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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Mabel Banfield-Nwachi and Hannah Devlin

Mary, Queen of Scots prison letters finally decoded

Mary, Queen of Scots
The letters were written by Mary, Queen of Scots while she was imprisoned in England by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA

A team of codebreakers have cracked secret coded messages in letters written by Mary, Queen of Scots while she was imprisoned by her cousin Queen Elizabeth I, in what experts have said is the most significant discovery about Mary for more than a century.

Fifty-seven letters dating from 1578 to 1584, a few years before Mary Stuart was beheaded on 8 February 1587, have been deciphered. Fifty of the letters revealed scripts that were not previously known to historians.

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