Edward Willes

Edward Willes ( born March 6, 1694 Bishop's Itchington, Stratford -on-Avon ( District ), Warwickshire, † November 24, 1773 in London) was Bishop of Bath and Wells and the leading English cryptologist of his time.

His leap from clergy in Oxford to the bishop he owes almost exclusively to his decryption work for the British government, which paid him to still good. After 1716 he was able to decipher the Swedish diplomatic bag, which proved an involvement in a Jacobite plot and the arrest of the Ambassador led ( GYLLENBORG - Affaire 1717), he was appointed rector of Barton in Bedfordshire. When it came in 1723, he managed to lead by deciphering the correspondence of the Jacobites the Bishop of Rochester, to which he had to testify in the trial before the House of Lords, which led to the deposition of the bishop, he was a canon at Westminster. In 1743 he was finally Bishop of St. David's in 1743 and Bishop of Bath and Wells. His sons continued the cryptographic work. In Westminster Abbey a memorial plaque commemorates him.