In 1584, a twenty year-old London scholar-merchant of Flemish origin composed a hitherto neglected tract on the cryptanalysis and encryption of Latin and the major Western European vernaculars. He then revised it two years later. He was known in Neo-Latin scholarly circles as Jacobus Colius (1563-1628), or Ortelianus, as the nephew of the great geographer Ortelius, and his tract is worth resurrecting as an example of an early cryptographical text by a man who later in his life might serve as ...