Experts Have Finally Cracked The Real Meaning Behind Mary, Queen of Scots' Final Message

Mary was wary of the possibility that some outside party might alter this letter before it reached its intended recipient. So, before she sent it away, she sealed it up in the most remarkable manner. And the particular sealing method that she employed meant that if anyone tried to mess with her note, the recipient would know all about it.

The specific way Mary sealed her letter would’ve required a tremendous amount of skill and effort. The point was to craft the seal in a way that would force the person opening it to break it beyond repair. That way, if someone read the letter before it reached its desired recipient, the latter would know about it.

As you can imagine, then, that makes it very difficult for researchers in the present day to study letters sealed in this way without destroying them. But recently a team of experts have at last cracked the method. And that’s allowed them to finally wrap their heads around Mary’s letter.

As you might imagine, the message within the letter is extremely potent. Written by a woman facing her imminent death, it’s a poignantly insightful document. And on top of everything else, of course, it wasn’t just any lady’s final thoughts. It happened to be written by one of the most famous figures in British history.

Mary undoubtedly ranks as one of the more famous monarchs of Britain. The tale of her life has endured through the centuries, inspiring artworks and films to this very day. Her trials and tribulations remain a source of tremendous interest to people, comparable to even the most riveting of fairy-tales.

Mary was born close to the Scottish capital Edinburgh in Linlithgow Palace, which lies in a region called West Lothian. She arrived in the world on December 8, 1542, with the newborn becoming Queen of Scots a mere six days later. That was because her dad, King James V of Scotland, unexpectedly passed away and she was next in line to the throne.

While Mary was young, high-ranking members of the Scottish court decided that it’d be a good idea to marry the young queen off to the son of England’s King Henry VIII. This boy, as it happened, would eventually rule England as Edward VI. The proposed marriage between him and Mary, the thinking went, would smooth over tensions between England and Scotland.

The planned marriage collapsed, though, which infuriated Henry VIII. In his rage, the English king sent his forces to attack Scotland in a number of ferocious assaults. These attacks saw important buildings and fields burned, with the onslaught eventually coming to be referred to as “The Rough Wooing.”

Despite Henry VIII’s aggression, though, the Scottish nobles arranged for Mary to marry a French prince in 1548 — a move that surely made the English monarch even angrier. After all, the union ultimately represented a close bond between the Catholic Scots and French in opposition to England, which was now a Protestant nation. With this in mind, Henry’s unease and fury is understandable.

Mary’s husband became King of France in 1559, which meant that she was now Queen of both Scotland and France. But things would quickly take a turn for the worse. Her young husband, not yet an adult, died just a few years into their marriage. Mary, then, was forced back to Scotland, though it’s said she wasn’t enthused by the move.

During Mary’s time in France, Scotland had become a Protestant realm at the instigation of John Knox. As a result, it made sense for her to tie the knot with a Protestant man. In the end, this person turned out to be Lord Darnley. Yet as with so much of Mary’s life, this didn’t exactly work out well.

Darnley soon turned against his wife. He also took a particular dislike to her secretary David Riccio, whom he was apparently jealous of. So, in March 1566, he and a bunch of co-conspirators killed Riccio right before the queen’s very eyes. She was pregnant with Darnley’s baby when the assassination occurred.

Despite the undoubted trauma this caused, Mary gave birth to her son James not long after the murder. Obviously, though, her bond with her husband never recovered. And before long, Darnley ended up dying in a rather suspicious manner. This got people talking, with rumors swirling that the queen had played a part in his demise.

Mary moved on from her husband, in any case, falling for the Earl of Bothwell, James Hepburn. Yet again, though, things didn’t work out well, as allegations were thrown around that Bothwell had killed Darnley. He was eventually cleared of the charge, and he and Mary wed. But that wasn’t the end of the matter.

Infuriated by her new marriage to Bothwell, prominent Protestants in Scotland staged an uprising against Mary. They took her captive in the summer of 1567, keeping her confined inside the walls of Lochleven Castle. She was pregnant with twins at the time, but she ended up losing both babies while she was incarcerated.

Bothwell managed to make it out of Britain alive, though he and Mary would never meet again. He showed up in Denmark but was soon captured and forced to spend the rest of his life behind bars. His mind apparently deteriorated during his captivity, and he passed away in 1578.

For her part, Mary managed to break out of prison in 1568. The respite, though, was brief, as pretty soon the Protestants overcame the modest force that she’d managed to assemble. She was then forced to seek refuge in England, at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. There, she’d remain Elizabeth’s prisoner for almost two decades.

Throughout her many years of imprisonment, Mary kept busy. And that mainly meant trying to orchestrate Elizabeth’s downfall. Apparently, she’d been sending out coded messages to this end. When discovered, her treasonous actions led to ferocious calls for her execution. And in the end, she was found guilty and sentenced to death.

The Queen of Scots was brought to Fotheringhay Castle, where her brutal execution was scheduled to take place. And so, on February 8, 1587, Mary was killed by beheading. She was just 44 years old when her dramatic, eventful life had been brought to an untimely end. Mary’s remains were laid to rest at Peterborough Cathedral.

Mary’s child James later ascended to power, ruling over both England and Scotland. He hadn’t actually known his mother in life, but in 1612 he had her remains retrieved from Peterborough Cathedral. He then arranged to have them laid to rest in Westminster Abbey instead, which was deemed to be a more honorable site.

Mary’s existence had been utterly chaotic, right from the beginning. Her short life was defined by twists and turns, while her untimely death was as dramatic as could be. But what have we learned of her innermost thoughts? Do we know anything about how all these dramatic events affected her? Well, thanks to a group of researchers, we do now.

Right before she was set to be executed, Mary recorded her thoughts in a letter. And naturally, she didn’t wish for anyone other than its intended recipient to read it. So, she sealed the message up in the most intricate of ways — and it’s only recently that researchers have worked out how she did it.

In order to seal her letter, the imprisoned Mary “letterlocked” it by using a so-called “spiral locking” method. Struggling to understand what that means? Fair enough. Basically, letterlocking was a process used to secure letters that involved folding them up in a special way to keep their contents hidden from view.

Letterlocking used to be a really common thing to do, in fact. And it wasn’t just a practice that was utilized by a select few. People from all over the world, regardless of their wealth or class, undertook the process. After all, vvenvelopes weren’t produced in big numbers until quite recently.

Contemporary researchers have managed to identify many different ways to letterlock. Of all these methods, though, one stands out. This is the spiral lock, which is renowned as monarchs such as Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots, utilized it. In fact, that’s how the latter queen sealed her final letter.

This note was written for Henry III of France, who was the brother of Mary’s first husband. And, hauntingly, it was jotted down on the very day she was set to be killed. She must surely have been feeling the most horrendous levels of fear and dread at the time, yet she still managed to seal her letter in this incredible way. In fact, according to CNN researchers have dubbed her seal as “one of the most spectacular examples of spiral locking.”

It’s believed that Mary was in her cell when she wrote and “locked” her letter to Henry, as she awaited her death. The note itself is dotted with stains, possibly caused by the queen’s own tears dripping onto the page. Given the circumstances, that seems like a pretty fair presumption.

In her note to Henry, Mary wrote bitterly of Queen Elizabeth I. She lamented, “Sire, my brother-in-law, having by God’s will, for my sins I think, thrown myself into the power of the Queen my cousin, at whose hands I have suffered much for almost 20 years, I have finally been condemned to death by her and her Estates.”

Mary continued, “I have asked for my papers, which they have taken away, in order that I might make my will, but I have been unable to recover anything of use to me, or even get leave either to make my will freely or to have my body conveyed after my death, as I would wish, to your kingdom where I had the honor to be queen, your sister and old ally... I am to be executed like a criminal at eight in the morning.”

The letter certainly captures the desperation of Mary’s final hours, but it also shows her poise. Despite the gravity of her situation, the Queen of Scots still managed to seal her letter in an incredibly complex manner. And she did so as a prisoner, without access to the appropriate equipment. It’s possible she was helped by her attendants Elizabeth Curle and Jane Kennedy, but the seal is impressive regardless.

Letters sealed with the spiral lock are incredibly difficult to study, as the researchers investigating Mary’s message have readily admitted. After all, the point of the seal is that it needs to be broken in order for the note to be revealed. How, then, can modern experts study letters created in this way?

It was definitely tough work, but a group of researchers managed to figure out Mary’s method. In the end, they found that there were no fewer than 30 different stages in the folding process. Writing of the procedure, they observed that it was “a highly intricate technique that required time, patience, and great skill: one wrong move and your locking mechanism could break and you would have to start the letter again.”

“The mechanics of this lock force the person opening the letter to tear the lock apart in order to access the contents,” the researchers continued. “Because the lock breaks in multiple places, it is impossible to piece back together in a way that would allow it to pass through the slits again; if someone thought their correspondence had been tampered with, it would be relatively simple to detect.”

One of the experts working on this project spoke to The Guardian about the whole process in December 2021. Jana Dambrogio said, “Mary’s last letter is a document of enormous national importance in Scotland... But working with it in person and figuring out its unique spiral lock was thrilling as a researcher — and a real ‘a-ha!’ moment in the study of letterlocking.”

In their study, the group of academics acknowledge this letter’s historic importance. They write, “The letter is a powerful and moving document written on the eve of Mary’s execution, not only a letter but also a last will and testament of sorts. But our big discovery is that after she wrote the letter she used one of the most elaborate and secure letterlocking methods to seal it. Not only that, she uses a variation of the technique — a single large slit rather than a run of small ones — which may testify to the limited tools she had available in her final hours.”

Mary’s letter isn’t actually the only famous example of a royal using the spiral lock to seal up a note. The Queen of Scots’ bitter rival Elizabeth I, for instance, also used it for a message in 1573. And Catherine de’ Medici sealed a note in this same way three years earlier as well.

Daniel Starza Smith was another of the experts who worked on this project, and he emphasized the importance of letterlocking in a chat with The Guardian. He explained, “Letterlocking is one of the most important communication techniques the world has known, but its history is only just coming to light. For some 600 years, virtually all letters were sent using letterlocking, before the invention of the modern gummed envelope in the 19th century — it was as important to epistolary communication as computer coding is to emails today.”

“The study of letterlocking supplies us with rich information about the concern historical figures had with communication security,” Smith continued. “And it also testifies to the inventiveness and even aesthetic creativity with which they responded to these concerns. The fantastically intricate spiral lock brings all these aspects together.”

As niche as it might seem, research focused on letterlocking could potentially reveal so much. That means studies such as the one centered around Mary’s letter are important. As Smith concluded in a chat with NPR, “When we understand things like slips and locks and folds in a more sophisticated way, we can really start telling a very different kind of story about the early modern period.”