That Charles was his father is more than doubtful, for Lucy Walters had previously lived with Robert Sidney (son of the earl of Leicester), brother of Algernon, and the boy resembled him very closely.
Charles was urged to legitimize Monmouth by a declaration of his marriage with Lucy Walters.
In the paper which he left signed, and to which he referred in answer to the questions wherewith the busy bishops plied him, he expressed his sorrow for having assumed the royal style, and at the last moment confessed that Charles had denied to him privately, as he had publicly, that he was ever married to Lucy Walters.
The Walters were a Welsh family of good standing, who declared for the king during the Civil War.
Her name is often wrongly written Walters or Waters.
