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Claude Nau
Claude Nau or Claude Nau de la Boisseliere (d. 1605) was a confidential secretary of Mary, Queen of Scots, in England from 1575 to 1586. He was involved in coding Mary's letters with cipher keys. Career Nau was a successful lawyer practicing in Paris. He was recruited by the Guise family in 1574 to be Mary's secretary. Jean de Champhuon, sieur du Ruisseau, who married Nau's sister Claire in 1563, also joined Mary's service. An account of the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, mentions that Ruisseau was Claude Nau's brother-in-law, a ''beau frere'', and Albert Fontenay was Claude Nau's half brother. Nau was presented by the Duke of Guise, Mary's nephew, to Henry III of France. The King gave him diplomatic accreditation and sent him to Elizabeth I of England. Elizabeth gave him a letter of introduction to the Earl of Shrewsbury the Scottish Queen's keeper at Sheffield Castle. Nau was frequently mentioned in Mary's correspondence, and many of his own letters survive. In August 1577 Nau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary, Queen Of Scots
Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication in 1567. The only surviving legitimate child of James V of Scotland, Mary was six days old when her father died and she inherited the throne. During her childhood, Scotland was governed by regents, first by the heir to the throne, James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, and then by her mother, Mary of Guise. In 1548, she was betrothed to Francis, the Dauphin of France, and was sent to be brought up in France, where she would be safe from invading English forces during the Rough Wooing. Mary married Francis in 1558, becoming queen consort of France from his accession in 1559 until his death in December 1560. Widowed, Mary returned to Scotland in August 1561. Following the Scottish Reformation, the tense religious and political climate that Mary encountered on her return to Scotland was further agitated by pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elizabeth Pierrepont
Elizabeth or Bess Pierrepont (1568–1648) was a gentlewoman in household of Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary hoped that she could be trained to join the household of Queen Elizabeth, and prevented her marrying as her father wished. She was a daughter of Henry Pierrepont and Frances Cavendish. Her parents' home was Holme Pierrepont Hall near Nottingham. She was a granddaughter of Bess of Hardwick. Elizabeth Pierrepont joined the household of Mary, Queen of Scots in England at a young age. When Mary, Queen of Scots was at Worksop Manor in September 1583, she wrote a letter to "Bess Pierpont", who was at home with her family. Mary thanked her for a letter and a gift, and was going to give her a black gown and a "garniture" of jewellery to wear, ordered from London. Mary's keeper Ralph Sadler described her father as a "peevish Papist" to Francis Walsingham. Her father in April 1585 had written inviting her to come to visit them at Woodhouse, relatively close to Tutbury Castle, before the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Stevenson
Joseph Stevenson (27 November 1806 – 8 February 1895) was an English Catholic priest, archivist and editor of historical texts. Early life Joseph Stevenson was born on 27 November 1806 in Berwick-on-Tweed, the eldest son of Robert Stevenson, surgeon, and his wife, Elizabeth Wilson. His parents were Presbyterians. Growing up, he occasionally accompanied an uncle on smuggling expeditions across the border. He was educated first at Witton-le-Wear ( County Durham), and then at Durham School, under James Raine; where he was usually near the bottom of his class and at one time kept a loaded pistol among his effects which went off in the hands of a servant with dramatic although not deadly consequences. Afterwards he studied Latin and Greek at the University of Glasgow but made little progress and eventually returned to Berwick to pursue a vocation with the Church of Scotland. Career Moving to London, Stevenson found work in 1831 at the British Museum, which had just acquired the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fotheringhay Castle
Fotheringhay Castle, also known as ''Fotheringay Castle'', was a High Middle Age Norman Motte-and-bailey castle in the village of Fotheringhay to the north of the market town of Oundle, Northamptonshire, England (). It was probably founded around 1100 by Simon de Senlis, Earl of Northampton. In 1113, possession passed to Prince David of Scotland when he married Simon's widow. The castle then descended with the Scottish princes until the early 13th century, when it was confiscated by King John of England. By 1220, Fotheringhay Castle was controlled by Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester. In January the following year, it was briefly captured by William II de Forz, 3rd Earl of Albemarle, in his rebellion against King Henry III. Forz abandoned the castle, Henry III took it under his control, and Fotheringhay remained in royal hands until the reign of Edward II. It was a favoured residence of the Dukes of York, and King Richard III was born there in 1452. It ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Court Of Scotland
The Royal Court of Scotland was the administrative, political and artistic centre of the Kingdom of Scotland. It emerged in the tenth century and continued until it ceased to function when James VI inherited the throne of England in 1603. For most of the medieval era, the king had no "capital" as such. The Pictish centre of Forteviot was the chief royal seat of the early Gaelic Kingdom of Alba that became the Kingdom of Scotland. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Scone was a centre for royal business. Edinburgh only began to emerge as the capital in the reign of James III but his successors undertook occasional royal progress to a part of the kingdom. Little is known about the structure of the Scottish royal court in the period before the reign of David I when it began to take on a distinctly feudal character, with the major offices of the Steward, Chamberlain, Constable, Marischal and Lord Chancellor. By the early modern era the court consisted of leading nobles, office ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Substitution Cipher
In cryptography, a substitution cipher is a method of encrypting in which units of plaintext are replaced with the ciphertext, in a defined manner, with the help of a key; the "units" may be single letters (the most common), pairs of letters, triplets of letters, mixtures of the above, and so forth. The receiver deciphers the text by performing the inverse substitution process to extract the original message. Substitution ciphers can be compared with transposition ciphers. In a transposition cipher, the units of the plaintext are rearranged in a different and usually quite complex order, but the units themselves are left unchanged. By contrast, in a substitution cipher, the units of the plaintext are retained in the same sequence in the ciphertext, but the units themselves are altered. There are a number of different types of substitution cipher. If the cipher operates on single letters, it is termed a simple substitution cipher; a cipher that operates on larger groups of letters ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Phelippes
Thomas Phelippes (1556–1625), also known as Thomas Phillips was a linguist, who was employed as a forger and intelligence gatherer. He served mainly under Sir Francis Walsingham, in the time of Elizabeth I, and most notably deciphered the coded letters of Babington Plot conspirators. Life and education Little is known about Phelippes family background except that he was the son of a cloth merchant. Despite his humble origins, it is believed that he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1569 and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1574. Phelippes was a linguist who could speak French, Italian, Spanish, Latin and German. His education helped him to master cipher skills and be an excellent cryptographer of high reputation. Therefore, he was employed by Sir Francis Walsingham, the principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I. The physical and intellectual stature of Phelippes was described as "''a small, lean, yellow-haired, short-sighted man, with pock-marked face, an excellent l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Babington Plot
The Babington Plot was a plan in 1586 to assassinate Queen Elizabeth I, a Protestant, and put Mary, Queen of Scots, her Catholic cousin, on the English throne. It led to Mary's execution, a result of a letter sent by Mary (who had been imprisoned for 19 years since 1568 in England at the behest of Elizabeth) in which she consented to the assassination of Elizabeth. The long-term goal of the plot was the invasion of England by the Spanish forces of King Philip II and the Catholic League in France, leading to the restoration of the old religion. The plot was discovered by Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and used to entrap Mary for the purpose of removing her as a claimant to the English throne. The chief conspirators were Anthony Babington and John Ballard. Babington, a young recusant, was recruited by Ballard, a Jesuit priest who hoped to rescue the Scottish Queen. Working for Walsingham were double agents Robert Poley and Gilbert Gifford, as well as Thomas Ph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tower Of London
The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is separated from the eastern edge of the square mile of the City of London by the open space known as Tower Hill. It was founded towards the end of 1066 as part of the Norman Conquest. The White Tower (Tower of London), White Tower, which gives the entire castle its name, was built by William the Conqueror in 1078 and was a resented symbol of oppression, inflicted upon London by the new Normans, Norman ruling class. The castle was also used as a prison from 1100 (Ranulf Flambard) until 1952 (Kray twins), although that was not its primary purpose. A grand palace early in its history, it served as a royal residence. As a whole, the Tower is a complex of several buildings set within two concentric rings of defensive walls and a moat. There were severa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jérôme Pasquier (courtier)
Jérôme Pasquier was a French servant of Mary, Queen of Scots, involved in writing and deciphering coded letters. Working for a captive queen Pasquier is recorded as a groom of the chamber to Mary and master of her wardrobe. The other grooms were Bastian Pagez and Hannibal Stuart. He was described as "young Pasquier". Adam Blackwood described him as "''commis et argentier''", a clerk and treasurer or purse keeper. The French ambassador also called him a steward or ''argentier''. On 20 March 1586, at Chartley, Pasquier and Bastian Pagez witnessed a document in which Jacques Gervais, Mary's surgeon, placed his affairs in the hands of Jean de Champhuon, sieur du Ruisseau, a brother-in-law of Mary's secretary Claude Nau. Ruisseau was an administrator of Mary, Queen of Scots' French estates. Pasquier worked with Mary's secretaries Claude Nau and Gilbert Curle managing Mary's correspondence. Letters in cipher from the French ambassador London, Guillaume de l'Aubéspine, Baron du Chât ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Walsingham
Sir Francis Walsingham ( – 6 April 1590) was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster". Born to a well-connected family of gentry, Walsingham attended Cambridge University and travelled in continental Europe before embarking on a career in law at the age of twenty. A committed Protestant, during the reign of the Catholic Queen Mary I of England he joined other expatriates in exile in Switzerland and northern Italy until Mary's death and the accession of her Protestant half-sister, Elizabeth. Walsingham rose from relative obscurity to become one of the small coterie who directed the Elizabethan state, overseeing foreign, domestic and religious policy. He served as English ambassador to France in the early 1570s and witnessed the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre. As principal secretary, he supported exploration, colonization, the use of England's maritime strength and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Gorges
Sir Thomas Gorges (1536 – 30 March 1610) of Longford Castle in Wiltshire, was a courtier and Groom of the Chamber to Queen Elizabeth I. Via his great-grandmother Lady Anne Howard, a daughter of John Howard, 1st Duke of Norfolk, he was a second cousin of both Queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, the second and fifth wives of King Henry VIII. In 1586 he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Downton in Wiltshire. Origins He was born in Wraxall, Somerset, the son of Sir Edward Gorges of Wraxall, by either his first or second wife, namely Mary Newton or Mary Poyntz (sister of Nicholas Poyntz (d.1557)), respectively. His nephew was the poet and translator Arthur Gorges. He was descended in the male line from Sir John Russell (died c. 1224) of Kingston Russell in Dorset, a household knight of King John (1199–1216). Ralph Gorges, 2nd Baron Gorges (d.1330/1), who died without issue, was keen to see his family name and armorials continue, and formed the plan of beque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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