subject: casket-letters retrieved: "2026-10-02" # Authenticity here has two levels (SCHEMA.md A9): the authenticity of each SOURCE as a document, and the separate question of whether the # lost casket originals were Mary's. The second is claim casket-authenticity-contested, not a source property. Wikipedia pages linked on the # open question page are orientation only and are not sources here. sources: - id: src-henderson-1889 title: "T. F. Henderson, The Casket Letters and Mary Queen of Scots (Edinburgh, 1889), Google-scanned copy on the Internet Archive" document_class: primary_text (the texts printed in the appendix) plus interpretive (the argument) url: https://archive.org/details/casketlettersan00hendgoog authenticity: status: authenticated strength: moderate provenance: "Public-domain 1889 book; Internet Archive identifier casketlettersan00hendgoog; OCR text downloaded 2026-10-02." tests: - "The open question page's quotation from p. 68 ('The copies of the original French versions of the letters now known to exist are Nos. 3 and 5 in the Record Office, and Nos. 4 and 6 at Hatfield') is present in the OCR text [read]" - "The Bresslau/Catherine de Medici passage the open question page cites (pp. 69-70) is present in the OCR text [read]" tested_by: "Strata session, 2026-10-02 (not an independent review)" gaps: - "OCR text: dates, names and quotations were checked only where quoted; page numbers in the OCR are noisy." - "Henderson argues for the genuineness of the letters; his judgments (for example that the copies 'must be regarded as thoroughly authenticated transcripts') are an advocate's reading and are not independent evidence." checked: 2026-10-02 sha256_ocr_text: f6020382ca137663dc8cfc7ece2045bf95a7679f0b18cfbfa1b6087d6e50c9b3 stored_as: "sources/henderson-1889.djvu.txt (OCR text, public domain)" - id: src-casket-french-copies title: "The French copies of casket Letters III and V (Public Record Office) and IV and VI (Hatfield, Cecil papers); English translations of 1, 2, 5 (Record Office) and 4, 6 (Hatfield)" document_class: primary_text (copies of lost originals) authenticity: status: unchecked strength: weak provenance: "Held at the National Archives and Hatfield House; seen in this dig only through Henderson's printing and description." tests: - "Henderson reports a collation minute of 14 Dec 1568 by the commissioners: 'In collation whereof no difference was found' [read in OCR]. A claim by the commissioners, not a test of the copies." tested_by: "not independently tested" gaps: - "The copies carry 'alterations and corrections' in other hands (Henderson, p. 68); who made them and when is not established here." - "Not seen. The relation of the copies to the lost originals is exactly what is disputed (A9: copies and translations need their own authenticity entries)." next_step: "Examine catalogue entries and digitised images at the National Archives (SP 53) and Hatfield; record hand, paper, date and corrections." checked: 2026-10-02 - id: src-labanoff-1844 title: "A. Labanoff (ed.), Lettres, instructions et memoires de Marie Stuart, vols. 1-2 (1844); Internet Archive lettresinstructi01mary, lettresinstructi02maryuoft" document_class: primary_text (edition of Mary's letters) url: https://archive.org/details/lettresinstructi01mary authenticity: status: authenticated strength: moderate provenance: "Public-domain nineteenth-century edition, Internet Archive scans; used by the open question's test via OCR." tests: ["Not re-checked in this session; used as described on the open question page."] tested_by: "open question Q-001 (formerly bounty B-001) author (computed test); not independently reviewed" gaps: - "Copies were made by clerks, so spelling is normalised in the test; autograph and secretary letters are not separated." - "OCR noise and an editorial French translation of a letter Mary wrote in another language were found in the pilot (finding F8) and had to be filtered." checked: 2026-10-02 - id: src-laferriere-catherine title: "H. de la Ferriere (ed.), Lettres de Catherine de Medicis, vols. 2-3; Internet Archive lettresdecatheri02cathuoft, lettresdecatheri03cathuoft" document_class: primary_text (control corpus) authenticity: status: authenticated strength: moderate provenance: "Public-domain edition; used as the control corpus in test DT-002." tests: ["Not re-checked in this session."] tested_by: "open question Q-001 (formerly bounty B-001) author" gaps: ["Mostly official dispatches, so a genre difference from the intimate casket letters (finding F11)."] checked: 2026-10-02 - id: src-lasry-2023 title: "G. Lasry, N. Biermann, S. Tomokiyo, 'Deciphering Mary Stuart's lost letters from 1578-1584', Cryptologia 47(2): 101-202 (2023)" document_class: primary_text (deciphered letters) plus interpretive url: https://doi.org/10.1080/01611194.2022.2160677 authenticity: status: unchecked strength: moderate provenance: "Peer-reviewed open-access paper; prints one full letter and summaries of the rest." gaps: ["Not read in this session; plaintexts are not fully public (finding F1)."] checked: 2026-10-02 - id: src-nsa-to-catch-a-queen title: "NSA, 'To Catch a Queen' (declassified 2011)" document_class: secondary url: https://www.nsa.gov/portals/75/documents/news-features/declassified-documents/crypto-almanac-50th/to-catch-a-queen.pdf authenticity: status: unchecked gaps: ["nsa.gov blocks the cloud session (HTTP 403); not read in this dig."] next_step: "Read in a browser; re-anchor the 1586 postscript claim to the National Archives document." checked: 2026-10-02 - id: src-eder-2010 title: "M. Eder, 'Does size matter? Authorship attribution, small samples, big problem', Digital Humanities 2010 abstract" document_class: interpretive (method) url: https://dh2010.cch.kcl.ac.uk/academic-programme/abstracts/papers/html/ab-744.html authenticity: {status: unchecked, gaps: ["Cited by the open question page; not read in this session."], checked: 2026-10-02}