PRINCE William usually escapes Royal mud-slinging — but here he is spattered from head to toe out fox-hunting.
Wills, 20, was drenched in muck cantering in the countryside at the weekend.
An onlooker said: “It wasn’t just his jacket and shirt that got covered, his face did too.
“Heavy rain has turned everywhere into a mudbath.”
William got down and dirty at a meeting of the Beaufort Hunt in Gloucestershire while on a break from his studies at St Andrews University in Scotland.
PRINCE William has privately shown his support for Paul Burrell despite reports that he was upset by the butler's revelations.
Suggestions that Wills had nicknamed Burrell "Paul the Betrayer" have been denied.
A source at St James's Palace said last night: "The prince does not see Paul as someone who has betrayed his mother. He does not believe he is betraying her memory."
The source added: "Following an article in the Evening Standard in which William is said to have called him Paul The Betrayer it is important that people know William has not said that. He has not made any comment following the reporting of the Burrell trial."
The Palace aide contacted newspapers to make certain that William's true feelings were known.
Buckingham Palace also expressed the Queen's views yesterday. A source said: "There is no suggestion here that the Queen is furious or unhappy with The Mirror's coverage. The Queen has not said anything.
"The conversation they had is regarded as private and confidential and nothing more is being said on the Queen's reaction."
Paul yesterday sent a personal message to William and Harry telling them: "I will never betray you. I will not change. My middle name is loyalty. Their trust in me is not misplaced. If they look deep in their hearts they will know that." The ex-butler, who gave the Daily Mirror his exclusive story, spoke out after a 64-page statement prepared for his defence and never meant to be made public was stolen from his lawyers' offices and details published in other newspapers.
The Mirror yesterday ran Paul's 39-page statement to police.
Paul told them not to worry. "I will never betray your mother or you for as long as I live," he said.
"Some things will go to my grave with me. You have nothing to fear from me. I want the boys to know that some of the things that are being printed in other newspapers have not come from my mouth.
"I had to be honest to my legal team and I gave them certain examples to illustrate how close I was to the princess. It was vital to my defence against theft allegations.
"Those details were never intended to be made public. But now other people have got hold of my statement and it makes me feel sick."
Some of his appeal to the princes was in a coded message which he said only they would understand.
He spoke to them: "Remember what we said and how we felt standing in that special place in Kensington Palace. Our hearts were breaking. You will know I will always protect you. If I betray you, I will be betrayed everything I ever felt or thought, everyone I stand for, and I will never do that."
Paul said Harry wept on his shoulder when the boys returned to their mother's Kensington Palace home for the last time after her death.
He said: "Harry ran across and hugged me. He wept on my shoulder, soaking my shirt. He knew my heart was breaking as much as theirs."
He is disgusted that his statement made to his lawyers was stolen. Paul said: "Someone is working behind the scenes to destroy me."
His barrister Lord Carlile said: "I was shocked to see details of a statement Paul never wished to be released being printed."
His agent David Warwick revealed he'd been offered £2million to pull out of the Mirror's deal at the 11th hour.
Mr Warwick was promised a bung, believed to have come from The Sun's parent company News International, for his trouble. He said: "It was an extraordinary thing and I feel offended they would stoop so low."
But Paul trusted Mirror reporter Steve Dennis, who had struck up a friendship with him over the last five years, to tell his story straight.
-THE jury in Paul's trial were brought back to the Old Bailey yesterday to hear why the case had collapsed. They had been sent home on Tuesday while legal submissions were heard. Staff rang them on Friday to tell them the case was over.
PRINCE William is tortured by guilt - because he feels he let down Paul Burrell in his hour of need, The People can reveal.
The young Royal desperately wanted Burrell prosecuted after police briefed him about the theft allegations facing his mother's former butler. Outraged William even branded him Paul The Betrayer.
But after Burrell's dramatic acquittal on all charges on Friday, William realises his view was "poisoned" by what the officers told him. He is desperately hoping he can make his peace with Princess Diana's loyal servant.
A Royal aide said: "He feels a degree of guilt. He feels he let Burrell down. He is hurt at the moment."
And as William battles with his remorse, we can also reveal that Prince Charles was always against Burrell being taken to court - and urged as recently as two months ago that the case be dropped. William, 20, had always liked and trusted Burrell - but his attitude changed dramatically after a secret meeting with police on August 3 last year. Three senior Scotland Yard officers and Treasury counsel drove to Highgrove to talk to Prince Charles and his sons about the investigation into the alleged theft of Princess Diana's property. They wrongly claimed Burrell had been selling royal items abroad. They also said - again incorrectly - that there was a photo of him posing in Diana's clothes.
William was particularly shocked and angered to learn that among hundreds of items seized at Burrell's home were pictures of the young Prince with supermodels including Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell. Wills believed the photos had been sent on to the beauties. He did NOT know that Diana had decided against sending the pictures after news of her son's meeting with the girls at Kensington Palace had leaked out.
The Princess had handed the photos to Burrell instead and told him to "get rid of them".
The butler threw them in a box and forgot about them until police found the pictures in the attic of his house in Farndon, Cheshire. But the police convinced William that Burrell - the man her mother called "My rock" - had taken treasured personal items to which he was not entitled.
At the time, Wills was vulnerable to suggestions that his mother was being betrayed by former staff.
Her private secretary Patrick Jephson had already made £2million from his book Shadows of a Princess, which painted an unflattering picture of Diana. An insider said: "William turned against Burrell dramatically after his meeting with the officers.
"They poisoned his view of the butler. After that he referred to him as Paul The Betrayer.
"They wrongly convinced him that he had been up to no good. For him, it was just another example of one of his mother's trusted aides walking all over her memory to make money. He wanted it to stop and thought the prosecution of Paul would be a good way to do it.
"Now he is racked with remorse. He realises he was mistaken to back the prosecution against Paul so zealously.
"But he was sick and tired of the idea that people he and his mother once trusted were exploiting them."
In contrast to William's stance, his father had tried for over a year to stop Burrell's prosecution. Prince Charles was never convinced of the servant's guilt and was worried the police were seeking a "trophy conviction".
Just two months ago Charles's private secretary Sir Michael Peat had a meeting with police and Diana's eldest sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale to say the case should not go ahead. But according to Royal insiders, Charles's lawyer Fiona Shackleton had come to believe it was right to prosecute Burrell. She thought it was what William wanted. Charles, who has run up a legal bill of over £150,000, remained opposed but the case went ahead.
He was furious when it emerged in court that he had been "grossly misled" at the Highgrove summit with police. The case collapsed when it emerged that the Queen recalled Burrell speaking to her about looking after Diana's belongings. A source close to Charles told The People: "The Royals, and William in particular, will renew their contact with Paul Burrell.
"Charles was never fully convinced the case should go ahead. When he heard of the Queen's meeting with Burrell he leapt on it."
PRINCE William KNEW about the Queen's secret meeting with Paul Burrell—but chose not to tell police.
We can sensationally reveal that William was aware of the
former royal butler's three hour-audience with his grandmother in which he'd
told her he was keeping items from Princess Diana's estate.
But even though the 20-year-old Prince had a lengthy meeting
with detectives investigating Burrell—whose Old Bailey trial dramatically
collapsed on Friday—he remained silent.
"He didn't tell the police, he didn't tell his father," said a
family friend. "He was directly involved in the investigation but stayed silent.
"One word from him would have stopped the case in its tracks. Paul wouldn't even have been charged, let alone gone to trial at the Old Bailey. This nightmare need never have started."
Last night a St James's Palace spokeswoman confirmed our startling revelation which will further fuel the growing mystery about the Royal Family's motives in the affair.
It completely contradicts a Buckingham Palace statement on Friday that ONLY the Queen and Burrell knew of their meeting.
Confided
The spokeswoman said: "Prince William knew about the meeting between the Queen and Paul Burrell. He did not pass on that information to the police and didn't know anything about what was said."
But it is understood he confided his knowledge to at least one senior royal adviser only to be told: "Let this be our little secret, William."
Burrell's bodged trial—which cost £1.5 million—was halted by the direct intervention of the Queen when she remembered the conversation they had had in October 1997 just after Diana's death.
Burrell, 44—so close to Diana she described him as her "rock"—told Her Majesty he had taken some of the princess's papers for safe-keeping.
The prosecution's case that he had stolen more than 300 items of her property rested on claims that Burrell had told no one he was looking after items from the princess's estate.
The Queen only stepped in thanks to a chance conversation she had with Prince Charles about the case. Until then, claim royal aides, she didn't know the relevance of the information.
"The thing is, William DID know it was relevant," said one family friend. "He knew all the facts of the case.
"He's been talking about little else for six months."
William had been present at a meeting at Highgrove—Prince Charles's Gloucestershire estate—when he and his father were briefed on the case by Scotland Yard detectives.
They were told—falsely—that Burrell's bank balance had soared and that police had found evidence that he had been offering Diana's treasures for sale overseas.
Both claims were untrue and during the trial police had to admit they'd misled Charles and William.
But now, in the aftermath of the ordeal, the Burrell family have been stunned to learn of William's silence at a crucial early stage in the investigation.
The young prince had grown up alongside Burrell's sons and had once looked on the butler as a close family friend.
"It is incredible. William must have had his reasons but it will be hard for Paul to understand," said one.
"If William had told the police that his grandmother had talked for three hours with Paul, they would have to have started asking questions of her. That would have been the end of the case."
Yesterday William was hunting with the Beaufort Hunt near Highgrove on a weekend break from his college studies at St Andrew's University in Scotland.
And at Windsor the Queen looked lost in thought as she rode out from the castle. Now Prince Charles is expected to order an internal review into how the Burrell case ever got so far.
He had been advised by his solicitor that they had no choice but to co-operate with the inquiry.
A royal source said: "The real tragedy in this case is that someone might have gone to prison all because a handful of people couldn't be bothered to talk about it. The Prince of Wales is very concerned and wants to make sure that Paul is treated fairly."
Yesterday Burrell and his wife Maria, 48, were lying low at a secret northern hideaway with his two sons—away from his home in the Cheshire village of Farndon.
Last night the ex-butler's father Graham, 68, said his son had been "put through hell" since being accused of stealing from his former employer.
Graham said: "People tried to make out Paul wasn't as close as he said he was to Diana, but he was. He was very close.
"I had audiences with Diana and whenever I saw her she would call me her grandad. She used to put her arm in mine and say: 'Come on, grandad, we'll go for a walk'."
Graham, who still lives in the family home in Grassmoor, near Chesterfield, Derbyshire, revealed that Paul had told him about his crucial conversation with the Queen.
"He told me he had an audience with Her Majesty just after the Princess's death," said Graham.
"He said, ‘Nobody knows what we talked about, but it will come out.'
"Paul still hasn't had a say—it was all prosecution at the trial. But if he had had to take the stand I can assure you he had an answer for everything."
Last night it emerged that the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith QC had been brought into the Burrell case as early as last Monday.
Concerned
As Britain's senior law officer he was asked for a view on the case by the prosecution.
"His advice was sought and given. But the decisions were made by the Crown Prosecution Service and prosecuting counsel," said a spokesman.
Meanwhile speculation continues to grow over why the Queen did not step in earlier to stop Burrell's ordeal.
Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews—himself a QC—said: "The Queen is no different from any of us in this respect. She had listened to this case.
"She had evidence to give which would have helped this poor man who was charged with these offences.
"Of course she should have come forward. She or somebody should have said 'I think we can help with this case'.
"Of course there are ways of dealing with this. She could have put this in the public domain a very long time ago. Of course the question has to be asked why didn't she do so."
But constitutional expert Lord St John of Fawsley defended the Queen, saying: "She was very well aware of the case and was concerned about it.
"One of the first things she did on returning from Canada was to raise the question. It is a very delicate question of timing. But the Queen is not a lawyer.
"If she had done it earlier the Queen would have been accused of a cover-up.
"She came to the conclusion that something needed to be said and quite rightly the meeting with Paul Burrell was brought to the attention of the police.
"The Queen is aware of her constitutional duty and has a strong sense of justice. As ever the Queen is blameless and emerges with the utmost credit."