Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/489

1541.] But it usually happens in such cases that the first discovery is but the end of a clue which ravels out to unexpected issues. Seven or eight of the Queen's ladies were examined, and it was found that Francis Derham had been lately taken back into her service, and had been employed in a confidential office about her person; while a third Court gallant, Thomas Culpeper, who had accompanied the progress, had been admitted to interviews at midnight in the Queen's private apartments. Her establishment had been separate from the King's; at each house at which they had stayed, either she herself, or her chosen friend Lady Rochford, studied the positions of the staircases and postern doors; and the quarters assigned to her at Lincoln and Pomfret having offered especial conveniences, Culpeper had been introduced to the Queen's room, Lady Rochford keeping guard to prevent a surprise, and had remained with her in more than dubious privacy from eleven o'clock at night till three in the morning.

No reasonable doubt could be entertained that the King had a second time suffered the worst injury which a wife could inflict upon him; that a second adultery, a second act of high treason, must be exposed and punished.

The hand involuntarily pauses as it writes the words. In nine years two queens of England had been divorced: two had been unfaithful. A single misadventure of such a kind might have been explained by accident or by moral infirmity. For such a combination of disasters some common cause must have existed, which may be