was passing on information. As you say, it must have happened to some degree, so I'd love to extrapolate what we know about Tudor manners, etiquette etc to puzzle out how these arrangements would have worked. shtove - Thank you for the article! I'm going to read it at further length later, but it may come in handy. Esther - See, that's the sort of thing I'm interested in... how did these ambassadors approach the ladies? Did they bribe them, and with what? Were certain topics off-limits? (the whole Dudley/menses topic was important but perhaps it wasn't guarded as closely as some of her other secrets?) I'm trying to get into the mindset of someone who would want to find out more about the secret doings of a Queen (possibly stuff like menses, men flirting, etc, but also things like important visitors etc), and how they would go about it via the queen's staff.