Pages Saturday, August 11, 2012 Question from Michelle - Ladies in waiting spying on Queens My questions are in regard to using ladies-in-waiting to spy on a queen's doings, particularly Catherine of Aragon, and how such "arrangements" were made. Firstly, do we actually know of any instances where a lady-in-waiting was known (or at least highly suspected) as a spy who willingly and freely passed on information about her mistress to a third party? Would love some definitive documentation (e.g. letters to/from said spy, financial transactions, arrest warrants, etc), but would also love to hear what courtiers thought or suspected as well (e.g. if someone like Chapuys thought a particular woman was untrustworthy or betraying the Queen, etc) Also, do we know if there's any truth to that habit in period Tudor dramas where the Queen always dismisses her ladies before important conversations, and if so, was this due to fear or knowledge of spies? Particularly, do we have any evidence of Cardinal Wolsey using Catherine of Aragon's English ladies-in-waiting to spy on her? I remember hearing somewhere that he used his influence to dismiss CoA's Spanish ladies-in-waiting and replace them with English ladies that reported to him (or at least ladies that CoA couldn't trust), but I can't remember if I heard it from a "factual" source or from fiction. It does seem something that Wolsey (or Cromwell) might do, though! What do we know of CoA's ladies informing other parties about her private dealings? In a more general