Mary, Queen of Scots, polyalphabet cipherThis page defines a Mary, Queen of Scots, polyalphabet cipher. |
Background
Mary, Queen of Scots was the daughter of King James V of Scotland, and was born on December 1542. She used it to plot against Elizabeth the First, as Mary aimed to kill Elizabeth and become Queen of England. In order to avoid being detected she sent coded messages to her co-conspirator Anthony Babington. For Mary, the code was actually easy to crack as the probability of the symbols match normal writing: