This is what you end up w/ when you have an encryption but no message authentication code:
"Babington and his associates, having laid such a plan [of the assassination of Elizabeth], as, they thought, promised infallible success, were impatient to communicate the design to the queen of Scots …
"For this service, they employed Gifford, who immediately applied to Walsingham [Sir Francis, the Secretary of State], that the interest of that minister might forward his secret correspondence with Mary. Walsingham proposed the matter to Paulet … The letters, by Paulet's connivance, were thrust through a chink in the wall; and answers were returned by the same conveyance.
"Babington informed Mary of the design laid for a foreign invasion, the plan of an insurrection at home, the scheme for her deliverance, and the conspiracy for assassinating the usurper, by 6 noble gentlemen … Mary replied, that she approved highly of the design; …
"These letters … were carried by Gifford to secretary Walsingham; were decyphered by the art of Philips, his clerk; and copies taken of them.
"Walsingham employed another artifice, in order to obtain full insight into the plot: He subjoined to a letter of Mary's a postscript in the same cipher; in which he made her desire Babington to inform her of the names of the conspirators. The indiscretion of Babington furnished Walsingham with still another means of detection, as well as of defence. That gentleman had caused a picture to be drawn, where he himself was represented standing amidst the six assassins; and a motto was subjoined, expressing that their common perils were the band of their confederacy."
On her trial, Mary denied the charges of the insurrection & the assassination, stating that she personally did not write those letters in such a form, for all her correspondence was controlled by 2 secretaries, who did the tedious process of (de|en)cryption on her behalf.