The Wives of Henry the Eighth and the Parts They Played in History
David Hume · en
Then Margery Morton was tackled by Sir Anthony Browne. She had never
mistrusted the Queen until the other day, at Hatfield, "when she saw her
Majesty look out of the window to Mr. Culpeper in such sort that she
thought there was love between them." Whilst at Hatfield the Queen had
given orders that none of her attendants were to enter her bedroom unless
they were summoned. Margery, too, had been sent on mysterious secret
errands to Lady Rochford, which she could not understand, and, with others
of the maids, had considered herself slighted by the Queen's preference
for Katharine Tylney and for those who owed their position to Lady
Rochford; which lady, she said, she considered the principal cause of the
Queen's folly. Thus far there was nothing beyond the suspicions of jealous
women, but Lady Rochford was frightened into telling a much more damning
story, though she tried to make her own share in it as light as possible.
The Queen, she confessed, had had many interviews in her rooms with
Culpeper--at Greenwich, Lincoln, Pontefract, York, and elsewhere--for many
months past; but as Culpeper stood at the farther end of the room with his
foot upon the top of the back stairs, so as to be ready to slip down in
case of alarm, and the Queen talked to him at the door, Lady Rochford
professed to be ignorant of what passed between them. One night, she
recalled, the Queen and herself were standing at the back door at eleven
at night, when a watchman came with a lantern and locked the door. Shortly
afterwards, however, Culpeper entered the room, saying that he and his
servant had picked the lock. Since the first suspicion had been cast upon
the Queen by Lascelles, Katharine, according to Lady Rochford, had
continually asked after Culpeper. "If that matter came not out she feared
nothing," and finally, Lady Rochford, although professing to have been
asleep during some of Culpeper's compromising visits, declared her belief
that criminal relations had existed between him and the Queen: