ed 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:

Culpeper, according to the depositions,[218] made quite a clean breast of
it, though what means were adopted for making him so frank is not clear.
Probably torture, or the threat of it, was resorted to, since Hertford,
Riche, and Audley had much to do with the examinations;[219] whilst even
the Duke of Norfolk and Wriothesley, not to appear backward in the King's
service, were as anxious as their rivals to make the case complete.
Culpeper was a gentleman of great estate in Kent and elsewhere, holding
many houses and offices; a gentleman of the chamber, clerk of the armoury,
steward and keeper of several royal manors; and he had received many
favours from the King, with whom he ordinarily slept. He deposed to and
described many stolen interviews with Katharine, all apparently after the
previous Passion Week (1541), when the Queen, he said, had sent for him
and given him a velvet cap. Lady Rochford, according to his statement, was
the go-between, and arranged all the assignations in her apartments,
whilst the Queen, whenever she reached a house during the progress, would
make herself acquainted with the back doors and back stairs, in order to
facilitate the meetings. At Pontefract she thought the back door was being
watched by the King's orders, and Lady Rochford caused her servant to
keep a counter watch. On one occasio