William Blencowe
William Blencowe (Marston St. Lawrence, 6 January 1683 – Northampton, 25 August 1712) was a British scholar and cryptographer who was the first official Royal Encipherer appointed by Queen Anne of England.An example is the correspondence of the representative of the duke of Holstein-Gottorp in The Hague, Hermann von Petkum, that disclosed secrets about the negotiations between the Marquis de Torcy and the Grand pensionary of the Dutch Republic Anthonie Heinsius in 1709.As a consequence the British managed to bring about the failure of these negotiations[6] In 1707 the correspondence of the French emissary at the court of the Elector of Bavaria and his colleague in Sweden was intercepted and both Blencowe and Abel Tassin d'Alonne, the Dutch cryptographer, separately tried their hands at it (unbeknownst to each other, of course), and came to subtly different results, though they both successfully decrypted the letters.[8] In 1712 the correspondence between the secretary of the Bavarian Elector, Malknecht, and a secret agent in the Dutch Republic, masquerading as a merchant, David van Putten,[b] was intercepted.His epitaph states that he was a "man studious of many kinds of learning, particularly of the common law, which he professed and practised with reputation; and of the art of deciphering letters wherein he excelled, and served the public for ten years".