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Jimmy Pautz
Most people do not know what cryptography is or why I would be taking a class
focusing on it. In fact, most people do not realize how common cryptography is in their
daily lives or how many lives have been saved and lost because of cryptography’s ability
or inability to keep information secret. The beautiful Mary Queen of Scots too was
affected quite seriously by a particular cipher that bears her name. 1 Though, for Mary,
cryptography led to her death. The cipher that Mary Queen of Scots and the Babington
conspirators used should have been stronger because of how advanced cryptography was
at the time and the sensitive nature of the information being discussed.
understand her situation. Mary was born shortly after Henry VIII defeated her father
James V and the Scottish army. Her father died days after she was born at the age of
thirty, leaving only Mary as heir to the Scottish throne (and, as some would argue, the
English throne).2 Because it would have been considered unchivalrous, Henry VIII did
not invade Scotland now under rule of an infant queen. Instead, he started trying to
arrange the marriage between his son Edward and the Scottish Queen Mary. After
consideration by the Scottish court, they denied Henry for the French dauphin Francis.
Scotland would continue James V’s venture by uniting Scotland and France.3 Both Mary
and Francis were children, but the marriage was arranged, which also provided protection
By the age of six, the English started attacking the Scotch again, and for her
protection Mary was sent to grow up in the French courts. She grew to love her suitor
Francis and they married at the age of sixteen. The next year they were crowned King
Pautz 3
and Queen of France. Only months after they were crowned, Francis—who always had
health problems—died of an ear infection that he had had since he was a child.5
The next year she returned to a changed Scotland. The Catholic Mary tolerated
the majority’s turn toward Protestantism and generally ruled with favor. When she
married her cousin Henry Stewart, the Earl of Darnley, things started going downhill. He
was a brutal, power-hungry man who lost her the favor of the Scottish nobles. He was
essentially a horrible person. Mary realized who she had really married when she
witnessed him murder her secretary. It was clear that Darnley needed to go. On
February 9, 1567, Darnley’s house was blown up and he was strangled when he
attempted to escape.6
7
Mary was married again, this time to James Hepburn, the Fourth Earl of Bothwell.
This was not a good decision and by the summer of 1567, the Scottish nobles imprisoned
Mary and exiled her new husband. They crowned Mary’s infant son from her second
marriage, James VI, as king. The Figure 17 next year Mary escaped from her prison,
Pautz 4
gathered an army, and attempted to regain her throne. Although she had greater numbers,
her army was easily defeated. Mary fled south, hoping to seek refuge with her cousin,
Elizabeth I, but she was immediately arrested for the murder of Darnley.8 Murder was
the official charge, but historians believe it was because of the threat she posed to
Elizabeth’s throne.9 The Catholics in England claimed that Mary had the true right to the
throne, citing that Henry VIII’s divorce was unlawful, and therefore the marriage to Anne
Boleyn was not valid and Elizabeth was a bastard. (Bastards were not allowed to rule in
England.) Mary was a direct descendant of Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII’s elder sister and
Though Mary was imprisoned, her conditions were not bad. She was held in
different castles and manors throughout England. Mary was respected by most because
“[s]he hath withal an alluring grace, a pretty Scotch accent, and a searching wit, clouded
with mildness.”11 After many years, her health worsened because of her conditions and
After attempts to contact her son James VI, Mary was at an all-time low: her son
hated her, she was imprisoned with no amenities, and her health was failing her. At this
low point, she received a packet of letters of admiration from the French delivered by
Gilbert Gifford, a professional spy for Sir Francis Walsingham and the English
France and put himself in position to smuggle messages to and from the imprisoned
One of the admirers of Mary was the well known Anthony Babington. Babington
was a former page of Mary’s who began organizing a plot to “assassinate Elizabeth,
incite a general Catholic uprising in England, and crown Mary.”14 Although Babington
and his coconspirators were happy with their plot, they would not proceed without
Mary’s blessing.15 At about the same time, Mary had heard about the plot through her
French supporters and sent a letter to Babington (through Gifford) asking for his reply.
In turn, Babington sent a letter outlining the plot, enciphering the letter with a
that relies on a cipher alphabet, which is used to encrypt the majority of the message, and
symbols for letters (j, v, and w were excluded) and 36 symbols representing words or
phrases. It also featured four nulls and one dowbleth. The dowbleth indicated that the
Figure 219
Even
though the
messages
between
Mary and
Babington
were encrypted,
Gifford
and being able to break it. He hired Thomas Phelippes as his cipher secretary and started
a cipher school in London.20 When Walsingham received the letters from Gifford, he
would send them to Phelippes, who would get to work immediately on them. Once he
decrypted them, he would send both the decrypted and the originals to Walsingham, who
would send the originals onward to their intended goal.21 Walsingham waited until he
gathered enough information to arrest the conspirators. Finally Babington sent a letter to
Mary detailing the plot further and she “not having explicitly commanded, in her reply,
that that part [the assassination of Elizabeth] should be abandoned, she was clearly
Although he had proof enough to arrest Mary, Walsingham still wanted the names
of the other six coconspirators, so he had Phelippes forge a postscript to Mary’s letter to
Babington asking for “the names and qualities of the six gentlemen which are to
accomplish the designment.”23 Soon after Babington receive the forged note, he needed
Walsingham’s department. The man who was running the office was ill-prepared for a
wanted man to show up, so he stalled Babington by taking him to a tavern until soldiers
could come and arrest him. Babington saw the notice of arrest and slipped out the back
door while pretending to pay for the drinks.24 He and the other six men managed to avoid
capture for ten days, but they were eventually arrested and were executed. Elizabethan
historian William Camden said, “They were all cut down; their privities were cut off,
Though the conspirators were executed almost immediately after their arrest,
Mary was allowed a fair trial. She denied association with the men and claimed that she
had nothing to do with them. However, the evidence greatly outweighed her testimony
and the judges recommended the death penalty. Mary’s cousin Elizabeth I signed the
death warrant. Three hundred people gathered to watch Mary’s beheading on February 8,
1587.26
One might ask how Mary was sentenced to death, if the messages were encrypted.
Evidence shows that the cipher had major flaws. The cipher mostly consisted of simple
substitution methods, which can be decrypted by use of frequency analysis. This was, in
fact, the method that Phelippes used to break the cipher.27 Furthermore, because of the
nature of the cipher, after he broke the cipher once, he had the key and could break it
even more quickly any subsequent times. Phelippes used the context of the rest of the
Another reason the cipher failed was because of the confidence that Mary and
Babington had in it. This confidence may have increased due to the steganography
involved, but they should have still realized how easy their cipher could be broken had it
fallen into the wrong hands. This confidence is probably the reason they were
Had Mary and Babington realized how advanced cryptography was at time, they
would have used a stronger cipher and probably would have saved their lives. To
understand why Mary’s cipher was too simple for the times, one needs to understand how
cryptography advanced up to the times of Mary Queen of Scots and her cipher.
Cryptography first was used by Islamic Arab nations in the ninth and tenth centuries.
Pautz 8
Many years before the Europeans, the Arabs were already employing the use of
Qalqashandi had already developed ciphers that featured transposition and more than one
substitute for a single plaintext letter.29 The Islamic Arabs were so advanced at
cryptography because their nations flourished, along with their mathematics and
linguistic education at that time. While the Arabs “enjoyed a vigorous period of
intellectual achievement, […] Europe was firmly stuck in the Dark Ages.”30 These
factors are why there was such disparity between the Arab and European advancement in
cryptography.
used in diplomatic affairs. This was due to the revival of the “arts, sciences, and
scholarship” that occurred during the Renaissance Age.31 “Renaissance nurtured the
motivation for secret communication.” Giovanni Soro, the Venetian cipher secretary in
the early 1500s, was the “first great European cryptanalyst.”32 He put Italy on top of the
cryptography food chain. Soro was sent messages to decrypt from all over Europe, even
the Vatican—which had the second best cryptographers in Europe. Because he was so
skilled, cryptographers had to work hard to invent new cryptosystems or adjust existing
ones and make them more difficult to break. Monoalphabetic substitution ciphers were
nomenclators. Nomenclators were solved again by frequency analysis and by logical use
of context (for the codewords). Codes proved too difficult for those trying to send and
Pautz 9
receive them because of the need for a large codebook. Another advancement in
cryptography was the introduction of nulls. Nulls are letters/symbols that do not
advancement was the act of misspelling words on purpose so that frequency analyzers
would have a more difficult time at finding patterns in frequency. Nulls and misspellings
were eventually broken or dealt with. All of these advancements happened more than 50
years before the Babington conspirators and Mary started their correspondence and
therefore should have been taken into account by Mary or Babington.33 Both parties
knew the value of the information that they sent to each other and the consequences if
The message encrypted with the cipher of Mary, Queen of Scots did fall into the
wrong hands and the worst that could have happened did happen. Had Mary or
cryptosystem and the steganographic aspect may have disillusioned Mary and Babington
into thinking that their cipher was strong. Failure to study cryptography, its advances,
and methods of cryptanalysis cost them their lives. Most people do not know what
cryptography is and are ignorant to the fact that they could be dead right now without it.
At least Mary and Babington knew what it was; it is a pity they did not know more.
Pautz 10
Notes
1
George Malcolm Thomson, The Crime of Mary Stuart (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1967), 15.
2
Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography
(New York: Doubleday, 1999), 32.
3
Ibid., 33.
4
Ibid., 33.
5
Ibid., 33.
6
Ibid., 34.
7
Thomson, The Crime, 10.
8
Ian B. Cowan, The Enigma of Mary Stuart (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1971), 160-161.
9
Singh, The Code Book, 35.
10
Thomson, The Crime of Mary Stuart, 10.
11
qtd. in Singh, The Code Book, 35.
12
Ibid., 35.
13
Andrew Dakers, The Tragic Queen: A Study of Mary Queen of Scots (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press,
1931), 218.
14
David Kahn, The Codebreakers: The Story of Secret Writing (New York: Scribner, 1996), 122.
15
Singh, The Code Book, 37.
16
Ibid., 37.
17
Ibid., 31.
18
Ibid., 38.
19
Ibid., 38.
20
Dakers, The Tragic Queen, 221.
21
Kahn, Codebreakers, 122.
22
Dakers, The Tragic Queen, 223.
23
qtd. in Kahn, Codebreakers, 123.
24
Singh, The Code Book, 42.
25
qtd. in Ibid., 42
26
Ibid., 44.
27
Ibid., 40.
28
Kahn, Codebreakers, 97.
29
Ibid., 96.
30
Singh, The Code Book, 26.
31
Ibid, 27.
32
Ibid, 28.
33
Ibid., 31.