Mary, Queen of Scots used a "spiral locking" technique to seal the last letter she wrote before her execution, indicating that she wanted the contents to remain secret, according to research published in the Electronic British Library Journal.
An
example of letterlocking -- where people doubled letters as envelopes
to ensure the security of a document -- the fallen monarch used a spiral
locking process to seal a message that was "a last will and testament
and a bid for martyrdom," the research published on Friday says.
Letterlocking was used widely throughout early modern Europe, and was an essential process of ensuring the security of letters before mass-produced gummed envelopes were manufactured in the 19th-century
It
played a crucial role in the "history of secrecy systems," enabling
"global correspondence in the early modern period as fundamentally as
computer coding underpins digital communication today," the research
paper says. more
