder]. Mary responded in code on 17 July 1586 ordering the would-be rescuers to assassinate Queen Elizabeth")
(4) George Lasry, Norbert Biermann, & Satoshi Tomokiyo, Deciphering Mary Stuart's Lost Letters from 1578-1584. Cryptologia, 47: 101 (online publication Feb 8, 2023; in print Mar 4, 2023)
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ ... 611194.2022.2160677
Note:
(a) "In Under the Molehill – an Elizabethan Spy Story, John Bossy writes that a secret correspondence with her associates and allies, prior to its compromise in mid-1583 * * * To our great surprise, those letters turned out to be from Mary Stuart, from 1578 to 1584, addressed mostly to Michel de Castelnau, seigneur de La Mauvissière, the French ambassador in London between 1575 and 1585. We also found in British Archives [official name: The National Archives] plaintext copies of seven of those deciphered letters, from 1583 to 1584, which were apparently leaked to Francis Walsingham * * * In the BnF catalog, the ciphertext documents are merely listed as 'Pièce en chiffre' or 'dépêches chiffrées' * * * In 1558, she married the Dauphin Francis, who succeeded to the French throne in 1559 [as Francis II, who died a year later in 1560] * * * [as mother of French kings Francis II and his younger brothers Charles IX and Henry III,] Catherine de' Medici was her [Mary Stuart's] mother-in-law."
(i) John Bossy, Under the Molehill – an Elizabethan Spy Story. Yale University Press, 2002.
(ii)
(A) Michel de Castelnau
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_de_Castelnau
("Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de la Mauvissière")
(B) French-English dictionary:
* sieur (noun masculine; from the oblique case of Old French [noun masculine] sire, from Latin [adjective masculine or feminine] senior older, elder (whence also [Modern French noun masculine] seigneur [lord], from the accusative form [of Latin adjective senior]), from [adjective masculine or feminine] senex old): "sir"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sieur
* pièce (noun feminine): "piece"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pièce
^ Modern English noun piece and Modern French noun feminine pièce share the same ancestor of Old French noun feminine piece meaning piece.
* chiffre (noun masculine; plural chiffres): "cipher (code)"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chiffre
^ This word and English noun zero share the same Arabic ancestor. (The English noun cipher is a dated noun for zero.)
* dépêche (noun feminine; plural dépêches): "dispatch (express private message)"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dépêche
* chiffré (feminine chiffrée, masculine plural chiffrés, feminine plural chiffrées): "masculine past participle of verb chiffrer [to encrypt]"
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/chiffré
(C) plaintext
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaintext
(b) "Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley [of Scotland] in 1565, but by the time she gave birth to a son, future James VI, in 1566, she had been disillusioned with Darnley. Her third marriage with the Earl of Bothwell, too soon after the extraordinary death of Darnley, alienated the Scottish people because Bothwell was suspected by many to have been involved in his murder. Protestant nobles turned against Mary and imprisoned her in Lochleven, a castle on an island in the middle of a lake, where she was forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son in 1567. * * * Descended from Henry VIII’s sister, Mary had a claim to the English throne, and there were many Catholics who believed that Elizabeth was an illegitimate queen, because, in their eyes, Henry VIII's divorce of Catherine of Aragon and his marriage with Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s mother, were void, and Mary was the rightful queen of England.
(i)
(A) Lochleven Castle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lochleven_Castle
("Mary, Queen of Scots, was imprisoned there in 1567–68, and forced to abdicate as queen, before escaping with the help of her gaoler's family [gaol is anther spelling of jail; the jailer who assisted Mary's scape was George Douglas]. In 1588, the queen's gaoler inherited the title of Earl of Morton [that was William Douglas as6th Earl of Morton, whose estate was elsewhere; before 1588, this Willaim Douglas was an aristocrat without title], and moved away from the castle")
, which at the time of Mary's escape was not a ruin.
(B) William Douglas, 6th Earl of Morton
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Douglas,_6th_Earl_of_Morton
( (c 1540 [year of birth] – 1606); "Mary chose to escape on 2 May 1568 from Lochleven with the aid of Sir William's brother George")
(ii)
(A) Henry VIII's father was Henry VII of England
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_VII_of_England
(table Issue: Margaret was older sister of Henry VIII)
(B) Margaret Tudor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Tudor
(1489 – 1541; "was Queen of Scotland from 1503 until 1513 by marriage to King James IV")
(iii) Treaty of Berwick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Berwick
(may refer to "Treaty of Berwick (1586), a mutual defence agreement between Queen Elizabeth I of England and King James VI of Scotland")
, all of which were signed in Berwick upon Tweed, England.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwick-upon-Tweed
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