|
Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington Plot
Queen Mary 1 of Scotland (Mary Queen of Scots) wanted to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I of England, and so began exchanging letters and messages with her co-conspirators, including Anthony Babington. This was later to be called the Babington Plot. Because these messages were so treasonous they enciphered them so that they could not be read should they fall into the wrong hands. However Mary's messages were intercepted by Elizabeth's spies and were soon decoded. Mary was immediately arrested, put on trial and the deciphered messages were used as evidence of her treason. She was found guilty and was executed in 1587.
The cipher shown below is an example of the one they used, it has a cipher alphabet for letters form A to Z, and code symbols for the most common words, with some more sophisticated symbols. This mixture of codes and ciphers is known as a nomenclator.
| |
